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VINTAGE PINBALL MACHINE
RESTORATION & REPairs
UK

We welcome commissions. Do you have a favourite game in your garage or storage which needs to be brought back to life?

Then look no further.
 
Pinball Creative can restore any EM (electromagnetic) pinball table no matter how far gone it is. However, we reserve the right to refuse restoring any games which we feel will be too costly to restore or make good. These projects are costly, and very time consuming. A complete project will take anything from three to nine months to get ready. We recently restored a Capt. Card which was practically dead. It took time, but it now lives and gets played regularly in its new home. When we supply a quote to restore a pinball machine, we reserve the right of a 10% margin of allowance, meaning if we quote £5,000 to restore a pinball game, we may need to add on up to £500 at the end of the restoration if we have over-looked any parts or had issues sourcing items which ended up being more expensive than we had originally budgeted for. This does not mean we will automatically charge an extra 10%. We only do so if needed.
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Contact us for details and to arrange a visit to our workshop.
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Restoring Cabinets

We restore an EM pinball cabinet by taking off playfield, stripping off all the playfield parts on the upper section. Then we remove the bottom board and back box and sand everything down on the cabinet and back box. Prior to this we either buy the stencils from the USA or if they don’t exist make them from scratch. Cabinets take about 40 hours labour to bring back to new. This means filling, sanding and often gluing cabinets back together. Cabinets look new, as they are prepared, primed painted with and air gun, then the relevant hazing or splattering effects and stencils are added and finally sealed with a matt varnished for strength. The cost of restoring a cabinet will vary from £1750 to £2500 depending on condition.

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We can now manufacture Gottlieb style cabinets from 1961 to 1974 circa (wedgeheads). These are brand new cabinets built out of solid ply-wood.

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This now allows us to restore any game no matter how far gone they are. Prices vary but start at £1750 for a new cabinet. Includes priming but not painting.

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Restoring Playfields
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We carry out complete playfield repaints to order. These take 3 to 4 months to complete and will cost £2,950 upwards depending on complexity of artwork and game design and parts to remove and replace.
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Chrome Plus
All metal parts are removed taken to our chosen specialist supplier and re-chromed or nickel plated. This process can take up to one month. All metal parts look like new. Chroming/re-plating or nickel plating a game costs between £1900 and £2250 and the process can take up to two months.
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Restoring Mechanics
This is the tricky part as the condition of the game dictates how much or how little is needed to fully clean and restore the electromechanical parts in a game. On average restoring an EM in fair condition will cost around £1950 plus parts. Solid state games will vary in price and can not be compared to a refurbishment of an EM game. Parts are purchased in the USA and imported on a monthly basis. We normally stock £10,000+ worth of parts, but there are many models of pinball out there any a myriad of parts to be kept. We cant keep them all, so bear in mind that parts are purchased in U$D and need to be subjected to VAT and import handling fees. As the £ weakens against most currencies post-Brexit the price the customer pays is unfortunately going up. Calculate we will normally need £350/450 worth of parts for most EM games, but this can vary immensely dependent on game and condition.
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Repairs - Do we simply repair games? 
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YES We do repair games on site, however, these can take a very long time to analyse and fix. For instance does the game have a schematics? If it doesn't then chances are we wont be able to fix it.
What if we need to return with parts? Where is the game located? Is it located in a cramped space? All these points need to be taken into account. If we need to return with parts we will still charge the same amounts as listed below. We will concentrate on the faults, but as these games are old and have been abused during their lives, the chances are that one fault will lead to another.
We charge £80.00 (minimum) per hour or part of on site (1 hour 45 minutes will cost) £160 and £80 per hour to drive to the site and back plus fuel, Congestion charges, tolls etc.
A call out could cost £££s and you probably won't even get it going for that long. We also take a 50% deposit up front for any work we carry out on location.
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For further details please contact us and we will talk you through the options available.
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