I would never hardtop a nice, restorable playfield. It would be a shame to peel the mylar and sand off all that nice artwork underneath. In your case I would either restore it or swap it and sell the original.

I've tried to find someone to do touch-up for the worn areas but no-one wants to touch it. The inserts are pretty bad with the typical cracking but it plays well and looks pretty good as long as you don't look too closely.

Did you ever cover the parts in masking tape and make flat patterns? Would still like to have someone make these and flat patterns would be great.
Mike

I'm working on a Xenon and found an orange wire that seems to go nowhere on the backbox door. I've traced it to J4 pin 9 on the power supply pcb. I'm trying to figure out if this wire is supposed to be connected to something since I can't see anywhere that looks like it may have been cut from or was it a factory oops that was cut short or didn't need to be there. Its just seems odd to me that its runs all the way to that point and is just seemingly cut off for no reason.

IMG_3720 (resized).JPG

I had 2 prior Xenons and they both had the orange mystery wire, don't worry about it? Is your game having issues?

According to the schematics, the J4P9 on the power supply board is a parallel of pin 8, and both are intended to feed the general illumination bus in the backbox with 6.5VAC.

Here is the schematic, you'll want to look at page 49/54: https://www.ipdb.org/files/2821/Bally_1980_Xenon_Manual_And_Schematics.pdf

I have not yet powered it up I just picked this up and happened to notice a wire that looks to go nowhere and i'm trying to figure it all out.

Its a GI wire. There are two each. The Orange should be Soldered to the same wire bus in parallel with the Red.

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scanned my pf to fix art/attempt to print and do the decal method people have been doing. messing around with changing the colors....thoughts??

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How many posts are there total? Mine are pink, but several are missing

Post pics when you get it! Assuming these don't have the mirrors? Is there anywhere to get those?

the mirrors are available on eBay, However, you can remove your original mirrors very easily as they were originally put on by Bally with double sided tape and after 40 years the adhesive really doesn't hold very well anymore.....

Probably listing my Xenon.
An all original beauty except for the Allteks.
PM if interested, will ship.

Yes, please post some pictures and if at all possible with it next to an original for comparison.

I talked to Greg Kmiec years ago about Xenon, he told me interesting facts. Those mirrors are just stick on mirrors that were sold in auto parts store back then. It's a convex blind spot mirror. If somebody could measure the diameter of these and post it, that would be great. Mine is buried at the moment. I'm guessing around 4 inches. Here's the closest I found to 4 inches.

https://smile.amazon.com/Camco-25613-Round-Convex-Mirror/dp/B004MDZ5NI/ref=wl_mb_wl_huc_mrai_1_dp

I was thinking of changing it up somehow with a custom mirror. Maybe something facetted or different color such as blue or purple, but would be difficult to find. I have a nice glass already so I haven't been that motivated to search.

Another note, these mirrors were given out at show as a promotional item. The had a xenon sticker placed over them. Pretty rare to find but I got one.

Sorry for the typos,
given out at shows, They had a xenon sticker placed over them...

My curiosity got the best of me and I dug out my xenon. I'm lucky that my inner glass is perfect still. I also like the fact that you don't need a lift channel, only for the outer glass. So the mirror is 3 3/4 so the amazon mirror should be a close enough match. I also found one on Napa:

https://www.napaonline.com/en/p/GRO12014?cid=paidsearch_shopping_dcoe_google&gclid=Cj0KCQjw9ZzzBRCKARIsANwXaeI5k4s-aqwh_FO4qQG0Z52mV0oe6vO4Im3pYg1D25vvH9iUsPEamjIaArQEEALw_wcB

I remember seeing those promotional mirrors.
Excellent that you have one.

Yea, I bought a 10/10 NOS set from a pinsider last year, but I might want one of these to make a frame out of. I just love this BG.

Yeah it's one of my favorite pinball collectibles. I also have the Xenon poster and had professionally framed. I'll post a pic one of these days.

The yellow is to weak. Looks good...
I wish CPR would test their inks and adjust
against an original OEM part.

Hey I recognize that apron.

The glass looks good, I'm anxious to see one in person.

Did they turn green ink into blue *again?* Twilight Zone, Addams Family, Meteor, 8 Ball Deluxe, now Xenon too? Take the blue dropper away from them!!!

This photo was taken nearly two years ago - both glasses came out of old machines. Wide variance of what shipped from factory. Glass on the right has more detail, glass on the left has more yellow. Click to zoom in.

IMG_0002a.jpg

Is it possible it is just due to fading? I know some of my machines, particularly where they lived their prvious life in the sun, have noticable fade / discoloration from the light, but it is interesting how it affects different pigments more.

That's interesting. I wonder if the one on the right has faded. I also noticed that the woman at the bottom seems to be looking left on the left glass and right on the right glass or am I just crazy?

Nice work! Where did you get the bumper caps?

Those pop bumpers are wild. I like the extra lighting on the middle PF, it seems like the cover might obscure the view a bit tho?

Anyway, Nice work, congratualtions on completing it!

I think koji and I are both agreeing here, jinx!

Anythings possible, I don't know the history of these glasses. The right side glass still has yellow in key areas and since red is usually the fastest fading color and it's still vibrant on that glass, I tend to think these were manufactured by different suppliers.

Interesting 3D effect!

I had 6 LED COB lights attached to the top post on my slings for a while. Didn’t affect the view at all.

Yea.. I know color separation is not fun...
O.K. So they know their is a problem; do to the mirroring.
So why didn't they use a masking fluid or Liquid Frisket?
Or at least give it a try? I know some parts would be a pain to do...
But they could have experimented to see if a solution could be achieved.
I don't know if they can scan the back glass all lighted up so that the depth of the colors
could be better registered... rather than unlighted.
I read that the problem CPR has is making a copy of a copy causes a degradation of detail.
I guess it is what it is.

I lucked out, I bought a project xenon at Pinfest last year and the glass is perfect. The outer glass was replaced with smoked pexi. Bought another head with a good outer glass and the wood is in better shape.

When they did Meteor a few months back they denied they ever had trouble with mirrors and claimed the original/NOS was definitely blue in the mirrored area. So frustrating.

Any chance one of those is a reproduction done by someone else years ago? Is this the first time anyone has reproduced this backglass?? I don't doubt there was some variance in colors in the original runs as they were all hand-screened over a period of months while the game was in production but that seems like a pretty stark difference. Agreed that it's great they are making these available and it does look pretty good, just curious.

I don't know the history of those glasses other than they both came out of ex German machines that were imported probably 5 odd years ago and likely had been sitting idle for years beforehand. I wouldn't imagine someone installing a repro glass in one of these machines that were both tired. Both those glasses had delamination. If BigAl56 is watching, maybe he can comment on Bally backglass suppliers at the time.
But anything's possible.

Yes I had a couple of those mirrors packed away that I scarfed up at a show. I sold them on ebay a few years ago when I was downsizing. They are ordinary concave truck blind spot mirrors. Its the decal that makes it a Xenon mirror. You could probably recreate them by printing on decal paper.

Color variations seem to be all the rage on pinside recently. Read the CPR Viking glass thread.

My family has been in the offset printing business for decades (not silkscreening like backglasses were originally made) but the plan and technique is essentially the same. I feel that I have some expertise in this field to offer my opinion based on experience.

This is a four-color process glass. There has been a lot of discussion about color changes in Bally backglasses. These are incredibly small dots of color put together to create a hue. If the glass or screen are misaligned even by thousands of an inch, color variations will occur. This is due to the colors overlapping behind the 1st screen, 2nd screen, and 3rd screen. Bally was able to make these type of backglasses in CMYK, or four passes. Other discreet color backglasses sometimes have 6 or 8 different colors. This saved Bally money, and also increased the contrast of the images they could produce. Win Win at the time.

I picked up a working Xenon with some playfield wear with the intention of putting a hardtop on it. It has an alltek board in there for the MPU. I don't think I am going to be able to get to it for a while. Anyone interested in one? I would just be looking to get my money back out of it.

Posted on classified ads but I will post here too. Looking for Tube light strip and metal covers (covers are at the start of the tube). Here are pics. Please contact me if you have a working or non working strip, I can repair it. Thanks

https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/93831

xenon tube light covers (resized).jpg

xenon tube lights (resized).jpg

So here's my take on the idea 1st put forward by dothedoo

I used my control circuit from the serial addressable pop bumper design and coded up a quick pattern. There's no interaction with anything from the mpu, just an easy add-on (power comes from the main GI rail on the XENON logo at the top of the light board).