Last Updated: 21Nov25

This board adds DIY custom backgrounds and sounds to early Solid State (SS) Bally and Stern pinball machines using the Bally AS-2518-16, AS-2518-22, Stern SDU-100 (and rev B432), or Alltek replacement solenoid board. It comes with some basic sounds and backgrounds to get you started. This sound board is designed plug into the solenoid boards at J3 and J4 without additional harnesses. It plays background sounds during gameplay and sound files will play as it detects both momentary and continuous solenoid commands. It is designed to add to the simple stock sounds of early Bally and Stern solid state pinball machines.

See bottom of this page for the purchase buttons.



This board has the following features:
1. Plays up to 5 background repeating sounds triggered by the flipper-enable continuous solenoid.
2. Plays 1 of 4 sounds for each of the 15 momentary solenoid commands
3. Plays 1 of 4 sounds for each of the 3 continuous solenoid on and off commands. There is no sound support for the coin-enable continuous solenoid.
4. Plays special callouts: a power up sound, an attract sound every 3 minutes when the game is not being played, and a hurry-up custom sound during game play when the game is idle for more than 30 seconds.
5. Four sound banks to choose from.

Although the Solenoid Plus Sound board works in any Bally or Stern machine with the early solenoid board, it works best with the machines listed below because they are mostly quiet with no background sounds. The details of these machines is contained in my printed manual that comes with the Solenoid Plus Sound board:

Bally SS Chime Machines (8): Freedom, Night Rider, Evel Knievel, Eight Ball, Mata Hari, Bobby Orr's Power Play, Strikes and Spares, Black Jack.

Bally -32/-50 Sound Board Machines (6): Playboy, Voltan Escapes Cosmic Doom, Paragon, Harlem Globetrotters on Tour, Dolly Parton. I do not recommend this sound board for Star Trek, KISS, Lost World, Supersonic, nor Six Million Dollar Man. I have much better game-specific custom Early Sound Boards for these machines.

Bally -51 Second Generation Sound Board Machines (12) when you turn off the background: Nitro Ground Shaker, Future Spa, Silverball Mania, Space Invaders, Rolling Stones, Mystic, Viking, Hotdoggin, Frontier, Skateball, Speakeasy, BMX.

Stern SS Chime Machines (4): Pinball, Stingray, Stars, Memory Lane

Stern SB100 Sound Board Machines (8): Lectronamo, Wild Fyre, Nugent, Dracula, Trident, Hot Hand, Magic, Cosmic Princess.

Later Stern machines (18): You will need to turn off the background with MPU switch 8 or 14: Galaxy, Ali, Big Game, Seawitch, Cheetah, Quicksliver, Flight 2000, Star Gazer, Nine Ball, Freefall, Lightning, Split Second, Catacomb, Viper, Dragonfist, Cue, Iron Maiden, Orbitor 1. I don't see a way to turn off the background on Meteor, so this sound board would be less useful.

This is a custom DIY (Do It Yourself) sound board. Upon delivery, the board is set to sound bank 0 which has some generic sounds to get you started. There is a power up quote, backgrounds from vintage Bally machines, hurry up quote for pause during game play, attract quotes every 3 minutes between games, and some test button quotes. The board comes with four sound banks which you can modify.
Sound Bank 0: Generic Sounds
Sound Bank 1: Duplicate of sound bank 0
Sound Bank 2: Diagnostic voice callouts for everything
Sound Bank 3: Diagnostic file number voice callouts

Sound banks 2 and 3 will help you figure out which file numbers are being played for what actions are occuring in the game. The printed manual will tell you this as well. Bank 2 will call out the actions. If you hit a pop-bumper at momentary solenoid 5, it will say "Momentary 5". Bank 3 will call out the file number it is played. Again, if you hit pop-bumper at momentary 5, it will say "Fifty one." or "Fifty two" or "Fifty three" or "Fifty four." For solenoids it will play one of 4 different sound files.

The board has three different versions to choose from depending on the distance between J3 and J4 on your solenoid board. I also offer adapters if you decide to upgrade your solenoid board. And I have a chime disconnect board for the J2 connector.

Version A: For Bally AS-2518-16 and AS-2518-22 solenoid boards (1450mil J3-4)
Version B: For Stern SDU-100 solenoid boards (1400mil J3-4)
Version C: For Alltek aftermarket solenoid boards L1, L2 and L3 (1350mil J3-4)

Adapter C-A: Adapts Alltek solenoid boards to Version A Solenoid+ Sound Board
Adapter B-A: Adapts Stern SDU-100 solenoid boards to Version A Solenoid+ Sound Board
Adapter C-B: Adapts Alltek solenoid boards to Version B Solenoid+ Sound Board
Adapter D-A: Adapts barakandl (weebly) solenoid board (1650mil J3-4) to Version A Solenoid+ Sound Board
Chime Disconnect: Easily disconnect solenoids 0 through 4 on the J2 connector

Speaker assemblies can also be purchased from me. It is a 4-inch speaker and metal grille mounted to a wooden mounting bracket with a 6 foot speaker cable. The speaker you will get depends on what I have available. Some are 8-ohm. Some are 4-ohm. Both work fine with my sound board.


Click on image to see larger

This is my chime disconnect board. You can jumper out momentary soleniods 0 through 4 from the solenoid board J2 connector. The photo shows all chimes enabled. To disable them, move the jumpers to the OFF position. I have a video of how to install it. See your machine details as to which ones are the chimes (included in my sound board manual).

Click on image to see larger.

Check out my board overview YouTube video on this board:


This one shows the background overlay example for Bobby Orr's Power Play:


How about a good example? Mark demonstrates how he created an awesome sound set for his Bally Evel Knievel machine. This machine has chimes. Mark turned them off. All the sounds you hear are from this Solenoid Plus Sound board.


You'll get a bunch of examples on the MicroSD card to get you going:
1. Some electronic chime WAV files
2. Some WAV files from classic Bally games: KISS, Star Trek, Centaur with reverb, EBD, Elektra (5 others)
3. Bobby Orr's Power Play example sound bank (I have this in a video)
4. Evel Knievel example sound bank (I show this in a video)
5. Play Boy example sound bank

Order Details: I have Solenoid Plus Sound boards in versions A, B, and C (depending on the solenoid board in your machine). Your board will come with a printed manual. I have speaker assemblies and adapters as well.

$230 Solenoid Plus Sound board Version A: For Bally AS-2518-16 and AS-2518-22 solenoid boards
$230 Solenoid Plus Sound board Version B: For Stern SDU-100 solenoid boards
$230 Solenoid Plus Sound board Version C: For Alltek aftermarket solenoid boards L1, L2 and L3
$40 4-inch speaker, grille, mounting block, 6 foot speaker cable assembly
$10 Adapter B-A for machines with the Stern solenoid board to accept the Version A sound board
$10 Adapter C-A for machines with the Alltek solenoid board to accept the Version A sound board
$10 Adapter C-B for machines with the Alltek solenoid board to accept the Version B sound board
$10 Adapter D-A for machines with the barakandl (weebly) solenoid board to accept the Version A sound board
$15 Chime Disconnect board: for J2 on all solenoid boards

Plus $10 shipping in US

The "Buy Now" (Pay-Pal, Debit Card, Credit Card purchase button below is for US buyers only. If you want a different combination email me at geeteoh@mchsi.com.

If you are outside US, email me at geeteoh@mchsi.com to send an invoice with shipping charges. $30 Canada and UK, $40 to Australia and most other countries. I am not shipping into South America. Customs forms are filled out as merchandise and total value of the board(s) shipped. Customs duty/taxes will be collected by your country prior to delivery.