1978 Bally Mata Hari SS

This all started with me picking up two Mata Hari's from two different estate sales, about 3 months apart in 2019 for pennies each. Neither machine worked - one didn't power on, the other powered on with GI lights lit but would not boot into attract mode. My initial goal was to repair each machine to working condition, sell one, and keep the other for our newly built-out basement game room.

I fixed Mata Hari #1 by repairing (replacing) the rectifier PCB on the transformer. New rubbers, a little elbow grease in cleaning and polishing, and I sold this player’s pin for more than 5x what I had in it to fund a total restoration on Mata Hari #2.

In addition to the normal wear and tear and damage you’d expect for a pin that probably spent the majority of its 40+ year life in bars and/or an arcade, the rear of the backbox had some water damage and the lower cab had edge and corner damage. Other than that, the overall pin was in fairly decent shape aside from needing some board work. The MPU had acid damage, the SDB had old, original caps and several burned out transistors.

At this point in 2019, I had never done a playfield swap so for Phase 1 of the restoration, I opted to put on a hardtop and play it for a while before doing Phase 2 (the cabinet restoration). The original playfield was playable but most inserts were cupped so badly that it dramatically affected ball trajectory even at moderate speeds.