I have them both, too. I would say Haunted House is more fun and Black Hole is more challenging. Personally, I think fun trumps challenging. Regardless, they are both great games.

Both are fun, Devil's Dare too.
Different, but I play all 3 every day.

I'm somewhat comfortable working with the early Bally/Stern solid state boards and re-pinning Molex connectors and header pins. Are these early Gottlieb solid state boards any more difficult to work with?

No, System 80 boards are no problem to work on. Battery leakage corrosion from the Ni-Cad may need to be addressed, and you should look at the on-line resources for suggestions on how to improve the original grounding weaknesses. The only major difference in the connectors, is that System 80's (and 1's) used PC board edge connectors, and "repinning" of those is even more important than on early Bally or Williams games.
The earlier System 1 control board, on the other hand is more challenging to work on. It used PMOS technology that required a negative power supply voltage and unusually packaged 42 pin QIL "spider chips", which are difficult to work on, and are hard / nearly impossible to find.

If there are replacement boards in it like rottendog be cautious as the traces are easy to lift on those.

Haunted House has such a dark playfield due to lack of general illumination. A bunch of Comet light strips later, looking good and bright. See pics.

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Nice! There are some traditionalists in this thread (as I've learned) that do not like the lower half of the playfield being illuminated. I personally disagree and would prefer to be able to see the game. Your approach is a good one!

I like playing in the dark but my wife has issues seeing the ball on darker machines. I’ve put in Poor man’s stadium lighting on those machines so she can adjust as she needs. Haunted House had the largest effect.

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I’m not a big fan of Pinstadiums or that kind of lighting…I don’t like the reflection of the LED strips that they put off. But I will say your HH looks pretty damn good. Definitely makes the playfield much brighter.

Where did you get those apron cards?

Digging into phase 2 of mine. This thing is filthy.

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Got everything stripped and prelim cleaning done. Insert edges and green areas above the window are going to need some love.

And you have to polish the ball arch.

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Much better. Deep cleaned, waxed, touched up, everything polished and ready for reassembly!

I’ve always loved the artwork on this pin.

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So nice and clean. Polished everything, including the ball gates. Main PF is done.

Using my own custom Titan kit, and new orange star posts on the main PF. Sunlight bulbs brighten it up quite a bit. Might add a few LED strips.

But of course I have every other shade of white strips…but sunlight.

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Done and onto the attic! And you have to add the secret passage plastic protector.

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My wife is turning 54 years old this year and has dreamed of a Haunted House pinball machine. Does anyone in Pennsytucky have a minty good one they can sell me to give her as a gift? Haha!

I posted this on the Haunted House/Black Hole group on Facebook, but I'll repost it here just in case you hadn't seen it! Seems like there was a lot of positive feedback.

Guaranteed not to be everyone’s cup of tea, but someone who was selling their Haunted House a few weeks ago had one of these cemeteries in the top left corner of their game. Someone told me it was the cemetery from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I’ll tell you what, I actually like it BETTER in person than what I saw in those pics. It really looks great in this machine, and with my purple spotlight, it adds to the eeriness. If you want to do this on your machine, these are only $35 on Marco: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/03-8864-2

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It is, and many of us Dracula owners enhance it with a strip of green LEDs stuffed inside. The attached photo is not from my own game, but you get the idea.

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