I will be painting mine before winter I hope. I am learning from your questions. Do you or does anyone have a color code for the wizard of wor cab? I just picked mine up yesterday. It has black speckles all over it. At first I thought it was overspray from someone's project, but it is only on the white parts of the cab. Nothing else. I want mine to be as original as possible. Is this how they were? If I find any info on paint, I will pass it on. From past experience, I will NOT be using latex paint! Good luck!
It's been discussed a bit how to get that speckle effect. It was used a lot on pinball cabinets, I think in a way to make a large solid color area look less dull, but to also mask grain and knots in the wood.
Do a google search for "pinball cabinet splatter"
and here's some info from pinballpal-
Applying a spatter effect
Many pinball machine cabinets received a paint spatter effect from the factory. This
involved spraying the base coat with a contrasting color with a random pattern of paint
droplets in a contrasting color. This has the effect of not only making the paint job look
more complex and interesting, but it also helps to distract the eye from minor
imperfections on the base coat or cabinet defects. The original spatter effect was
probably achieved with an air-powered spray gun, but a similar effect can be obtained
with nothing more than a toothbrush or an old paint brush.
The first thing that you need to do is determine the color of the paint spattering effect that
you wish to use. Appendix A lists what we have observed for spatter color for the games
that we have checked out. There's no guarantee that every game of a particular title
received the same color of spattering, and there's always the possibility that someone
reapplied a spattering pattern at some point in the past. Here's one easy way to tell: The
factory spattering always went on after the base coat but before the stencil colors. So, the
stencil colors should cover up any spattering and you should be able to see the bumps of
the paint, but not the color. If the spattering is on top of the stencil colors, the spattering
was added later.
Since the spatter dots are so small, color match is not critical. We've seen black, white,
brown or gold and silver spattering. To apply the spattering, the thicker the paint the
better. Straight out of the can should be fine. Get some scrap cardboard to practice with
and either an old toothbrush or paintbrush. The stiffer the bristles, the better. If you're
using a paintbrush, you may get better results if you cut the bristles down to an inch or
less. Now simply dip the brush lightly in the paint, and drag your finger across the top of
the bristles to flick the paint onto the surface. Experiment with distance, the amount of
paint on the brush, and finger pressure to get a pattern that closely resembles the original.
In most cases, less is more. You may be tempted to apply more spattering than on the
original, but it's likely that the end result will look better with less rather than more
spattering.