Gottlieb Opinions?

playpin35

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Do most of you choose not to collect gottlieb pins, or maybe just when you can get them for next to nothing? It just seems to me unless it is a haunted house or black hole, most gottlieb machines sit forever on craigslist, mr pinball and sometimes ebay. I currently have 2 sys 80's, 2 sys 80B's and a sys 3. What are your likes(if any),dislikes and opinions?
 
I've played a lot of Gottlieb pins, and I rather like them - there were some great games. Arena and TX-Sector come to mind. Not a huge fan of Genesis, but it's still good. Overall, I have liked several Gottliebs... and not liked several. I think they've developed the reputation of just being "meh". Add to that the fact that it's a royal pain in the neck to find manuals for them, and they become annoying to work on.

That, and every Gottlieb I've ever worked on has needed those stupid ground plugs cut off and crimped into eyelet connectors, then screwed to the transformer housing. That fixes a lot of stuff, actually.

Another thing I've noticed is that a lot of Gottlieb translites fade badly, and the art in general isn't as nice as a lot of the Williams games. Similarly, they had several "wannabe" themed games - like Raven. It wants to be Rambo, but it didn't want to pony up the cash to license Rambo. Also, the score displays they used are those tiny VFD's. Some games like TX-Sector even had them all the way at the top of the headbox. Kind of annoying when you want to glance up at your score while playing. The displays do seem to last forever though.

So, it's probably just a lot of little things that strike against them. They're not bad pins at all.

-Ian
 
i love gottlieb machines. i grew up in northern cali and gottlieb machines seemed to be the most common. i no nothing about working on them,however i enjoy playing them.
 
Gottlieb has some great pins, I love Black Hole, Haunted House, Class of 1812, just to name a few. I'm into newer pins mostly, but Class of 1812 was a huge surprise, it was actually one of my fave games at the last Seattle show, totally unexpected. My son also loved it alot. I had a chance to buy one from a local collector and brushed it off, I should have tried it first before saying NO...
 
I love them! I currently have 4 of them. El Dorado and the City of Gold (pretty rare), Genesis, TX Sector and Close Encounters....

I know back then Gottlieb ruled the Em era. They did have some really cool sysetem 1 games like Sinbad. The System 80 is when they really shined for me. The op mentioned Black Hole and Haunted House which were really cool but Spirit was the best one of the bunch. Krull was also part of that group but unfortunately only 10 of those were made.:( Anybody played one of these?

To me system the System 3/Dmd era was when they really stared going downhill albeit Stargate is an awesome pin....At this point I think they were concentrating on getting licenses the than the playability...

The downside.....Gottlieb pins are one of the most finincky pins out there! Yes they are prone to grounding issues which if not resolved they go haywire....And Clay also mentioned the soldering job on most of these boards SUCK.....I reflow the solder on almost every single one of the connectors and header pins, a MUST!

On a side note.... Some of these Gottliebs are hard to find due to being popular across the pond... Someone told me that over half of the Gottlieb machines, starting at the System 80, era were exported to the European market....
 
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