1968 Williams 'Cabaret' Pinball Machine - Overview, artwork - cool old Electromechanical Fun!

Ladies and gentlemen this is Joe's Video Games. LionsArcade.com is where you can see all of our games that we have in at the moment but we sell video games and classic arcade games and a few pinball machines. So today I'm making a videotape of a pinball machine. Usually we do arcade games but we get a few of these in so I figured I'd videotape it because there's so many different pinball titles we may not get this one again. This is 1968's Cabaret made by Williams Pinball. This was designed by the famous Steve Kordek. He did it be Steve Kordek. I don't know how you pronounce it. I wish he was around to ask. This gentleman was responsible for about a hundred different pinball designs and since he's listed as the only designer I don't know who did the artwork. He may have done the artwork. I'm not sure if that was in his wheelhouse or not but he's certainly known for making a lot of games at Williams while he was there. So this is Cabaret. This came out in 1968 like I said. This is an electromechanical game. If you know about pinball machines you'll know all about this but if you don't I figured I'd just go over it a little bit and just show you a general overview of it. We bought this from a local church that had had it for a long time in their youth center and the game had been neglected. I don't think the church really did it but it looked to me like whenever they received it it was in pretty bad shape. We went through it and serviced it and got all the electronics working the way they should. That's the good thing about an electromechanical pinball machine. You don't need too many parts whenever you work on one. It's mainly cosmetic issues and then of course you have to service all the relays and stepper units. Usually there's no PCB boards or I shouldn't say that but no circuitry boards that burn up or anything like that. This cabinet's actually been repainted at some time. The original paint job now again this is a 1968 so we're looking at a game that's more than 45 years old and at one point it was repainted. So the original paint job if you look at the other examples online or if you see a flyer of this game it'll look a little different. Williams had this cool thing they did for a while there where the game would be painted but the trim around the back glass around the back box was actually stained wood. So that's pretty cool. It's kind of different and it kind of frames the glass a little bit. This is a four player as you can see and the electromechanical ones use the old score reels. I'll get a close-up of that if you've never seen that. These are little reels that spin around. If you look closely you can see the next number getting ready to come up. So as you score those wheels spin and makes it display the new score. Let me give you a close-up of some of that back glass artwork. So you've got a different scene for each player. Somebody looks like they've fallen under the table there. They had a little bit too much. This guy's so busy staring at the pretty lady that he's dumping champagne all over the place. This lady's doing her makeup. You've got the... I guess she's dancing. It's pretty cool. I'll walk up the play field here a little bit. I've taken the glass off the machine just so we wouldn't get as much glare. Just the standard kind of layout. It's got this little... now this play field has, whenever we received it, had major wear. So we've touched it up and did what we could but it's definitely not mint. Remember it's 45 years old. I've read some comments online where people say that it's kind of hard to find this particular title. It's not a super desirable title or anything like that but it's kind of hard to find one of these that's not really worn because apparently it did pretty well back in the day. It has this neat little feature that Williams did on some of their games up here. See how there's this wheel up here? It says score selector and then it says change right there. Well if you hit that change rubber it makes this wheel spin and so it changes the color that's lit up. We're not playing a game right now. It's just sitting here waiting for a quarter but whenever it's split up white this white insert over here lights up which makes this one 300 when lit but it also lights up for instance this pop bumper. So it makes this one 100 points when lit and then you know it might light up some of the other displays. I can't remember which one's the white one does but so you've also got if it if every time you hit this change reel it'll spin it or that change one it'll spin it or that change one it'll spin it or this change one it'll spin it and so as that spins away up there it changes the points on almost every target on the play field which is pretty amazing really if you think about it. They did it with no computers or anything like that it's just switches and relays so you've got the white yellow green and then you've got red so if the red lights up everything lights up so all of these will be lit up and all of the pop bumpers will be lit up if you're on green these two pop up bumpers are lit up so instead of one point you get 10 points and if you're on yellow these are lit up and if you're on white this one's lit up or if you're on red everything's lit up so it's got this little kick out hole you can see some of the wear right there that was around kickout holes you've always got the most wear you can see how that was touched up in the past and it's pretty worn but in general wear on the play field usually doesn't affect the gameplay if it's really bad it does but as long as you've got the game uh playing well with nice strong flippers and everything adjusted and cleaned and scoring the ball will roll over that worn play field about as well as it will over a nice play field of course you need to keep them waxed keep it as clean and as fresh as possible making it'll make it a lot faster so somebody came up with this paint job the the actual layout of it is like i said it's different than the original somebody actually like that bottle is not on the original paint somebody actually took the time to put that in there and then the other side i guess they just taped it off really well the other side is similar so this is williams cabaret just a cool old pinball machine 1968 we get these in a while these take a lot of work though to get working again if they've if they've been sitting for a long time not working um essentially you just have to go through and service every little part literally every switch you have to mess with i'll take the back off of it and show you a little bit of what these look like inside just so you'll get a an idea of that let me take this on this is a key that holds this back door on let me back out a little bit so you can get a good idea of what we're doing here that's the back of the game now as you can see it's lit up because we're turned on right now but these are the score reels on an electromechanical machine and so all of the relays in the bottom of the cabinet have to be doing their thing and then as you score it will spin these around so i'll pull one in here you can see this out kind of clicks to the next one and then these are stepper units that have to do with telling you know what ball's in play what player's up you have to get all of that clean and turning this is the credit wheel have to get all that cleaned up and where it makes good contact and turns and resets and steps up and steps down and all that so whenever you see a pinball machine that somebody's serviced and you wonder man why is that thing hundreds of dollars or thousands of dollars it's because somebody is taking the time to go through and if they have you know maybe they haven't and they just want a lot of money for it but someone has taken the time to go through and adjust all of these switches clean all of these relays all of these stepper units you can also see on the back glass if you've got a good eye for this stuff you may have already noticed it but it has some areas that have been touched up on it so like for instance see the title looks pretty good right but if you get close see the cracks in the paint there that's been repainted again doesn't look perfect this is not a collector's quality top of the line machine but it does look pretty good and it plays good so you can see some more wear down here see how that's bubbled up a little bit but when you stand back it's a five footer right five feet away it looks really good so there you have it