New England’s Best Pinball Repair and Restoration
two premier services to bring your pinball machine back to play like new condition, in-home or in our Massachusetts workshop
IN-HOME RESTORATION SERVICE: THE PINBALL DAY SPA
A pinball machine is more than just a game– it’s playable artwork, a time machine holding memories of high scores and good friends. It’s a time capsule containing all the enthusiasm of your inner child at Christmas. And it’s a valuable heirloom, a legacy to share with generations to come.
That’s why Dr. Dave’s Pinball Restorations doesn’t just repair your pinball machine– we refresh it to play like new via our exclusive signature Pinball Day Spa. With this service, we won’t be doing any artwork touchup as our goal is getting your pinball machine to play like it did when it first hit the arcade with optimized gameplay and enhanced reliability. This in your home Pinball Day Spa typically ranges anywhere from $1500 – $3500 and can take anywhere from 5 to 12 hours to accomplish. (If you’re looking for artwork touchups in addition to the rest of our Pinball Day Spa work, see our In Shop Restoration Service at the bottom of this page for details and pricing for that higher end service.)
Our in your home Pinball Day Spa service is offered primarily in the Boston and Eastern Massachusettes area. With special arrangements made, we can also cover areas farther out in greater New England. Some machines and machine issues can require multiple days, but in most cases our careful preparation enables us to get it done in your home in one day! We accomplish this via:
- We bring an entire inventory of new pinball parts and circuit boards relevant to the title of your game.
- This includes all parts needed for a successful restoration: flipper rebuild parts, premium silicone clear rubber and silicone colored post rubber, NEW / OEM circuit boards and electronic components, warm LED lighting as well as incandescent lighting, playfield hardware, new switches, new balls etc.
- New cabinet and head locks if needed / missing / locked out
- We replace all the general illumination lights with Comet warm white LEDs, especially recommended if you’re game is 1986 or newer. Everything else we leave as incandescent, as it looks better that way after cleaning the undersides of the playfield feature light inserts.
- We have a deep look inside your game, looking for and repairing issues on the underside of the playing field: coil or switch wiring that is worn out, as well as connections, components and circuit boards, score displays in the backbox that need rebuilding or upgrading
- We move and/or take off major assemblies from the top of the playfield to get to the playfield surface wherever the ball will be rolling around and deep clean those areas, as well as the underside and top side of the ramps (if your pinball game has these)
- Inspect microswitches top side and underside of the playfield for proper action; and if any frayed wires, we repair or replace switches where needed
- We service any sluggish drop target assemblies via taking them apart, cleaning the tracks, applying lite lubrication.
- We rebuild any burned connectors going to the driver board
- We repin any connectors that have any signs of alkaline damage and likewise any lite alkaline damage on MPU. We replace the MPU board if this damage to it is beyond repair. Further, we install a remote battery pack or an NVRAM solution that eliminates the batteries entirely.
- If your pinball machine has a dot matrix display (DMD) that is having issues, we offer full color upgrade DMD replacement or standard plasma DMD replacement.
More information on the particulars of our Day Spa process can be found on the page called Particulars.
In-Shop Restoration Service: The Pinball Spa & Resort
With this service, we go over and above our Day Spa service and get your game in the kind of showroom condition that would grace any game room or living room for that matter as when we are done with your game it is truly a piece of gleeming playable artwork.
This service takes anywhere from 40 to 100 hours to complete and can ballpark anywhere from $5,000 – $8,500
Our Particulars page describes in detail and includes all the services listed in our in your home Day-Spa PLUS fine tuning niceties like:
- Buffing playfield and coin door metal as well as the palm bar, deep cleaning the cabinet inside and out
- Replace any broken plastics (partial or complete set).
- Replace worn out drop targets with new
- Professionally touch up the playfield surface and cabinet artwork
- Replace the playfield with a new reproduction playfield with a labor intensive playfield swap / optimization
- Replace the backglass (or translight) with a new color correct reproduction
- De-rust the metal legs and any rusty metal on the playfield surface
- Replace pinball legs and hardware with new ones specific to your title
- Rebuild the original plasma displays or Upgrade to new LED technology versions.
- Replace and or rebuild circuit boards for enhanced reliability
- Option to upgrade the original orange plasma display to Full Color Dot Matrix display.
- Mirror Blade high reflective playfield cabinet mirror sides (1990 games and newer) which enhances the play experience
- Custom mods or toys appropriate for the title.
- HD optically clear antireflective tempered playfield glass (Standard new tempered playfield glass also available)
A recent example of the above: