I recently just brought home a Grand Prix and all of the non-metal parts on the chime box have rotted out. I know Williams' chimes sound clanky to begin with, but was wondering what the thoughts were on rebuilding to original vs getting xylophone bars (or other) and replacing the bars, perhaps building a box, etc? I love the sound of GTB chimes, but know they can be a little spendy. Anyone have any experience "upgrading" the Williams' chime units?

Has anyone replaced just the chime bars? I did a "rebuild" using nylon wire insulation, cut up post rubber, and silicon washers, and I can get one really good chime (med bar), slightly worse chime (small bar) and one really bad chime (large bar). I was thinking maybe getting the same bars that GTB machines had or using tuned bars of off a xylophone or glockenspiel, as I now have learned

I would love to, but I don't have the tools to grind or cut the bars myself. I'm looking for a place to buy individual bars, or just looking to get a used set to take bars off of. If anything, I'd have to drill mounting holes for them.

I was also curious about wooden xylophone bars. Would definitely be much easier to work with and if I can find a cheap set, I wouldn't have any problems experimenting.

I may end up just getting a proper kit and doing that.

Thanks for the links. I'll check it out.

I have to say, I do enjoy the sound of the score reels spinning. The chime unit (on my diy rebuild) sounds like to can't keep up, so the sound of the score reels spinning are the loudest.

This my only EM at the moment, so there won't be any confusing sounds I'll get a PBR rebuild kit on my next order and not obsess about it not sounding as good as a Gottlieb 2 of the 3 bars sound pretty good. It's the bar that actuates the most that sounds the worst...funny how that works lol

I really doubt it, and probably why it sounds as bad as it does. The spacing for the mounting points are all the same for each bar in the Williams unit and the result is what I described a few posts back as far as the quality of sound goes. It might seem like they found one bar the worked (middle bar) then added a shorter bar and a longer bar to add variety (at the cost of purity) of the sounds.

Compared to even the most basic of glockenspiels, the mounting points are different from bar to bar, to produce a more tuned and refined tone.
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In which, as you can see, the Gottlieb unit emulates, making for nicer tonal qualities.
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Also, the striking point of the Williams unit is at the end of the bar, as opposed to the center of the bar. I would think you would get better sound quality by moving the placement of the solenoids. Again, I doubt there was a lot of thought put into the Williams' chime units.

I suppose that could be true. I don't have a Gottlieb box in front of me so I can't confirm. Either way, the Williams units are still inferior to the Gottlieb ones. I think we can all agree on that.

Thanks for the post The game is in the middle of a teardown right now and I've only put on maybe 20 games on worn and dirty mechs and dirty playfield. I may grow to love it once I get it back together and get some good games on it. One question I do have is currently the flippers are pretty flat when in the fully plunged position and both coils buzz quite loudly. I'm not sure if I can expect a huge difference after rebuilding the flippers (and new EOS switches , new flipper coils, and new flipper cabinet switches), but I sort of am? Hope this isn't a normal part of the game either.

In the first picture above (this was taken from my machine that I'm currently working on) you can see the solenoids on the right hand side. I've circled it.

The paint job looks great! I ended up using stuff I had lying around in my pinball stuff. Post sleeves, nylon tubing, and silicon washers. I inserted a 1/2 inch piece of nylon tubing into a 1/4 inch piece of post sleeve and placed that over the post on the unit. Put the bar down on top of that and then finally the silicon washer retaining bar, and the retaining "clip". This was so that the bar would have free movement and could vibrate without any damping. I've tried to from pretty tight, to pretty loose, and this ended up sounding the best. Like I mentioned earlier, the middle bar definitely sounds the best (most pure sound), the smaller bar sounds a bit worse, and the large bar sounds like a tin can.
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