Bingolett..... help please!

American, British, French or German? We want to know about it.
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coppinpr
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Bingolett..... help please!

Post by coppinpr »


machine1.jpg

I'm just about to start work on this Bingolett, the case and playfield are in very good condition, as you can see from the photo, and inside the wiring seems complete and in good order, except for the transformer area and the fact that there are clearly at least two parts missing.
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I know at least one other forum member has one of these and I know most others on this site know more than I do, so I want to ask for as much help as I can restoring this great machine. First thing I need to know is what's missing and can I make it/buy it. I would guess the complete payout system is missing and that connects to the three colored wires. Just below this are two disconnected white wires and a bracket that must have held something, I don't know what.
payout1.jpg

The coin mech is for UK 3d and I think a part is missing, the parts that decide if the coin should go to the payout chute or the coin box seem to be there but nothing to make them work. Should there be something here?
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Lastly (for the moment) the transformer area is a mess, but seems to be connected, all except for one of two grey wires, and the larger transformer is loose and not attached to the case. Is it a replacement? I think perhaps it is!
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I did get the original wiring chart which is good but in German !!
Like so many German machines of the early 60s these seem to me to be so important representing the transition from mech to Electric and offering, for the first time, at least the hint, of the player being in control. Of course he's not, the skill level is actually less than an Allwin.
I'm grateful for all help and it's much needed !!THUMBSX2!!
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slotalot
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Post by slotalot »

Hi :D , nice looking machine you have there. You say you have the original wiring diagram? Any chance you can post it on here?
As for your transformer !PUZZLED! it looks to me, and I could be wrong! as if the original transformer may have had two outputs, for example 24volts??? for the solenoids/relays and maybe 12volts??? for the lamps. If the original transformer burnt out it could be difficult to find a replacement, so they may have used two separate transformers, one for the 12volts??? and one for the24volts???. That is the most likely reason for having two transformers. It also looks as if the original rectifier has been replaced as well with the new blue square one. As for the gray wires? Really need to see the diagram to sort that.
Not sure I have been any help, but I did try !!CHEERS!!
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coppinpr
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by coppinpr »

Happy to post the W/D, will it come out large enough to see? I'll try, if not I can send you the file.. I'm sure you're right about the double transformer as the W/D hints at two voltages. Any ideas on the missing parts? Also did I pay too much? £210, not that I care, I love it LOL
Thanks for help!
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treefrog
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by treefrog »

I did see this machine, not too far from me and was going to have a go, until I saw the price, I think about £212?, I was going to post something about the price as, but I am trying to get into the habit of not knocking what other feel something is worth to them, as what is important is that you are happy with it....Having said that good working one's tend not to be much more than this, I have seen non working one's going for as little as £100 or less.....At the end of the day, if you can get it working, it will be worth it....Also it is on English coinage and script, which is always a bonus.....
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slotalot
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by slotalot »

Hi, Thanks for the wiring diagram !THUMBS!
The spare gray wire from the transformer, looks as if it is left over from the 12v-0v-12v tapings, "but I could be wrong!" see sketch. If so just tape it up to make it safe.

As for the payout solenoid (AUSZAHLER) see bottom left on wiring diagram, the 2 red/green wires should be joined to one side of the payout solenoid, and the orange wire should be connected to the other side of the payout solenoid via switch "A".. and handle with care as they are 240v AC

As for the missing mechanical parts????? :!HELP:! .............. !!ANYONE!!
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by pennymachines »

Slotalot's your man for the technical stuff but I have a working example here on old penny play, so let me know if any close-ups or component specs might help. My transformer's probably a replacement too and also in a bit of a bird's nest.
Englishman11 can probably sort you out with the missing payout bits.
You may be pleased to know I paid more than you (albeit for a complete and working example) many years ago and still consider it a good buy.
I already provided a cleaned-up Bingolett wiring schematic in Resources.
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operator bell
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by operator bell »

Neither of the two transformers in coppinpr's machine are original, nor is the one in pennymachine's picture. The original is a substantial chunk with a core 85mm square and 33mm thick and two windings, one 12V for the lights and one 30V that is rectified for the relays and clickers. The cam timer and the payout solenoid run directly off the 240V mains input and don't depend on the transformer at all. It seems 12V/30V transformers are unobtainable but it's perfectly reasonable to use two smaller ones, and everything will probably still work from 24V if a 30V unit is hard to find (28V is a standard voltage, though). Coppinpr, you should probably toss out that big gray one, as it looks like a tranny out of a piece of old valve equipment and probably has 500V or so floating around on some unconnected windings with murder in its heart. Actually don't toss it, sell it, as those are rare and sought-after these days. You are also missing the payout solenoid and slide, as has already been mentioned, though at least you have the tube. The rest of it looks complete.

The picture is a bit washed out by the flash, but my machine is entirely original, old penny. This is how they looked when they were new. I don't want to brag, but I only paid 120 US Dollars for it and about another $40 renewing the rubbers and lamps. I have to run mine off an auto-transformer, since my mains is only 110V. Replacing the transformer is not an option as I still have to drive the timer and payout solenoid, and the latter is a meaty sucker that needs a family-size transformer to deliver enough current.

<edit> not entirely original. The white wire snaking down the right side from some top lights to the transformer is my addition, to keep the playfield lights on while the bingo panel lights go off at the end of the game. If you wire it so the bingo panel stays lit, the plastic framing melts.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by operator bell »

PS: there's a little overflow chute to the right of the top of the payout tube that sends coins to the cash box when the tube is full. The other part of the overflow is on the back half of the case, the part that screws to the wall, and the cash box lives there also if it's present. Mr pennymachine's cash tube has been seriously assaulted and an additional gaping hole made near the bottom, where no hole ought to be, for the overflow.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by pennymachines »

I don't think the cash tubes are Wulff-original on either of our machines, as these games were designed to take the 10 PF piece. Various outfits, like AMECO, imported them, adapted the coin acceptors and lashed up coin tubes and slides to make them work on British coinage. I assume they put the lower overflow hole on my coin tube because the solenoid, designed to slide a coin from the bottom of a stack of 10 PF, wasn't built to do this from a stack of heavy British pennies.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by gameswat »

Good call PM. You can easily spot the second hand import versions from looking at the glass like the one shown here. The original payout schedule should be printed on the glass with mirroring just like all the other numbers. The UK operators scratched out the German coinage sometimes well other times averagely and then either painted, like mine, or added paper awards. Same with the two instruction panels. Mine had typed out yellow paper instructions that at least was back lit.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by pennymachines »

That's true, but some revampers had English glasses specially screen-printed, complete with mirroring. I think that's true of my Bingolett (compare the instruction panels with coppinpr's example). I've seen English glasses on quite a few German 50s games, but never on a Duomat for some reason. They always seem to have paper behind scratched-out instruction panels.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by gameswat »

PM, I can't believe a UK revamper would pay the huge expense for mirrored glasses. Most likely they just ordered a bunch of them from the maker in Germany. Or maybe a large number of machines were exported new and over the years they've made their way as spares to ex German machines? They have to start with a mirror then remove most of it before even starting to screen print paint. Even large pinball makers like Bally used to complain about the cost. And few pin makers did use them. Your glass looks exactly like mine except mine was the German language version originally. I've pretty much always found old replacement glasses are inferior in a number of ways. !! :(
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by treefrog »

gameswat wrote:PM, I can't believe a UK revamper would pay the huge expense for mirrored glasses. Most likely they just ordered a bunch of them from the maker in Germany. Or maybe a large number of machines were exported new and over the years they've made their way as spares to ex German machines? :(
I agree, most of the Beromat machines I have are in English, including the mirror finish ones like the Primus and Exactas. Occasionally you see them with the scratched out German instructions and a paper insert. I would have thought Britain was their largest customer outside Germany and would have made them for the market as the volume would justify this
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by coppinpr »

If you look at the video on youtube of the Bingolett the glass on that one has the payouts correctly painted in amounts (6d 1' 3d) that look nice.

but back to questions about my machine and requests for advice.
I think the machine will work as is except for the big problem of the missing payout mech, but can anyone explane the other strange missing part just below it, (see photos below,from front and back)from photos posted by other members this part is not there on thier machines
empty bracket from inside back
empty bracket from inside back

this second photo seems to hint that the missing unit actually fired the ball! the partd on this side are original??
odd2.jpg

Another odd thing seems to be the original(?) parts on the back door,are these always there? the input comes into the case from above(?) then through the parts shown below,what are they?
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just out of interest I fitted some new LED bulbs (see photo)and they seem a big improvement as they are of course cool running,long lasting and bright, (they will not fit in all the sections.
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lastly ANYONE know where I can get the missing payout...please.. :#:
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by malcymal »

I have a Rialto at home in full working order. Is this not the same machines under a different name? Not sure if I can be of assistance to you in taking pics. What I did notice straight away in the photos is the coin mech looks the same as your first photo. On the coin tube there is a pivoted wire; when the coins reach a certain height the wire goes firm and grips the coin coming into the machine, therefore the coin provides the gate to send the next coin into the cashbox (it goes right of the mech and down a little chute).

As suggested, Englishman11 is the man to talk to, as my machine came from him, albeit through a Portsmouth vendor. I paid £240 for mine in complete working order with original keys and original cashbox in situ (oh, and completely overhauled by the guru himself). It is one of my favourite machines, a keeper for sure and friends and family always flock to this machine over my others. Mine works on 20p coin but has higher payout combinations than yours: 1, 2, 2, 3, 8 and 10. Three 2s, for example, pays 8; three 1s pays 10; 123 pays 2 and 3 for the other combination (132 is it?).
Let me know if I can help in any way.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by davnea »

Hi everyone.
Having joined the Forum a while ago I have been happy to sit back and enjoy the friendly banter bouncing back and forth. Now I feel it's time to put pen to paper as it were and to join in.
I have 2 Bingoletts and a later, variant machine called the Rialto.

One of the Bingoletts has an English glass but appears to have the original German (10pf) coin mechanism. As such it accepts both modern day 1p and 20p coins. I haven't tried it with an old sixpence but I'm sure that at the time that these machines were in use that would have been too expensive a play. So what coinage it ran on is a mystery as it won't take the 3d coin.

The other Bingolett, a 3d machine, has a German glass which has been modified as Gameswat describes by scraping off the pfennig values and pasting in English amounts based on the 3d coin. This coin adapted well to the German payout mechanism as all that was required was to raise the thickness of the area above the payout slide with a few washers to accommodate the coins extra thickness.

Now, the plot thickens! My 3rd machine, the Rialto, is a variant of the Bingolett which I picked up at the last Coventry auction. It too has the empty bracket as described in coppinpr's machine. I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Rialto, a later machine, had an automatic ball shooting feature which took over if the player was not quick enough to manually flick the lever. It seems as though there is a solenoid assembly missing from both mine and coppinpr's machine, hence the tapped holes visible on the top surface of this bracket.

The strange thing is that I didn't think this feature was fitted to the Bingolett. It's not present on either of mine, or PennyMachine's according to his picture. This leads me to believe that there has probably been a lot of cannibalizing of these machines over the years. Did the arcade owners remove these auto flick solenoids due to the public's dislike of the feature. My 2 Bingoletts without this feature have a much more precise and stronger flicking action.

As far as the original (?) parts, a primitive mains Filter is concerned, get rid of it before the capacitors expire with an almighty bang!
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by pennymachines »

Hi davnea and a belated welcome to the banter.
The Bingolett was introduced in 1959, the Tivoli in 1961 and the Rialto in 1964, so perhaps the auto play mechanism was a Tivoli or Rialto "improvement" which was then applied to later made Bingoletts. As you suggest, UK operators or revampers probably removed them as troublesome or undesirable.
davnea wrote:As far as the original (?) parts, a primitive mains Filter is concerned, get rid of it before the capacitors expire with an almighty bang!
Yeah, I've been there. Nerve shattering explosion followed by cloud of toxic smoke (inappropriate allusion to Fukushima not intended).
tree-frog wrote:I agree, most of the Beromat machines I have are in English, including the mirror finish ones like the Primus and Exactas. Occasionally you see them with the scratched out German instructions and a paper insert. I would have thought Britain was their largest customer outside Germany and would have made them for the market as the volume would justify this.
I don't think Britain was a significant customer for any of these post-war manufacturers. The German three year licensing rule (gaming machines could not be licensed after this period in service and therefore had to be scrapped or shipped) meant the UK market was almost entirely confined to the abundant and very cheap used machines. It made no economic sense for Wulff to manufacture for the UK while there was a glut of dirt cheap but perfectly serviceable used machines available for export.
gameswat wrote:I can't believe a UK revamper would pay the huge expense for mirrored glasses. Most likely they just ordered a bunch of them from the maker in Germany. Or maybe a large number of machines were exported new and over the years they've made their way as spares to ex German machines?

As I say, I see no evidence they were ever made specifically for the UK. The clear proof of this is that, although there are German games with purpose-made Anglicized mirror glasses, they never have manufacturer-original English coin gear. If they were built for the UK, they would have Wulff-made old penny coin slides. I've never seen the like.

I agree it's impressive that someone went to the trouble of making English glasses, but presumably they can't have been too prohibitive in the 50-60s, otherwise mirror glassses wouldn't be on so many fairly low-budget wall machines. I suppose Wulff could have made them for supply to UK revampers of their old machines, but it seems more likely they were made here. For one thing, it would probably have worked out cheaper; if they were made in Germany, there would be the added shipping cost.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by gameswat »

I'm still of the belief that if the glasses had been copied in the UK they'd never have never bothered with mirroring them and that they'd be noticeably inferior to the originals.The cost of preparing silk screens alone was a large up front expense. And just look at the quality of British allwin backflashes, every one I've ever seen has been a pretty low quality screen print with registration all over the place usually. So my call is this, back in the early 60s if I was importing large quantities of second hand machines from Europe that were only three years old, first thing I would do is contact the factory that made said machines and ask them for English language glasses. Surely they were exporting some new machines to English language countries? Or if not then I'm sure Wulff could have set up for English language artwork quite quickly for a much lower price than a quality sign company doing the same from scratch in the UK. And the cost of trucking a crate of say 100 packed glasses would not bust anybodies bank.
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by pennymachines »

I take your point about the less-than-stellar backflashes on allwins but British electro-mechanical wall machines of the same period have some pretty fancy glasses. The Bingola, Electrodart, etc. have some very nice screen printing and I believe the various Jamieson betting games (Top Ten, etc.) have mirror printing too. However, if everything but the English and German lettering is absolutely identical, it would support your theory. Anyone in a position to compare?

I have an old Amusement Equipment Company Ltd. brochure which includes a full range of these "second-to-none reconditioned" German machines with English glasses. It says, "AMECO machines are overhauled in their own workshops by their own skilled staff and when it comes to conversion Amusement Equipment really score again, for AMECO conversions are complete rebuilds." As you suggest, Wulff could have screen printed English glasses and exported them for converting their old machines, but equally, as a major manufacturer, servicer and supplier of spares from 1932, AMECO were equipped to do the job themselves. If only someone would say, Ich erinnere mich an die Herstellung dieser Dinge! or I remember manufacturing those things!
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Re: Bingolett..... help please!

Post by gameswat »

One of the reasons I'm so sure these are factory glasses is that today even with digital imagery and computers to speed up the graphic work I've barely ever seen an exact reproduced backglass. I have a modern repro Ten Strike glass from Mayfair Amusements which does look close but the colors are off, especially with what should be bright red but looks dark maroon. And it's a slow and very time consuming job to break down each screened color from existing artwork. The problem is that pretty much other than the black outline all the colors need to be slightly larger than what you see from the front, that way there are no missed spots of that color if the registration is off by a smidgen. And often two colors will blend with one another to make a third.
The reason I purchased my Bingolette in the first place, (a little too modern for what I usually like) was because of the great looking backglass, the mirroring really does look expensive and steps this machine right up in my view.
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