06/09/2026
Another late night at The Parlor working on games. Keeping these things in top shape is an enormous feat.
Tonight, or this morning I guess, I'm working on a playfield swap. I found a Cleopatra for a few hundred bucks but it needed a lot of work. First, I replaced all of the pcbs with an all-in-one board that works flawlessly. After playing it for a few days, all of the paint started chipping off of the playfield because it was in such bad shape.
Then I proceeded to cover the chipping areas with mylar and had a major catastrophe. The mylar bunched up and when I went to straighten it out, nearly all of the paint ripped clean off the playfield. At this point there was no other option than to search online for a replacement. Luckily I found one on eBay for a decent price in much better shape than the one I had. Not perfect, but better.
Through the awesome Pinball community, one of my buddies cleaned up the top of the playfield and clear coated it. This locks in the state of the playfield and no more damage will occur (for a while at least).
I knew this would be a big project so I put it off for months but decided tonight was the night. A few hours in and I feel like I've made a ton of progress but visually it doesn't look like I've done much of anything. I have transferred about 80% of the screws that hold the wiring harness, switches, lights and mechanical components from the original playfield to the "new" playfield.
I did zero research on the standard process for a play field swap and just kind of winged it, but this seems to make sense to me.
For the switch stacks that were screwed directly into the playfield, I very carefully ran a zip tie through both holes of the switch stack in order to keep everything together.
For the insert lights, I am replacing every single one with an all-in-one LED board that works on everything from EMS to new games that replaces the spring-loaded socketed bayonet bulbs. Those bulbs have been an absolute nightmare to deal with. They cause flickering on games from the '60s all the way up through the ones that just came out yesterday.
Hopefully we will have this one back up in time for Friday Night Strikes! See you then.
