Sears Pinball-Breakaway: a couple questions

Armitando · December 2, 2023

Hi all,

I recently got a Sears Pinball-Breakaway unit for $20 as-is at a local retro game store, and I've been having fun with it in the last week. I have a couple technical questions about it:

- Is it possible to turn the sound from the internal speaker off?

- Does anyone have experience cleaning the paddle controller on these? Mine is very jittery and it makes playing the rebound/breakout games just this side of unplayable. I know the process of cleaning them having done so with 2600 paddles in the past, but just wanted to know if the potentiometer is easy to get to before I take a crack at opening it up.

Thanks!

BassGuitari · January 4

On 12/2/2023 at 4:30 PM, Armitando said:

- Is it possible to turn the sound from the internal speaker off?

Nope. But you can bring the volume down quite a bit by blocking the speaker hole with packing tape, or some other material lightly adhered. That's a trick from the old days. Just don't use anything that will leave a residue or be a pain to get off; and don't stick anything to the label, because it will be destroyed if/when you remove it.

You could open up the console and disconnect the speaker, but that probably requires desoldering and is not conveniently reversible.

On 12/2/2023 at 4:30 PM, Armitando said:

- Does anyone have experience cleaning the paddle controller on these? Mine is very jittery and it makes playing the rebound/breakout games just this side of unplayable. I know the process of cleaning them having done so with 2600 paddles in the past, but just wanted to know if the potentiometer is easy to get to before I take a crack at opening it up.

I haven't had to fix the paddles on mine, but I would think you can just pull the knob off and squirt some DeOxit--or similar--into the post and work it in. Shouldn't require any disassembly beyond that, unless it needs to be replaced outright.