Page Created 01-18-2023

The “jones” plugs are a pretty common source of problems in the Bingos

Especially if you have separated the two cabinets to move your machine somewhere`

Broken wires, loose wire strands shorting to others, worn sockets, broken studs/plugs - etc`

Yes, from the simplest of machines to the more advanced Bingos, there is a lot going on here`

I stole this detail from some long-forgotten website`

4) Clean your cable plugs! I learned about this trick from my wife's 1950 Bally Spot Lite bingo. The vast majority of our pinball machines use 'plug and socket' interconnecting cable connectors between the backbox, main cabinet and the playfield. The 'plug' (cable) ends of these connectors (shown at left) in many early games for some weird reason use two-part pin terminals, with one part a solder tab where the cable wire solders to the terminal and also a pin part that actually goes into the socket shown in the photo at right. You will need to solder each of the terminal tabs onto its corresponding pin in each plug. Why? Because these pin plugs are only pressed together in manufacture, and dirt and tarnish will form between these parts and form bad connections in these assemblies. To fix this, you will need to wire brush each of the pin and tab connection areas for each pin in each of your cable connectors until these parts are shiny again, and then solder each tab to its corresponding pin one by one. DO NOT short any adjacent pins together! Once all of these pins have been soldered, test each of them with your VOM or DMM for lowest actual resistance (NOT CONTINUITY!) from each tab to its pin. If you have plugs that have the wires going right into the pins without the mounting tabs (like the ones from the Idaho shown at left) just heat up each pin with your soldering iron and add a little fresh solder to the hollow end of the pin to resolder the joint.

Keith Nickalo has owned more Bingos than anyone I have ever known, literally 100s, made this comment to me one day`

One thing I have had big problems with....The Jones Plugs. Those suckers have to be cleaned off.

I clean all mine to the point of obsession and still end up with faults from poor contact at the Jones Plug.

That was years-and-years ago, 2011 and I have never forgot`

The faces and the shafts of these things can get tarnished`…Remember these games are 50+ years old`

An alcohol bath isn’t a bad idea, and you can gently rough these up with a Scotch-Brite pad`

Inspect them with good lighting and side-to-side views, you can see the tarnish and dirt`

A lot of this is common sense, preventive maintenance kind of stuff`

Try to limit disassembling the plugs`…don’t do it at all unless necessary`

Be very careful during assembly-and-disassembly`…keep things straight to each other and use gentle, slow, force and movements`

Handle the “jones” plugs by the phenolic, never by the wire bundles`

If you do take the machine apart, inspect the hell out of them`…while the machine is still apart and after you put it back together`

Again: Use good light and look for broken wires, frayed wires touching others, tarnish, first, broken metal - etc

Yep, even the games with only three plugs have problems`

_ Links _

http://danny.cdyn.com/pinball%20repair%20notes.htm

http://danny.cdyn.com/SIMAACA.org.htm

https://bingo.cdyn.com/techno/overhaul/magic_ring/backdoorstuff.html

https://forums.arcade-museum.com/threads/going-to-work-on-a-bingo-machine-today.302416/

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