That's a Wico add-on sound board designed to replace chimes in EM games. Quite rare.

It's absolutely repairable; the electronics in them aren't terribly complex but some of the components are... perishable.

This is Bush League by Gottlieb from IPDB . Seems like a bad place for those two fuses.

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Wico sold shitloads of them. Mainly used in early SS games with chimes. As soon as Solid-State sounds came out, play dropped on the chime games. Those $79.00 sound boards helped prop up play. Gottlieb Sinbad was a great example. Made tons of money then died when Dragon came out. We went to locations and added the sound boards. Brought the cash box right back up.

The ingenuity in this thread makes Mgyver look like an rookie.

Here is my contribution...

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I've seen a lot of taped wires under thr playfield on a few routed games alot of times the operators will cut the solenoids off the think are bad to trouble shoot. I had a space shuttle where ever part was cut and taped. Some of the wires didn't even match color so they may have been just populating for auction.

What did it sound like? Did they have custom sounds for each title?

Universal board for "any" game. Blip-blip tones.

I've got a board in one of my EMs that seems to be semi-programmable via jumper wires. It's got a giant grid of holes that someone has hand jumped shut in some way, and it can make a variety of simple synth sounds, but not just one-off things. Some even have their own patterns, or can play little multi-note tunes. All done without a CPU somehow. Wish I had a manual

Picture?

We installed them in the games with the jumpers in the default positions. Installed them as soon as we received them. IIRC, Penn-Ray and The Great Amusement Emporium also sold them. There may have been slight differences between each one.

Wow, I've seen the Wico board in the past, but never the Synchroson (great name)! And with French labeling "fait pour Laniel Canada", so really cool. Would be very interesting to see if there's any documentation of the jumper-matrix.

It looks home-made. The traces seem hand drawn or created using adhesive tape then the PCB etched...

This is still one of my favorite threads on Pinside. MrBally’s history and knowledge here is invaluable.

Most early PCBs I've seen look the same. Don't think it's home made, just hand plotted

Oh, that's vintage pre-1980s routing. They were all hand drawn and created.

The guy that did it at williams (Ray Gay IIRC) did a seminar at Expo 2008 or 2009.

Not a Wico sound board though, that's a more rare beast apparently.

http://pindude152.blogspot.com/2017/01/laniel-synchroson-ml-1600-pinball.html

Agreed, that's a nice, clean commercial board but pre-CAD, so laid out by hand using tape to create the board-mask (obvious from the curving lines), but care taken to make it very neat (as evidenced by the nice rectangular layout on the bottom section).

Here's a blog that shows some additional photos of these: http://pindude152.blogspot.com/2017/01/laniel-synchroson-ml-1600-pinball.html

When I was young electrical engineer (or maybe even a tech at the time), I remember seeing the drafting guys hand taping the film for board layouts. Probably in the very 80's timeframe. Since the boards were fairly small (maybe 3x7"), the actual taping was done at a much larger scale, then reduced.

Multiple layer board, meaning they had layers of film stacked together at the same time and would tape each layer as needed. Then we would compare the schematic, part-by-part vs. layout, to make sure the layout was correct.

Because cutting another base plate in half is easier than replacing it?

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Wow looks like Rodriguez really screwed up the inspection on that one

Found this gem on a Gameplan Sharpshooter yesterday.

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Maybe to dim the lights (i.e. to last longer)?

Maybe the machine was installed in a location in Alaska and they wanted the HEAT generated to warm the inside of the cabinet and the flipper buttons making it easier to play in the winter with gloves off????

Don't plug that thing into an outlet in Texas; it might take out the grid

I'd suggest it's because the company is Wico (well-known gaming parts supplier even today) not Wilco =) but even correcting the name won't turn up any real results. Too specific with the part # in there. It has been discussed a bit though, you can search "wico add on sound board" and turn up several good results including some pinside threads like this one: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/em-with-added-electronic-sound-board

Richard

I pulled a Wico out of a Night Rider and replaced it with a chime unit.

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/archive/71683

After verifying my switches off the cpu on my BSD were working...came across this hack off the 9pin switch IDC...corrected the poor craftsmanship and boom; we’re golden.

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A 100X improvement of that board would be a $4 RaspberryPico board, with a $1 one chip amplifier if designed today. Too bad there is no market for sound upgrade boards for EMs any longer....

I guess with some jumpers and an extra switch on the start button to reset it, you could make the sounds (WAV TRIGGER) change based upon the score and the current coil being triggered. This could be a little more dynamic that bleeps.

Remember the hacked up Road Show I posted a while a go? Starting to work on it and looks like I have more detective work ahead of me.

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I think all the colors are on both sides of that screw-terminal block, but the individual wires clearly are not matched up. Not even one is matched! It hurts just looking at that mess...

Those blocks seem like such a blessing and a curse. While you don't have to deal with twisted/taped or crimped connections, you still have a "solution" for people that have no business digging into wiring, digging into wiring.

(Trust me though, after having repaired a Barracora that someone cut and stripped, twisted, taped EVERY wire between playfield and backbox, you're far better off repairing hacks from those terminal blocks!!!)

Richard

I would suggest "butt slices". No soldering required.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XCZ9PT5/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_glt_fabc_3MGZ0KVK7DJPT35XRK53

For trouble free performance, solder lap joint and heat shrink insulation. Will look good too.

I hate those. Solder and heatshrink for life. If I was an operator looking for a quick fix things would be different though.

That word underscores everything for a pinball owner. Know, or learn, how to solder.

I see the 'shortcut' approach on Amazon, but it scares me to think of using a product like this:
https://www.amazon.com/Kuject-Connectors-Self-Solder-Waterproof-Electrical/dp/B07Z8SD8PB/ref=sr_1_5

Even if your wire strands were shiny clean, I can't imagine the solder would flow very well, and worse, the shrink wrap will hide whatever actually happened inside the connection. I agree with the above statement... for the home machine, resist any of these mechanical splices and solder and shrink wrap properly. Two wires will visually be connected if the solder is shiny and the wires are all encased. Shrink wrap is then activated once the solder connection is confirmed.

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Saw something similar on YouTube last week. Very nice.

Mark

We used those while I was in the Navy. Used a special heat gun to ensure complete solder melt and uniform shrinking of the wrap. It also had a type of glue in the ends that made it waterproof.

A good product, but I see no use for it in the pinball world. There are better alternatives.

This is something like what I do when I need to splice two wires together (referred to as a lineman's splice), although, I don't pre-tin, use quite so many wire turns on the ends or quite as much wire length since the wires are not load bearing. I use just enough to physically hold them together, then solder, then cover the joint with heatshrink. That way, the splice is secure and there's no chance of it breaking, unlike with a butt connector.

No worries guys, I will solder and heat shrink everything, and refit connectors where they were supposed to be. Already fixed the wiring at the mains box. After the transformer I found another gem. Its the gift that keeps on giving!

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I used these type of splices when I was building and wiring up airplanes (Beechcraft). I will allow that what we used had to be certified for aviation use so there might be a higher level of quality than these that are selling on Amazon.

If I was dealing with pin with a cluster of cut wires, I would not have a problem with using these.

These splices are marine spices; They are water proof. With an industrial heat gun, that solder ring inside melts easily and flows well. There is some gummy type of stuff on each end and when you apply the heat gun the gummy stuff makes a water tight seal. These splices much better than those butt/crimp splices you usually see.

Solder and shinkwrap would not be authorized for aircraft use; At least not where I worked.

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