Thanks for all of the kind comments guys, it's been great fun so far.
But it was a resto thread by Nino on this forum which shifted my thinking, and I have never looked back. A very hard machine to get to join your collection, but finding one makes it worth the while. The more I play it, the more I enjoy it. Gameplay, artwork, and sound - really great
it’s probably one of the heaviest playfields for a Bally of that era.
NOS Fathom playfields are even rarer, and I know of a guy in the US that has one. Below is an image he sent me comparing the NOS one (on the left) with the 2009 CPR (on the right). Huge shift in colour for the NOS one from blue to green over time. Looking at the flyer on ipdb.org, you can see the blues in the original
Reading Nino's Fathom restorations had me hooked on this machine also. I actually brought a CPR backglass for it when they first became available because I always thought "I have to get one of those machines some day".
Your not wrong on the playfield weight either Steve and it's probably made worse by the way Bally mounted the thing in the cabinet. There is no timber rails in the cabinet to slide it on so you basically have to just dead lift it straight of the brackets. This is the main reason I wanted to make sure everything on the playfield was 100% working before I had the cab re-sprayed because I think it would be very difficult to get the playfield in and out by myself without scratching the inside of the cabinet. It's getting going in next week so I don't have long to sort the pop bumper issue and get it all striped out.
My playfield is in wraps at the moment so I can't compare it to the pictures of the 2004 and 2009 photos but it is blue like the 2009 version. I don't know if they made any other improvements over that run. It does look beautiful though and HRP are going to re-clear it for me as well which I'm sure will add even greater depth to it just like the work they did to my Xenon playfield.
