Episode 34 - Pinball Restoration
Podcast
Wedgehead Pinball Podcast
52 min
Summary
Pinball restoration artist Ashley Ludwig discusses her craft, processes, and the hidden complexity of restoration work.
Alan and Alex from Wedgehead Pinball Podcast interview restoration artist Ashley Ludwig about her specialized work restoring pinball machines, particularly electromechanical (EM) games. The conversation covers Ashley's background transitioning from sign painting to pinball restoration, the technical and artistic processes involved in restoring cabinets and playfields, the challenges of backglass restoration, and the regional patterns she's observed in operator repair hacks across machines she's worked on.
Highlights
- Ashley has been doing pinball restoration work full-time for eight years at Pinball Alley in Rochester, New York
- Old varnish playfields (pre-1990s) wear down to the wood and don't have clear coats, making restoration more difficult than modern games
- Incandescent lights in old pinball machines created heat that caused plastic inserts to dip and backglass paint to flake
- Ashley saves approximately 99% of cabinets she receives for restoration rather than sourcing replacements
- Backglass restoration is the most difficult and finicky restoration work Ashley does
- There appears to be a regional pattern of dangerous electrical hacking and splicing in machines Ashley has worked on, possibly from a single operator or operator family business
- Spanish EM machines often have superior playfields due to looser European regulations and better chemical availability
- Webbing (chemical spray technique for cabinet detailing) took Ashley approximately five years to master correctly
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