jgeorge44
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It’s a Western Electric body, the upper housing lock looks like the original 29A type lock. If it’s mounted, your only option is to guess the lock code (locks were regional, with each region only using one or two different keys). You could get lucky and get the upper housing apart for probably having the ebay dude cut you a couple of keys. Coin box key is going to be unique; you’ll drill that one out most likely, or maybe someone else has an idea for it.
If it’s OFF the wall or not mounted, you can - I’ve done this - get a $30 endoscope off of Amazon, run it into the back of the phone through the hole the phone line goes into, and see if you can identify the key type off the back of the lock. One edge of the back of the lock should say something like “29AXX” where XX is the key number. It’s tricky, it took me probably a half an hour of bending the scope camera different ways until I could see it, but it IS visible that way.
Most pinball manufacturers, regardless of what they might say about the quality of their pinballs, get them all from the same source. They are all the same size, weight, density, and metallurgy. You can GET other pinball types that can differ in metallurgy and weight and density, but as you said, not anywhere near enough to make a visible difference. But the pinballs you get “with” a new machine are all exactly the same.
I learned more about 1-1/6” metal balls than i ever knew there was to learn from a slightly tipsy person who “did the math” for the supplier.
Machine play and feel is as you said mostly about flipper power, rubber ring quality/type (and rubber vs silicone), pitch, and even level (side to side)
IBM built for reliability not for repairability. No sockets, no clips, nothing where a component could work it’s way loose in shipping or handling or use. These boards almost never broke. The PCB is probably 6 layers as well, making these chips a bit of a challenge to desolder but doable with a decent desoldering tool.
