My replacement Night Club playfield came with a problem: the ball arch between the shooter lane to the rebound rubber, was routed down about 1/4 inch.

I've thought about several methods for repair, and decided to try Varathane as I have a can here, and it holds up to ball travel normally... 

We will see how it holds up!

Bally's Night Club (1956) was a heckuva game.  Rotating numbers in the corners of the bingo card, changes to quadruple your wins in certain areas of the backglass, corners scoring, an extended time tree, and the Ballyhole!

Whew!  That's a lot of features! One of my all-time favorite bingos, and mine is running, so I'm a happy camper.

Insert cupping is much more difficult to fix than sunken inserts.

There are several methods that can be used, and I give some of the pros and cons of each.

Get ready for nerve-wracking sanding!

There are multiple ways to reglue inserts.  

In this episode, I give the method that I use. 

When inserts are loose, they must be removed and re-adhered to the game to prevent nasty playfield wear.

The bingo helpline lights up again tonight with a call about how to most effectively troubleshoot the scoring on a magic screen.

I give my personal method for troubleshooting, and explain the (few) shortcuts I take.

Troubleshooting a new game for me using this method takes only a few hours.

Congratulations on getting your blue section working, btw75!

In 1952, Williams put out a bingo-style game that encourages you to land in the four corners of the card to win the most replays.

As with most woodrails, there are multiple ways to win replays.  In this case, you win replays based on three or four in line on the bingo card.

It looks like a very fun game!

Bally Bingos were big money.  If the machines had a feature that allowed for skilled players to earn replays too quickly, some sly operators would disable that feature.  Alternatively, they might make it come up much less frequently.

Working on a hacked game can be difficult - some of the technicians were very clever.  The ham-fisted ones are usually very obvious and easy to repair.

The solid state bingos made by Wimi or GAA have a different type of ball return board - the design has one advantage over the Bally style of ball return, however, it also has a few disdvantages.

Bally's bingos had a ball lifter that would handle multiple tasks - chief among them, to serve a ball to the shooter lane to allow the player the chance to fire!

Bally Bingos have a special part underneath the playfield that is designed to return the balls to the trough.

This part, despite its simplicity, is also an elegant solution to getting all the balls back into the trough without jamming.