Last Updated: 24May26

The Solenoid Plus Sound Board works alongside your machine's stock sound board to add richer, customizable audio to early solid-state Bally and Stern pinball machines. It mounts directly onto your solenoid driver board and outputs audio to a second speaker - no special wiring or extra harnesses required. Simply plug it into the solenoid board at J3 and J4 and you're ready to go.

This board adds DIY background audio and additional sound effects to machines using the Bally AS-2518-16, AS-2518-22, Stern SDU-100, or Alltek replacement solenoid boards. It includes basic starter sound sets, and I also provide example sound packages for select machines.

During gameplay, the board plays continuous background audio and triggers sound files whenever it detects momentary or continuous solenoid activity. It's designed to enhance - rather than replace - the simple stock sound packages found in early Bally and Stern SS games, giving your machine a deeper and more modern sound experience without altering its original hardware.

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.


Compatible Machines:
Although the Solenoid Plus Sound board works in nearly all* 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 (no background anyway), Catacomb, Viper, Dragonfist, Cue, Iron Maiden, Orbitor 1.

* This board will not work well with Meteor because you cannot turn off the background. The outhole is on unsupported solenoids for Xs and Os, Black Pyramid, Fireball Classic, and Cybernaut. This will cause the background not to change when multi-backgrounds are selected.


What Sounds Come with the Board?:
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 occurring 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", "Fifty two", "Fifty three", or "Fifty four." For solenoids, it will play one of 4 different sound files.

Board Options:
The board has three different versions to choose from, depending on the distance between J3 and J4 on your solenoid board. See my page on the differences between the stock Stern solenoid boards. 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 and Stern revision A solenoid boards (1450mil J3-4)
Version B: For Stern SDU-100 revision B and C solenoid boards (1500mil J3-4). See differences.
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 revision B and C 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 solenoids 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.

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 and Stern revision A solenoid boards
$230 Solenoid Plus Sound board Version B: For Stern SDU-100 revision B and C solenoid boards. See differences.
$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 revision B and C solenoid boards 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 the US, do not use the "Buy Now" link. Instead email me at geeteoh@mchsi.com to send an invoice with shipping charges. It is $30 Canada and UK, $40 to Australia, etc. EU countries have long shipping times. 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.