Contact Rottendog Amusements. I believe he is producing or about to produce B/W transformers

And there $300, price to pay, no cheaper.
Its a great new remake of old part at a great price.

What failed on the transformer-- did windings short out or something melt?

Every major city has a motor and transformer rewinding shop.

First though, how have you determined that your transformer is bad?

I had to patiently search a few months for the same one. It's either pay the 300 premium or wait for someone to have a part out and get one that way. Figure 200+ for used.

You're correct, they aren't interchangeable due to the audio board voltage requirements.

They are really pretty simple - iron core (that's why they weigh a ton) with a set of windings for the input and voltage which induces current on an output (or multiple outputs as you could tap the windings for different output voltages) winding

This is a really rare problem.

Usually the raw voltage output from a transformer is too high, then the following circuitry **regulates** it down to the required voltage.

So I might measure 26 AC volts coming off a transformer with no load, and then the circuit converts it to the 18 volts the game requires.

A rewinding shop measure the thickness of the bad transformer winding (there are often many different windings in a single transformer), then they rewind the coil with the same thickness wire and the same number of wraps.

Finally they bake the transformer in an oven so it does not buzz all the time.

Coil_Primary_Finish (resized).jpg

itfinal (resized).jpg

I instructed Mike to post this thread to get some second opinions. I suspected the transformer is causing an issue because the 9v AC and 13v AC are reading about 5v too high on each at J101, but this was with J101 unplugged from the driver board. I forgot about voltage drop due to load, so we can now rule the transformer out I believe. Let me know if the voltages on those two windings still sound high. The power driver board is showing 18v on the 12v unregulated test point. The game hums when starting up and continues buzzing (all these sounds are coming from the backbox speakers) with no activity from the sound and display driver boards. The DMD in the game is good. It boots to attract and coins up. We did not try starting a game though. I also removed the power supply connectors from everything except the driver board and still see 18v on the 12v unregulated test point.

You could then be the scrotum king, and I could retire; maybe raise a family.

Did you guys check the voltage select plug? i.e. Page 3 in the PDF of the WPC Schematics (labeled page 1). You may have, but there's no mention of it, and figured I'd ask. Check the plug where 120v AC comes in, and the jumpers in the plug, against the center dotted area on the page.

If the game used to work, then we can be 99% sure that it's set to the correct voltage.

I'm sure the transformer is fine.

Time to start diagnosing the actual problem....

First, it was never mentioned the game 'used' to work. And second, no actual symptoms have been mentioned, other than high voltages and hum. (i.e. Was it just a call to get rid of the hum, or was something else failing as well?)

And it's always good to cover all bases, or else you're chasing ghosts in the dark.

Now it's likely they checked it, but it wasn't mentioned, hence why I'm bringing it up. If it's set to 105v, then that would give you about 18v on the 12v unreg line, actually.

"the transformer in my fishtails has failed"

To me (and remember, I'm an idiot), that sure sounds like the game used to work.

No need to argue amongst ourselves over semantics, we got a game to fix....

To give some more details, we are getting 122v AC at the wall and the game was working perfectly with occasional issues with the display ribbon cable (which were temporarily resolved by physically moving the cable around the backbox). All of the ribbon cables in the backbox were replaced with new, and installed. However one cable was off horizontally during installation, the short one connecting the CPU board and the driver board. This was installed correctly, and we discovered this new issue. I am pretty sure a misaligned ribbon cable would not cause this, but I could be wrong.

Okay, well, since I don't know anything, I'll stop posting here.
However, that wouldn't cause any change with the transformer. So it's been running with those voltages fine up until you replaced the ribbon cables.

Good luck.