Journalist Tool

Kineticist

  • HDashboard
  • IItems
  • ↓Ingest
  • SSources
  • KBeats
  • BBriefs
  • RIntel
  • QSearch
  • NName Review
  • +Health

v0.1.0

← Back to items

Cheap Modifications to Enhance and Protect Your Game

Pintastic New England·video·1h 16m·analyzed·Oct 4, 2022
View original
Export .md

Analysis

claude-haiku-4-5-20251001 · $0.025

TL;DR

Budget pinball mods: cheap protective upgrades and lighting enhancements using standard parts.

Summary

Pintastic New England hosts a detailed workshop on affordable pinball modifications, focusing on cheap protective and functional upgrades. Speakers cover practical mods including clear washers for slingshots, 555 lamp sockets for custom lighting, LED strips, neon rope light replacements, and proper wiring practices. The discussion emphasizes budget-friendly enhancements that significantly improve game aesthetics and functionality without expensive aftermarket parts.

Key Claims

  • ICE washers (clear slingshot protectors) cost 25 cents and come with a $100 minimum order, making them cheaper than retail alternatives from Fred Marco and Pinball Life

    high confidence · Speakers discussing parts sourcing at Pintastic New England event

  • 555 lamp sockets with angled mounts cost 89 cents when buying 100 units and can be used throughout the playfield for custom lighting

    high confidence · Direct product pricing discussion by primary speaker

  • LED strips from Comet Pinball cost under $5 (approximately $4) and come in frosted versions with 7-8 color options

    high confidence · Speaker detailing Slugfest modification with LED strips

  • Color DMD mods have had only one failure out of 300-400 installations performed by the speakers

    medium confidence · Speaker claiming reliability based on personal installation experience

  • Neon LED rope light for Zachariah machines costs approximately $20-25 on eBay and requires a 4-amp 12-volt power supply

    high confidence · Direct documentation of Zachariah neon replacement mod

  • LEDs draw about one-third the power of regular incandescent bulbs in pinball machines

    high confidence · Technical explanation during lighting modification discussion

  • Gilligian's Island was the first dot matrix game released, even though Terminator was finished first but not released

    medium confidence · Speaker assertion about pinball history (requires verification)

  • Zachariah machines have three major problems: logic board battery damage, neon tube failure, and flipper relay issues requiring capacitor replacement

    high confidence · Detailed technical discussion of Zachariah-specific issues

Notable Quotes

  • “we like their washers because they're real thin, and it's impossible to break... the slimmer they are, it's easier to put the lock nut down on the top”

    Primary speaker (unnamed)@ 5:39 — Explains why bulk-ordering ICE washers provides best quality and value

  • “don't use them the way they come. I take a lot of wires out and move stuff around to suit the way I do it... don't buy the $20 Chinese wiring harness”

    Primary speaker@ 17:59 — Emphasizes importance of quality wiring harnesses and professional modification approach

  • “The colored DMDs, we've had almost, I've only had one failure out of, I must have put 300 or 400 of them in there, maybe more”

    Primary speaker@ 30:33 — Establishes high reliability and value proposition for color DMD mods

  • “You can buy a brand new button for $2 or $1 and then you can buy the lamp socket for 60, 70, 80 cents, depending on how many you buy, and put an LED in it, and you've got the button lit for well under six bucks”

    Primary speaker@ 7:25 — Demonstrates cost-effective alternative to $30 pre-lit cabinet buttons

  • “Simple mods, I think, are the best... the 555 light you can light your swamp you can light the ramp any scoop in your game... just a light and it just changes the whole look of the game”

    Primary speaker@ 29:43 — Articulates philosophy that cheap, simple mods provide best value and impact

  • “do not discard a Zachariah if your logic board is soaked with battery damage... You'll need the processor to move over to the new board”

Entities

Pintastic New EnglandorganizationPinball ResourcecompanyFred MarcopersonPinball LifecompanyComet PinballcompanyICEcompanySteve ZemonskipersonFrankpersonJillianperson

Signals

  • ?

    business_signal: Supply chain constraints affecting color DMD availability with current supplier out of stock; emerging overseas manufacturers attempting to fill gap

    medium · Speaker notes color DMD supplier 'out of stock' with unknown return timeline; mentions overseas manufacturers now producing competing color DMDs

  • ?

    community_signal: Active knowledge-sharing workshop format at Pintastic New England event with hands-on demonstrations and video walkthroughs of modification techniques

    high · Multi-hour workshop covering specific products, pricing, installation techniques, and video demonstrations; audience includes competitors and collectors; emphasis on educating community about affordable options

  • ?

    design_philosophy: Preference for simple, cost-effective mods over complex aftermarket solutions; emphasis on using standard parts creatively rather than specialty products

    high · Repeated messaging that '555 socket and strips' provide best value and visual impact; criticism of complex mods like plasma bumpers; recommendation to avoid expensive pre-lit buttons in favor of $6 custom solutions

  • ?

    product_strategy: Systematic lighting improvements applied retroactively to games like Gilligan's Island, Firepower, and Gold Wings that originally had minimal playfield illumination

    high · Multiple detailed examples of adding 555 sockets and LED strips to illuminate previously dark playfield areas; Gold Wings scoop lighting project demonstrates significant visual enhancement

  • ?

    product_concern: Poor handling practices by some resellers and technicians (cutting wires instead of using Jones plugs) creating preventable damage; emphasis on professional wiring standards

Transcript

youtube_groq_whisper · $0.228

0:00
Got to keep things cheap. And that's what we're going to talk about, cheap. Really cheap, because there's a lot of things that we figured out you could do. If you've been watching our video channel, I'm sure a lot of you have, or all of you at least watch one or two. We do point out a lot of things that you can do on the sly.
0:20
But then the last part of our show will be, yes, you're cutting off my head. That's a big head. I could lower myself.
0:33
But the last part, the second part of our show, is going to be about modifications for your games that are not physical for you to see, but stuff to keep your games more stable. Functional, not cognitive. Functional.
0:51
Apparently sometime between breakfast and about an hour ago, the thumb drive for today's show dropped out someplace in the hotel and I've been looking all over for it. However, cleverly, I've always uploaded to YouTube the program and Jillian is now downloading it. Is it almost done? It is downloaded. Good.
1:18

Primary speaker@ 19:47 — Critical salvage advice for Zachariah owners facing logic board failure

  • “Tell him never ever cut a single wire in a game... it's very difficult to explain... the average homeowner does not know what a Jones plug is”

    Primary speaker@ 9:49 — Consumer education about proper machine handling to prevent damage

    • John
    person
    Bearded Steveperson
    Jersey Jack Pinballcompany
    Sterncompany
    Williamscompany
    Twisted Quartercompany
    Pinball Solutionscompany

    high · Detailed story of customer-provided game with cut wires; warnings against Chinese cheap wiring harnesses; recommendation for quality Super JAMA harnesses at $38 despite higher cost

  • ?

    technology_signal: LED replacements for traditional incandescent lighting becoming standard practice with 555 sockets and LED strips; color DMD mods achieving high reliability and adoption rates

    high · Speakers mention having installed 300-400 color DMD mods with only one failure; LED strips now standard in custom game lighting; neon LED rope light replacing failed neon tubes on vintage machines

    • Now there's something you should do. If you've got it on a thumb drive, upload it to YouTube too, just for good measure. This is the first time I've had to use it. And I'm glad I uploaded it before I left. We only have 18 minutes of film. We have an hour slot, but we could go over a little bit. Is that right? Yes, because you all want to go out for dinner.
    1:38
    Yes. So officially we're to 5.30, but we could go longer, especially if you want to talk or anything about other things. There's lots to talk about. We're at probably the most exciting period of pinball history. New games are coming out right and left. great games, fun games. Your games are selling for record high prices, as you know. But of course, it costs you a lot to buy them to replace the ones you sell. So I guess it all evens out. But there's some great deals in the vendor hall, a whole bunch of pretty good deals you could make. Remember, usually when you see a sticker price, you can always come down a little bit, unless it's brand new. That's when it's tough because of the listed price. But if we're ready Jillian okay why don't you start our we have to have opening credits of course
    2:48
    we're back six months later Unfortunately, our twins are still en route, so they're not here yet, but they're coming. But there's the title. Yes, the twins had a slight pinball emergency. Just a slight one. So they're going to join us soon, and we have plenty of topics, so they're part of the show. Of course, everybody helps out. This is Franklin and Mutham toward me, closest to me. And we have John.
    3:23
    He started out as Fanboy John. One of my competitors named him that. Furious. And it stuck. Unfortunately, it stuck. It did stick. Now, Steve didn't want to come up, but Bearded Steve is right there.
    3:38
    Hold your hand up. The one that just sipped coffee and is ignoring me. There we go. I got a wave out of him. Steve is actually a big Gottlieb collector. He loves Gottliebs. He has hundreds of them. and he loves them very much. He keeps threatening to sell them. We all do. Don't we all threaten to sell our favorite games, and then we keep them? That's what's been happening. Well, we're going to start with mods for your game. And if you've watched our videos, you've probably seen a bunch of these. Different mods come in different places. Frank, do you have your cheat sheet? You don't, do you? Okay. No, this one. Yours. Lost everything, didn't we? There were multiple pinball emergencies. Everything we typed was also on the stick. So that was the end of that. So we were trying to write down everything we could remember. That's the difficulty because I only uploaded the video to YouTube and not the rest of it. So, we pretty much got everything. One of the more basic mods is the washer, the clear washer that protects your slingshots. Now Stern continues to use metal ones, which of course we take off and then we put the clear ones in when we sell the game if the customer wants us to open it up. But you can buy them from Pinball Resource.
    5:18
    Marco sells them, Pinball Life. Ice. But the best place, believe it or not, is from the people that made it originally, which is the ice people, and they're only a quarter. However, they have a minimum order of, I think, $100.
    5:31
    So I just got a big ice order, and I just sorted 600 more washers. But we like their washers because they're real thin, and it's impossible. I see someone shaking their head, yes, yes, impossible to break. And the Lexan washers, the slimmer they are, it's easier to put the lock nut down on the top. And we always put them on the slingshots and then a couple other key places where they break. So if you decide that you need parts for your super checks, remember to get them, throw in a bunch of those ice washers. At a 25 cents, they're half the price of Marco and everybody else.
    6:14
    So it is a good deal. So that's one thing we always order in bulk are the washers. Another thing we have on our list, possibly the most important thing you can buy are 555 lamp sockets with an angle on, a little silver angle on them. I have the parts numbers in a lot of my videos. We use the same part we get from Steve, but Marco sells them too. They cost about 89 cents if you buy 100 of them. I'm hunched over.
    6:49
    And you buy this lamp socket. You buy a roll of heat shrink from Amazon. And then long strands of wire, which you can cut out of harnesses you're not using. And these lamp sockets can augment lights throughout your play field. If you've watched our videos, you can see we've added them pretty much everywhere, including you can even light the buttons on the cabinet sides. So instead of buying those $30 clear buttons to light your cabinet, you can. For $30 or $35, you get two. You can buy a brand new button for $2 or $1. and then you can buy the lamp socket for 60, 70, 80 cents, depending on how many you buy, and put an LED in it and bang, you've got the button lit for well under six bucks.
    7:43
    We do that a lot. And the other nice thing about the button is the right button light will also light your shooter lane, which is a really nice feature. Now, we're going to run a video now, in a moment, of a slugfest.
    8:01
    That is a pitch and bat. No, it's not a pinball machine, but because it's got the WPC boards in it and it's in basically the same cabinet, we're going to think of it as a pinball.
    8:14
    It's a steel ball. Okay. I would agree with that. The slugfests all were unlit at the bottom where the bat is because they didn't think it was necessary because the white lights on the back glass or actually in the front of the play field, you'll see in a moment, light the field. But by adding four color strips that you can buy, the only place so far I've found that sells them is Comet Pinball.
    8:41
    And we buy in quantity. We always spend a couple thousand every order. But you can buy the strips for under $5. I think they're $4. The best strips they make are 10 LED and they're not clear. They're frosted. I couldn't think of it. And they have about seven or eight different colors. All right. Why don't you start the video because I explain it better. And this piece was made. Oh, you know what? Jillian, can you go back on that? I meant to open with that. I forgot. This clip got away. A customer sent this to me. He took the head off his game. Wasn't it nice? And he says, you know, I couldn't figure out what to do with these wires, so I had to cut them. So he was unaware of the Jones plugs. So what you all need to do, if you're going to buy a mechanical from some clod hopper or something, and he says, I'll bring the game to you, tell Tell him to unplug it. Tell him never ever cut a single wire in a game. He did not see that those were plugs. We see it, but the average homeowner does not know what a Jones plug is. And it's very difficult to explain. I remember I took a while on one man to explain how to unplug it. Now, this wasn't one that hit us, but this guy was very frustrated when he ended up picking up this game. And he, what do you do with these wires? Well, you match the colors and you heat shrink them together. Do not electric tape them, please. Make it look professional. Buy a roll of heat shrink. It's really cheap on Amazon, really cheap, big rolls.
    10:25
    And you get free shipping by all three sizes. One size you can use for your flipper cranks to replace on your old ballet games because that rubber is usually cut or worn or missing. You can slide the bigger size on there. We stock three sizes, right, Frank? Yeah, it's like eighth inch, three sixteenths, and maybe half. Eighth inch, get closer to the mic. Three sixteenths and like maybe half inch. Okay. It's really good to have that, I think. Please don't use a propane torch to set the whole machine on fire. You can use heat shrink with simply just a... The side of the solder? Yeah. The side of a solder pencil is perfect. That is correct. And you can use a wooden match. We keep wooden matchsticks. That's actually a great tip. Wooden matchsticks fill holes on your play field where the posts are. I see some nodding heads. Actually, I have another fix for that if Jillian got all my pictures. We'll get to that later. It's a little later, but yeah. Another way, because the matchsticks come to a point in time that they don't work anymore.
    11:30
    Not in our lifetime. I'm not worried about that. You're not always awake, so let me handle the technical stuff. Thank you. You be the dancing clown, I'll make sure this stuff works. I think Frank meant, you mean to augment it with Elmer's glue? No. This was a completely different project. I've seen that. You jam one matchstick in, break it off, jam another one in, break it off, and that should do it. But if it doesn't, you put a drop of Elmer's glue in. That's not what I had to do in this case. We'll wait for your, we'll see what he has in mind. Yeah, thank you. Let's show the Slugfest clip now, Jillian. Thank you. And thank you, Jillian, for setting everything up. Isn't she wonderful? Now, we have this in lamp test.
    12:14
    Now, normally, the play field is lit just by a strip of light bulbs. 555. You can see most of them are burned out. Frank. We got this from a competitor who had it shopped. You know, I guess you've all noticed when the bulb is first on. Now, there's an LED right in there. stick that in so they can see the difference now we're gonna of course change all these which is anything anybody can do that but look at the difference right well we're all gonna look at the difference see unless you I'll draw his eyes up. That's a lot brighter, isn't it? Now that's going to help. Todd, me. Yeah. Go ahead, give me a hug. Okay. But what we're going to do is this. You notice this is blue. This is a green area. Blue and green. There's nothing under there. Nothing under there. There's nothing under there, right, Frank? Nothing you'd be interested in.
    13:18
    Again. Same thing that's under there. Listen, just because we have pictures of you at the gym with one day on the treadmill, a single day. How many pictures do we have of you on the treadmill? Listen, while you're down there. I have more pictures, but that's irrelevant. Okay, let me show you what we're going to do to this. Okay, now you can see there's absolutely nothing on the playfield here on these two sides. And we do have a hole to fish the wires through. And we're going to drill another roll, another roll, another hole over here.
    14:00
    Look here. Come in, come in. You see the strips. So we have a green one here, a blue one here. That's ice blue. It goes through this hole. And we have another little hole here, green and blue. And then underneath, Kurt, did you snap this down on purpose just to upset me? The new guy was going to get fired. Here, now look here. Comes in right here. Michelle, come in close. See the connectors? These are the plugs that Comet Pinball's connectors are furnished with. But we added these wires. We added this. See the heat shrink. And the wires are now wire-tied. See the black wire ties? And dressed with the cables.
    14:54
    So everything looks almost factory. See how it loops around here, comes over here. The second set of wires are over here. See that hole? We saw that earlier.
    15:06
    Okay. and it all comes down to this connection and we put in these connectors there marked one and two so if we had to lift the playfield out the whole mess on the plugs sometimes you got to do that to work on these things this way you won't have to worry about it yeah hardwired the easy to do that obviously you'll notice we put stickers now here's another tip you should to or come up with some system so you know all these header pins will refloat. An easy, simple mod that costs you nothing. And the same is true with the optics. You have to reheat the two little optics.
    15:53
    Not a mod, but simple maintenance makes it easy. Well, let's put it back together. Frank, we're ready. There's no sound at this point, but there you can see the end results with the ice blue and the green. It looks great. Now there's one option you can do. Good, you'll stop that. You'll notice that the Home Run plate was flashing. One, in a couple of games, we hooked those two sides to the flashing light. Because it's LEDs, it doesn't seem to be taxing the transistor. So when the home plate light was flashing, the panels were flashing. And it was actually pretty neat because during gameplay, they're on and sometimes they're off and such. And it was a nice interaction. And you can play around with the connections too if you didn't want to wire it into the GI. Yeah, the LEDs only draw about a third of the power. Get closer to the mic, Mike. The LEDs only draw about a third of the power of the regular bulbs. So you don't want to use too thin of a wire. It's really, really cheap thin wire.
    17:05
    And I'll mention it now because a lot of people that make and sell mods use impossibly thin wire to work with. If you make mods, use a bit of a better wire. Like don't go any smaller than an 18 gauge because I have a hard time working with it. I don't know anybody else is going to have a hard time working with it. What's perfect is an old video game harness. We've cut wires. A speaker wire. No thinner than a speaker wire. Yeah, you don't want something too thin, especially the really crappy JAMA harness wires that are out there. I know when we do our conversions of video games we build, we buy something called a super JAMA harness from Twisted Quarter. We must have bought 200 from them. And they're great. They're $38, but you get a heavy gauge wire that Frank likes. Wire colors make sense. They're a nice heavy-duty wire. I heavily modify them. I don't use them the way they come. I take a lot of wires out and move stuff around to suit the way I do it. But, yeah, don't buy the $20 Chinese wiring harness. Both Player 1 and Player 2 controls are the same colors. You may not think of it at the time. You don't care. But when you work on it later, it's going to be a pain in the ass. So an extra $20, just get a good harness. And you can use the wires you're not using from the harness to run the wires to the other things. I'd like to add, if you're in a pinch and you didn't plan ahead or have enough wire, often you can run to your local auto parts store and you might be able to buy a spool of wire 50 feet, 100 feet.
    18:41
    That's a good alternative if you need that wire right now if you're in the middle of your project. Yeah. That's good. That's a good point. I like that. Next thing I wanted to cover are there any people in the audience that have a Zachariah or Zachariah game We have one Just one What game do you have
    19:05
    Farfella. Well, that's great because that's the video. They imported the most Farfellas. That was the number one game that came over to America. And Devil Riders was number two.
    19:18
    A stunning, beautiful piece of equipment. It's gorgeous, especially ours. We went through it. But there is a problem, a major, just two major problems with Zachariah. Number one is the logic board.
    19:32
    And a wonderful company, only one company in the world, makes brand new ones, and they're beautiful.
    19:38
    And I can't for the life of me think of it because I wasn't going to talk about the new logic board. But do not discard a Zachariah or Zachariah if your logic board is soaked with battery damage. Do not throw it away. You'll need the processor to move over to the new board, and then your game will be back and it'll be beautiful. But there's one other problem with Zachariah pinball machines, and you have to know what it is. Relay. The flipper relays. Okay, you know what? That's number three. That's number three. So what's number two? You may not have had a problem. did with this one? No, no. It's the neon tube. Yes. Well, you were lucky. See, the neon is very dependable, and I should write to these creeps, because after 40 lousy years, you'd think that tube would still work, you know? But our tube was dying, and it wasn't the transformer that was still putting out voltage, because I knew that because I had to shock Frank awake with it once I zapped him with it. It's pinballsolutions.eu. They do have that processor chip, but it's $40. It's oddball. No other game uses it. Yeah, and we found that the power supply that you had the problem with the relays, you have to change all the capacitors on that.
    21:07
    They are dried out after 40 lousy years. But after you finish that and you have a neon tube and you discovered that all the neon tube places in town closed because of LEDs, that on eBay they sell neon tubing. Very cheap. And it's flexible and in a roll, and it's as easy as can be, and this is what we did with it. Go ahead, Jillian, please.
    21:41
    Go ahead. Oh, I didn't know if I was in this phone. You're the star. Yes, I am. Of course I'm the star. Franklin! That's why you're only in your own videos.
    21:53
    Brad, come over here before I attack you with this wonderful mod. Do you know what this is? This is neon LED rope light.
    22:06
    You can see it's very flexible. You can buy it right on Green Bay in a roll, different sizes. and it's ideal if you have neon that turns out not to be good we had a glass tube in there neon tube but it was almost out it was very dim and it wasn't the transformer the tube was losing days so oh god you're losing yes cheese so we've replaced it almost looks identical there's different colors we thought yellow was the perfect match since the game that yellow isn't that clever We lift Mr. Glass out and we'll show people what this stuff is. The neon only glows on this end. So the directions said you could stick this or mount this in different ways. Now this isn't stuck anywhere. Kurt actually got these little clips, see these little cable clamps, using the existing screws that hold the trans light on and this was threaded through here and then ends there. Frank if you open the door, I'll show you how it ends. It ends here and you can cut it off at the segments. You can actually see the segments when you look carefully. Now Now, notice on that end, if you get close, that is the cable. That goes down into a 12-volt power supply.
    23:39
    Now, it does not come with it when you buy this roll, so you can add a 12-volt power supply. We had a 2-amp, but it didn't seem to be. It was getting very hot. Very hot. So we decided to do something different. That was a little pack that you charge your phone with, something like that. No good. installed a 4 amp commercial grade screw terminal power supply so it would run cool. That's it there, with the green light. Plugs into a service outlet and then that is carefully wired in to the 110 going in. Do you like that Frank? I thought it was pretty great. I'm not sure. Well, because we can unplug the power supply when we need to. Well, you might have to.
    24:32
    Well, plus now they'll have a socket to plug their stupid soldering iron. See, a socket for the soldering iron.
    24:42
    Frank, put your fingers right here for just a moment. You see, it's my own show when I get abused. Constant abuse. Did someone just reach out, Todd?
    24:59
    We had a party go on up front. Well, it's a great update for neon, isn't it, Frank? So if you have a Zachariah, you can do a very inexpensive update.
    25:13
    Shall we return? Yes, we will. So there you go. Now, flexible neon, right on eBay. You'll find a roll. They sell it in all different lengths. I think that was a big roll, and I think it was only $20, $25. But you had to add the power supply. Did it come with the plug end on it? No, no ends.
    25:37
    No, we had to stuff the ends in, remember? Did it come with a receptacle? Did they go to home and buy a receptacle and a junction box? You're just jealous of mine. See, Fairfella, remember, doesn't have any outlet on it. They have one of those goofy overseas outlets. That's no good, right?
    25:54
    Right, so you have to, you know, it's nice to have a soldering iron under there so you can solder. So does it work when the game is turned off? Who cares? When somebody blows their Zachariah up because you gave them bad advice, it's being recorded.
    26:10
    See, I told you, constant abuse. Constant. I do it all the time. Power on. How long did that game sit blown up because somebody was touching it? It worked over seven months, eight months? Ah, what difference does it make? It made a lot of difference when you were crying because you couldn't sell it.
    26:30
    I'll sell it to you. See, we'll do that with all the new games. Always work on your Jersey Jacks with the power on, right?
    26:40
    No, of course not. You turn them off, Frank. And you're accepting your soldering iron. No, what you do is you plug the soldering iron in, get it nice and hot. Then when you're ready to solder, turn the game off. The soldering iron will stay hot. Just run an extension cord over to us.
    26:58
    See? Always. Always abuse. I'm trying to cover... I spent money on that socket. We could have just wired it right into the thing. We could have, but we didn't. I put a socket on it. I had the idiot do it. Anyway.
    27:17
    Okay. So flexible tubing is a nice feature. I could see commercial pinball manufacturers use it too. It's cheap. And it looks great. It's super bright. We had a lot left over too.
    27:34
    So when you make your own connectors, you can use it on different things. I presume you could also light plastics on the play field. The 12 volts is going to be the problem. That's it. You can't depend on the 12 volts off the WPC. because a lot of you, if you put those mods on, you're taxing your 12-volt department in the WPC board. The more you add, the more possibilities of disaster, right? I guess, did you record when we did Jeff's Addams Family where we added those plasma pop bumpers? Remember all the hell I had to go through to wire up the power supply and all the shit I had to do to make that stupid thing work? Yes, we had to add 12 volts. What video was that? No, I had to do a lot more than just 12 volts. Yeah, somebody sent us like a billion mods for an Adams family, and the board was not happy, just furious with us. So we had to add power supplies. Plasma pop bumper caps, you know what I'm talking about? Plasma pop bumpers. Somebody was selling them, I guess, a couple years ago. Sometimes it'll just be on all the time. But they give you this little relay board, so they want you to plug a power supply into the service. Get closer to the mic. Which you never do. and then it comes with some little relay board and you're supposed to tap it into the GI. Well, Adam's family doesn't use all five legs. But no matter what I did, it kept blowing the fuse. I thought it was Genesis. No. There were four Genesis with those bumpers. No, it was Jeff's, Adam's family.
    29:02
    Okay. He bought all five of those. Remember, because they kept failing. There were two different plasmas then. We had Genesis too. Brand new. Yeah, we were having trouble with them. Did you go through the mouth of the power strip and the bottom of the cabinet? Yes. No, no, no, I had to mount a computer power supply in the bottom, and then I had to make this framework to mount all these little relay boards to turn them off and on. It was about, maybe about three, four, five years ago. If you look up the video, just look up the TNT Adams family videos and you'll see it, unless you lost that. Well, we've sworn off those mods. I'll let them put them in, blow them up. We've just spent too much time on them. Simple mods, I think, are the best. speaking of the Adams family that 555 light you can light your swamp you can light the chair any scoop in your game you can light you're going to see a Gold Wings video where we lit the scoop a new light that was never there with that $3 lamp socket wires that's it, just a light and it just changes the whole look of the game and it doesn't cost you much So we covered that. There's other great mods you already know about. The color DMD is the best thing, the best mod you could ever add to a WPC game. But of course, as you all know, he's out of stock. And we don't know how long he's going to be out of stock. But that's a great mod. I understand there's some overseas manufacturers now that are making them. But the colored DMDs, we've had almost, I've only had one failure out of, I must have put 300 or 400 of them in there, maybe more. We buy them like 10 at a time, so we can keep adding them wherever possible. The nice thing about the colored DMD is if you put it in, you can sell your old DMD because you're never going to use it again. Just dump it.
    31:00
    That's why we always have them. We sell them for $75, $75 to $85, depending on whether they look like new. We sell every one we get in once we convert them.
    31:12
    There's a few other things we can hit. I want to keep track. We're okay on time. We got in a game that nobody wanted, and now everybody does, is Gilligan's Island. and I always thought it was great. I really did. I thought it was great when it first came out. You obviously know it's the first dot matrix game to be released, even though Terminator was finished before Gilligan, but it wasn't released.
    31:39
    Kona in the back, if you're not familiar with it, is a mountain. There's two eyes, hollow eyes in it. And behind Kona, there's a flash lamp. So when the flash lamp goes off, the eyes flash. But, we came up with another idea in this next video that you can do with those same 555 sockets and something we call a bendy, which is a light you can... Bendy! Yes, that's right. One you can adjust and turn and move and point in the right hole so you don't have to be so precise. Here's the video. Okay, Gilligan's, originally the mountain, had no lighting other than flashlights and the GI under it. But look what we came up with. Actually, little Chris did. Pop riveted two of those sockets, added two bendies, and put them right at the eyeballs. Oh, he's winking. He's winking at us. You better fix that for good. See now, look, isn't that neat, Kona? Now the result when you see it, it does look like eyes. The camera can't capture it. Took one of the bulbs out of the strip to make this brighter so you can see the minnow a little better. I think that looks good. And of course there's the usual strips. We have one under here to brighten this back. We started putting strips underneath the second plastic. Middle plastic. Right, you can kind of see it poke down to the middle. Piece here. So, you can really brighten the game up this way. There are our eyes. Now when you see it, you can actually, it looks like they're pupils because of the construction of the bendy bulb. It's very nice, very effective. And the customer, of course, will be thrilled. And if it's your game, you'll be thrilled. And once again, almost no cost. If you have a firepower, probably a lot of you have had at least one over the years, there's a really simple mod with that same lamp socket. Once again, you light the three holes, but you hook the wires up to the green lock hole. So when the lock is flashing, the hole is flashing. It looks terrific. Once again, dirt cheap and what a great effect because you see the arrow and the hole blinking merrily away. Of course, Firepower is one of the greatest games ever made, top ten game ever made. And it's a really nice upgrade. That wonderful 555 socket and the strips. So we always order like 200 at a time from Steve at Pinball Resource, but Marco carries them too. them for a while. Steve supplies most of the other pinball manufacturers. So it's rather interesting because they all work together to get parts to all of you. And we need the parts. We are up to another part. You know what, we'll do the gold wings. I never liked this game, but everybody wants it now because of Top Gun. We sold three. Three. As a matter of fact, the last one was just picked up. One was an overhaul. Steve Zemonski from Jersey Jack Loves Gold Wings. We did his up. This is his, actually. Go ahead.
    35:28
    There better be seats for my Jack. This is the end result of one of our machines now. That's the second one we had go out. Do you see how the ramp is... How the curlicue is made?
    35:45
    This is Steve's. So as you can see, the factory... has no lighting at all. Give him a good seat. Something like that, yeah. I think it goes like that. So none of this is lit. None. There's no lights at all. And that's in front of the curly cube, which is going to be here. So I'm going to light up the plastic with a trick here. I'm going to light the plastic up. And then bounce the color changer off the rim. We had to drill a hole.
    36:25
    Good. And then I added these here. None of the corners were lit. But the lights back there are on. So that game screaming for extra lights. If you didn't want to use the strips, you could drill holes and put standard 44 LEDs in tow. We did that on the earlier ones. But the strips are so easy to work with. And they're brighter. You get 10 LED lights. So the scoops, anything metal, you can light and change colors with. It looks great. And a lot of the manufacturers now are doing that. That's what creates such a beautiful color palette on your play field. Wouldn't you agree, Frank? Absolutely.
    37:13
    Frank doesn't like gold wings either, especially when the siren goes off. By the way, if you have a siren and it's too loud, wrap it with a towel, an old towel. Your wife won't miss. Just wrap it up. You'll hear the siren, but it'll be quite muffled, and it's perfectly safe since you're not having it anywhere near any of the electrical parts if you want to keep the effect. If you've all had gold wings, I'm sure you've opened them up and found the fuse is missing. Just take that little black fuse out and throw it away. That's the end of the siren.
    37:48
    But some people want to keep that effect in there. Especially after they get home from the movies after seeing Top Gun What a great movie that was That was a great movie So and maybe explains why Gold Wings Somebody asked how much The Gold Wings were
    38:08
    So that's what we were selling them for. That's for the new ramp from Ramp-O-Matic. Jody makes these wonderful ramps. They're thicker. He makes them a different color. So we saw one was blue. Steve wanted a clear one. We gave him a clear one, but they also make pink. They all look great. So any colors, I think they're $75 plus shipping.
    38:32
    So that's the Gold Wings. There's another real cheap ramp. Oh, okay. It's going slower than I thought. Okay. There's another cheap mod. Steve at Pimble Resource sells these things they're stars you've seen them in a lot of Gottlieb games Gottlieb used tons of them but then again Williams used a whole bunch of them in Laser Laserball and Stellar Wars no Stellar Wars didn't have any the one they only made a hundred of oh I got it right out of my head Starlight there's only a hundred you'd knock out the red one and they're always red. And they have the little white star in the center, and they look like shit. And they're filthy dirty, and they don't work well. So this is what we did. Can you run this clip, please? Well, we're going to show you what you can put in your game that'll cost you a big, fat $4. Now, Kirk, come down here. This is what... That's the rollover. That's what your rollover looks like. it's red and it has the little white thing in there and the white thing we have this loose so you could see when your game it's filthy look at it cruddy the only could take it out and clean it a student B you could buy a brand new one each piece is two bucks this week's everyone know or not with a new white center see how easy it moves it's not cruddy like this okay and then we lit it with a comet fire that's a little cost unless you get discounts is four bucks and the fires for eight dollars reduces this effect here you can put any color changes whoever was getting in my way to put it in.
    40:33
    I'd be putting quarters so fast the coin would catch fire. You know, the other option is to put a fast-changing color LED.
    40:42
    That's another option. That's the only other option. That's it. Well, no, you can put a red... No, no, no. You can put a solid bulb in if you wanted to be stupid. Good. Not as good as you used to. Is that what you did? You put a solid one in there, stupid? I did, to show you how ugly it used to look. What about this? What's this one?
    41:00
    You don't like my rubber? No. That is a Titan mini rubber. Frank! At least you got me a chance to say my Frank. Everybody likes it when I go Frank.
    41:23
    Okay, let's go back to these two idiots. That's us, Frank. That's us, you know. Well, we are now up to other things you can do with your game. Custom translates, you've seen them, especially the Gottlieb ones that are really nice. They make them for Raven and Genesis, but now they make them for all the other games too. So you can get a new one for Funhaus. You can get one...
    41:56
    Shadow. Shadow makes... The original Shadow was okay, but the new one's much nicer. Frank, did you have any translates you liked? Well, people put the one in the Genesis. I like the original one better. It's creepy. It's supposed to be creepy, not that stupid metropolitan robot thing. I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Well, oddly enough, the woman in the original Genesis is a fan of TNT. She watches our videos. And she says, that's me in the back glass, you know. And I say, yeah, you're in the original ones if they're not changed yet. rather interesting. We should have her come in and do a video. We should. If she still has that hair. She'll have to get her with the hair. Jillian, you could loan her your hair.
    42:37
    Say, that would do it. Anyway, we're up to powder coating. There's got to be powder coating places near you.
    42:50
    The powder coating people used to just do engine parts or motorcycle parts, but now they're doing pinball legs. Every game we sell, even the as-is ones, we powder coat the legs. They do every color you can think of, and you're not sitting there scrubbing the crap off the old legs, scraping the rust off. You don't do anything. You just take the caster out of the bottom, the leg leveler. Obviously, this is a good time to make sure the threads are still good, because you don't want to powder coat a leg that has bad threads, unless you just want to put a lock washer in it and screw the caster all the way down and use it in the front so you don't have to waste the leg. But, you know, there's three sizes, 27, 20 1⁄2, and 31. So make sure you have enough. We do just hundreds and hundreds of legs now. And your patio furniture, right? I just took mine over. Side rails and back boxes. Side rails, back boxes, hinges. we took over Dirty Harry Gun to have that powder coated obviously gun metal so we're going to do that the right color it's a great way to make your older game look more modern spice it up a bit another advantage is maybe you have a pitted or rusted chrome piece that you can't get aftermarket to look new again that's another great reason for the powder coating if it's not an option to replace get it powder coated and you'd be surprised the difference make it look much more modern and another option if that part's no longer available that's right and buying a new leg isn't the answer because the new legs are not powder coated so take your old leg thinner and weaker too depending on we do quantity but powder coated legs cost us $10 to $12 each and if there's a special color, they're 15 each. So for $10 or $12, your guy's not bent over the sink scrubbing the old one with Brillo pads and trying to shine it up. The inside of the leg always looks like shit no matter what you do. So you don't have to paint it and it looks great and the customer's happy for us. And you'll be happy if it's you. We are now going to move into important repairs, upgrades, which are not necessarily related to the appearance. Now, John is going to share with you Frank's battery board mod that Frank, as you all know, if you've watched our videos, developed a wonderful little board that fits into every single game made right now, right? We cover them all? pretty much in a couple of videos too. The Ballet one, or the 6803 one will fit the off-road. And also Farfalla. Yeah, Farfalla. Game plan. Now, Frank has a website you can buy direct, which is, go ahead. It's noquartersarcade.com. I also have a Facebook page with the same name. And occasionally I'll put tech articles up or just little tips, so little things I find that are a problem over the years that can usually... Some are funny, too.
    46:11
    Horrible repairs. Zeke's Peak, where they wrap the fuse in foil. Well, you've all come across foil fuses. Everybody has. I'll fix this for good. It'll never blow again. Yeah, when you're doing a mod, don't forget about the hidden things you can do. It doesn't have to be an added toy or light on your play field. you can do a mod that's going to better improve the life duration of your game.
    46:44
    And Frank's Battery Board is a great example. I've put some on my games already, and I'm in the process of eventually putting them on everything I have. And your wife, she put the first one on herself. Yes, on Frank's Page No Quarters Arcade. I did a video of my wife, Crystal, how easy it is to install a battery board. We used my fun house as an example.
    47:12
    By doing that, we're preventing any future issues of the AA batteries leaking acid and doing damage to our boards. Just by putting the battery board in, they're very affordable. and putting that coin cell in, those never seem to leak. And only $14, possessive rate. And they're great upgrades, aren't they? Yes, they are. Yes, and it looks clean and neat. It has a blocking diode. Every battery board has a blocking diode to protect your game. Except the Gottlieb System 3, which doesn't need it. Yeah, because they didn't need a blocking diode. I fed right to a Dallas, it was a 1230. He even makes a little one for the System 3, that little tiny thing. So that fits right in. And please don't forget about another mod that you're not seeing or might not make your game more exciting. Check your power cords. Make sure there's no splices in them. You don't want to wrap electrical tape around it. Maybe your ground prong is missing. You can replace your cord. It's very affordable, and you're going to protect your game for a long time. Actually, John, that was a great idea. The best power cords made anywhere is, in fact, Steve Young. And I remember he had ran out and he finally got them stocked again. They're 14 foot long. They're flat, like the original ballet cords. They're beautiful cords. I buy hundreds of them. And you put a new cord on the game. Our stipulation is if the cord, the original cord, has any kind of ding in it or the ground is broken off, it gets a new cord. make sure you hook the new wires up. Those three wires are hooked up in the correct order. The banded side, the side with the ribs on the flat cord, is your neutral. So you have to make sure you hook it up right or the game will still give that. Have you ever touched your games and you have that magnetic or the electrical feel? It feels like there's electricity passing through it. Yeah, the side rails. The side rail touch, yes. So you do want to make sure, if you're unclear, look at the ribbing and look at the slots. Every socket in America has three slots, unless the house is 70 years old or something. But the long one, the long slot, is neutral. The long slot is neutral. The short slot is your hot. That's your black wire. And then, of course, the ground is the green wire. oddly enough in your fuse box or your circuit panel in the basement the white wire and the green wire are connected together in the fuse panel. So it's like well I got an extra one. There's no need to run it because they both go to the same place. Well what the reason is that it's there. It's an extra path back to ground. Right. To keep so the extra path isn't through your body. It's actually just a quick story so you would want to make sure that your ground is there or so guy that I know had a lady friend over. They were engaged in some adult consensual activity between pinball machines that were turned on. And they were getting heightened sensations at the point of contact. And then he said, how much power, so should I get any voltage to my side rails? I said, no. He said, I'm getting about 60 volts. I'm like, check your grounds.
    50:36
    If you've ever worked on multiple machines and you stood between them and lean across them when they're powered up, you'll know what I'm talking about. You'll know. You're laying your arm across them, and one of them doesn't ground it properly. You're going to get shocked. Yes, and it's usually 60 volts. I brought it up because it happened to me on one of my games. Yes. Every one of you must have been shocked at least once. Do you engage in any consensual adult activity between the machines? No. Make sure you wipe them down next time I come over when I work on them.
    51:02
    Good idea. You just want to make another video. Well, we just came across this on Super Mario Brothers. uh, Gottlieb Penn. If you have a system three and there's a hum and you've changed the amp, you put another board in, you change the soundboard, uh, and you change the fuses on the transformer bottom and you can't get rid of the hum, you are now going to discover why. Can you run this video, Jillian, please? This is every system three. System three, sound hum. Have you experienced here come come close listen you can hear the hum
    51:49
    the volume's all the way up but there's a background hum you can't turn off it's always there people said they changed the soundboard they changed the amplifier
    52:02
    no help oh the transformer is bad it's actually not let me show you something them. On all System 3s, the auxiliary power supply, auxiliary power supply, two fuses, 10 and 11. The fuses are absolutely good. They're even new. But guess what? This one is not working right. Listen. Hum is gone. Hum, hum is gone. Now watch. If I take the fuse out completely. Listen. See, there's a lot of hum. So the brand new fuse, the hum goes down, but it don't go away. What? Right in the middle. We're doing a seminar, Kurt. Oh, I'm sorry.
    53:04
    Excuse me. Now, how to fix it. We're going to show you. First thing, first of all, you don't have to change the whole fuse block. Completely idiotic and unnecessary. You need to just change these two. Golly, put enough little holes in there where you can, we're going to show you. In the metal cases. Take these pieces out here. Then you get in there and break these two away. Put a new fuse block on with a screw. Solder it in. your problem is gone and you don't have to sit there and change the whole fuse block unless you have a lot of time and you're really i didn't say it right did i i sure know the balls he's got lots of secret stuff on this again okay kurt has separated the fuses and he's put a screw back in so this holder is in tight And now the next step is to change those two holders.
    54:05
    And, Kurti, voila. The hum is gone. Hmm. I hear it up there. It's gone. Kurt, lower the play field. I just want to show. I'm not doing anything. That's one way to put the lights in, to light the buttons. and this one here see that one the way that's placed it'll light the shooter lane and that was an invention of Timmy one of our twins you see how the strips are above the lower plastic but underneath the top plastic so you get a nice effect and they're out of view when you're playing the game And this is a close-up of the sticker. Stern copied that from us. Did you notice? Starting with Black Knight 3000, they light all the flippers.
    55:06
    So we've been lighting the flipper area for, God, how many, five years now? Also, too, if you do find a blown fuse, it's rare. I've found it so many times that I chased it forever because the fuse never looks blown until you really look at it. But if you have a blown fuse and you put another fuse in a blow, you're going to have a bad diode on that amplifier. or just check your diodes, one of them is going to be bad. So this is a quick tip. Don't put a bigger fuse in. No foil. Or gum wrapper. Gum wrapper. They work quick if you're out of fuses, I guess. Remember, everybody loves a buzz except the sound guy. That's true.
    55:45
    Can you hear the hum now? I can hear it. Let's see. We are up two. you got Tommy's they didn't come I guess they couldn't make it oh bridge rectifiers everybody knows the story with them they're failing bridge rectifiers that's the way they are especially on the Williams WPCs oh you knew that so we always put two new ones in we don't change all five because the others are under zero strain it's the two main fuses the five volt fuses that run the five volt circuit try to buy bridge rectifiers that are tall because the higher up off the board the more heat dissipation there is and then you have to buy the frank it went right out of my head the white gunk the what thermal thermal compound yeah right out of my head i just found out something um one of our most purchased product for us is something called it's contact cleaner and i just found out from Mike at Automated. He actually went in his office the other day before we came up here. Sitting on his desk was a can of contact I keep it here because it And I said what They or Same can I said what What do you mean they or A company in Florida called AVM Incorporated. You can buy them like dirt cheap. You can buy a contact cleaner. You get three cases at a time, and it comes down to below $6 a can. There's 12 cans in the case. They also have air duster. You blow air away. Half the price of everybody else. So look them up. AVM Incorporated. And they'll sell direct to you, do a credit card over the phone, and the thing's on its way two days later. You get a case of them. A great product. We spray it everywhere, don't we, Frank? It's actually really good for removing adhesive because it won't hurt plastic. Yes, that is true. The guys will use goof off, and I don't like any of that because it takes the paint off. You're trying to get a sticker or something off the bow tie. You have to be careful because it will if you're too aggressive with it. But if you just spray it on, let it work, wipe it off a little bit at a time, you're going to take a lot of headaches. It dissipates. That means it disappears. It doesn't leave a film. So it's called contact cleaner, cleverly. And if you're going to clean anything on your mechanical pinballs, leave the game open and walk away for about a half hour before you turn it on or else you're going to get a ball of fire. Have a fire extinguisher handy. Yes, have a fire extinguisher. And certainly don't start it up when that motor starts to spin and all the contacts are going. You're going to have foof. A good foof, that is. Well, mechanical games are great. I mean, they shouldn't be working. You know, mechanical machines were made for five years of use. Five years, and then you were supposed to throw them away. Just one other thing. You can use it for cleaning the flux off of your boards when you're soldering. Yes. Keep your work nice and clean. You know what we should bring up? The washing of the boards. Simple green.
    58:50
    Okay? Not in the spray. I put it in a little jar. Yes, but it's the pure stuff. Yeah, straight. I just put it on a paintbrush, especially like shuffle alley boards that are always going to be heavily coated with nicotine. Oh, God, yeah, black nicotine. The boards will come up like new. You don't even scrub them. You take a big floppy paintbrush and paint the board with it, backside and front. Just paint the whole board. You're not going to hurt it. Believe me, you're not. and then you get a big fan, box fan. Yeah, like a 24-inch. You lean it up against the box fan for about an hour, hour and a half, or even overnight. It dries a bone. It looks beautiful. Todd, don't you also use non-abrasive, with no pumice added, Gojo hand cleaner? Gojo for the play fields. We picked that up from John Sheehan. He worked with us until he was, gosh, how old? 89. He retired at 89. Our retirement requirement is 100 for him to collect the pension. But he decided he was done at 89. But he brought to us his techniques in fixing shuffle alleys. We've sold hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of shuffle alleys. But Gojo, the stuff you clean your hands with if you're a mechanic, is the most marvelous cleaner for play fields. and he was using it for years and years and we've been using it now for almost 30 years. And you have to buy the original formula. That's it. Not the one with the pumice. Otherwise the paint will come off your play field. It's usually white with like blue or purple print. If it's orange, don't buy it because that's going to have pumice in it. Yes, it just says original formula in the can. They sell it in big cans. I think you can buy little cans but we always go there and get the big cans. And we get our, Napa also sells the Bondo that we like. It's not called Bondo. It's microfiber Bondo to fix your cabinet.
    60:55
    You sand it. You make the cabinet look like new. Your pinball machines. You know there's always a chunk of wood out of it. Or several places. You can fix it with a Bondo, sand it, and then repaint it. Often a corner of a head, someone's moving it up and down their basement stairs or through doorways.
    61:14
    Yes. You always get the game moved, and you're like, oh, what's this little colored piece of wood? Darn it. Yeah, the Napa up the street from us says we bought gallons and gallons and gallons. What do you do with this? And we tell them we fix the cabinets with this stuff. And high-gloss black, we use a lot of that from Ace Hardware. They sell gallons of it. It's $45. It's made by Clark and Essington. It's the best paint there is. Next best paint Home Depot sells, high gloss black.
    61:49
    Same color as the Adams family or something you can paint. That's what we've been doing for years now. I didn't even have that listed.
    61:58
    Let's see, we have, let me see, battery holders, capacitors. I think we covered everything, and I think we covered all of our clips except our closing clip. and we are at 537, and I know you're all hungry for dinner.
    62:16
    I don't know if there is any, can you guys think of anything else that we could cover? Do you have any questions? Anybody have any ideas? You can stand by the microphone there.
    62:29
    They can be fun. They can be personal. They're all asleep. Maybe you have a mod or an affordable mod you'd like to share with everyone. Yes, yes, there is a great mod. This was in my book. I found these pictures. That idiot ruined my book. These pictures were supposed to be this clear, and I stumbled across it. This is the corner of a Williams driver board used from 77 to 83.
    62:57
    If you have a Williams game between 77 and 80, it looks like this. Do you see those eight resistors? Well, some of the Black Knights had a little message stapled in them that says if you replace the, that was the first game to use the update. I don't know if you're aware of it, the updated transistor. I think that's a video, too. If you hit the start, I think it'll, I cleverly made it blink with my 2002 video program. But this is what we did. It'll start in a moment. The next, here we are. And then you can freeze it now, Jillian. Now, this board that I happened to take the picture of were not what we were using. A staple from your office stapler fits the holes perfect. You suck it out. You put the staples in and throw the resistors out. Your switches will become more sensitive.
    63:58
    If you have a black knight or anything after that, the switches may not read correctly because of the faster pace of the game, because of the stronger coil. Now, you don't have to do this, but we do it to every game, regardless of what year the game was made. We make sure that it has the jumpers in it. So if you move this driver board to another game, you can get away. It's just a great zero-cost mod, just your time. Now, this header pins on the right, do you notice the header pins on the right are round?
    64:33
    Bolex made the darn things round. I even see one of the pins is pushed down. I'm not sure if that's the... Okay, you have to go through these and make sure all the pins are level and reheated. The connector, the weight connector in a Williams game, is flat. So when the connector's plugged in, it's touching a portion of the round pin, just a portion.
    64:58
    Now, Moloch's solution was to make a square pin. So if you look at a newer game, The pins are square, not round.
    65:06
    And Marco sells a tri-eurocon. I think I said that right. Trifurcon, right. A pin that grips it on three sides. It makes a solid, great connector. So if you're going to change it, you don't have to. We will not change these pins, baby. We're done with that. That's going out that way. But if you have a problem, especially if you have an old Williams video game like Joust, you should change just the power connector to the square Molex pins and change the connector to the three-level pin that you can buy for a couple cents. They're real cheap, like six cents, seven cents each. We buy hundreds of them, too. But that's a great mod, and that jumper is perfect for your game. Now we can do questions. That's the last thing I did. We have a question. Aha. I have a question. My name is Christian. I'm a photographer. So, like, I had to state that in order to be ethical. Do you have any tips for clamping down system-free Gottlieb flippers? They have two hex nuts, which are just, like, you screw one in, and you screw the other in, and it starts to shift in the bushing, and it just kills me, and I've done it. Okay. I've spent 100 hours on this thing. On the flipper. On the system. Three. Yeah. Well, you have to change the plunger and link.
    66:28
    The plunger and link on all System 3s are bad. Yeah. Now, are you talking about the paw, the P-A-W-L? Not the paw.
    66:39
    What's the metal thing that goes down into the bushing through the play field? The shaft. The shaft has a recessed area where there's two bolts clamped. But those two bolts, like, they push and pull and push and pull. It's like, never get it even. I can never get it right. Then I'll play a game and it'll fail. Okay. clamp one side?
    67:00
    Well, here's what we do. When we get the shaft, we pull the shaft out. We always put a new boot on the top. Steve makes the boots, the white boot. But if the shaft is burred, you really should put a new one in. But you can sand it off, you know, with sandpaper. You can get it or use the wheel, wire wheel. I actually started with new shafts from Steve Young. So they're, you know, virgins. But I just can't quite get that. Like, I'm tightening it like you do wheel nuts, where you do one turn and then one turn, or quarter turn and quarter turn. We hand-tight them, and then we take the Allen screw and tighten one. And then sometimes you have to move the flipper to tighten the other, but you make sure it's lined up, and you make sure there's up and down movement before you do it. But I've never had a problem. Once or twice we've had a pull and the screws kept loosening up and we put a drop of Loctite. I think only once or twice. Thank you. Oh, Johnny, did you have a suggestion? I was just going to suggest Loctite and then you mentioned it. On the hex bolts? The Allen screw. Yeah. The black Allen screw. But we've rarely used that. Sometimes you have to do that on the new Bally ones. well the new ones meaning up till 84 no no they used them until 89 that's right thank you anybody else oh we have another good let's see 543 closer on the godly soundboard what do you attribute that is it a ground no the fuse holder is shot. Now what happens is, and I wrote about this on a Terminator, Williams had a really horrible hum and a cap shorted and it blew the trace off, which blew the fuse. The amplifier gets fed, it's a center tap transformer, so you're not just getting a positive line in, you're getting two legs of AC fed to it. One of those legs drops off, it's going to cause, because the amplifier will run off a positive and negative voltages. So if you're losing one of them, the amp's going to hum. So is that the same thing that happens to the classic Valley solid space? You get a lot of sound boards with those. I haven't seen that happen on them. It's always been caps on the Valley boards. Yeah, caps. You've got to do all, especially like your squawking talk boards. Oh, there's a zillion caps. All of the caps. Every single one. Those horrible long ones.
    69:35
    The caps, they're failing. Actually, what you really need is you can get a I think I got it off Amazon or eBay or something. It was an ESR meter. It was like maybe $25. It was just a cheap Chinese thing, but that will tell you if your caps are bad, if you're not sure.
    69:50
    I kind of question its reliability because it was a cheapy one, but it's been pretty accurate. And it'll tell you if a cap is going out of range. So you really can't measure it with a voltmeter.
    70:02
    It's like $25. It has a little chart right on the front that tells you what each microfarad rating compared to voltage should be. So like a 10 at 50 volts or something. and it'll tell you what the reading should be. If you see that it's getting out of range, just replace it. And a lot of times you can even measure them in circuit too.
    70:18
    Thank you very much. Good. What we didn't mention earlier about Frank's website, No Quarters Arcade, he's not just selling his battery boards he invented on there. He posts a lot of tech tips, Frank's tips on there. A lot of them, yeah, and videos. Yes, and photographs of experiences he comes across, problems, how he troubleshooted it, what the solution was. And they're really handy.
    70:49
    I look at them, and they don't all apply to me, but it's knowledge I'm reading and learning that I might come across in the future. And then I know I can go back and reference it. So check out the No Quarters Arcade for a lot of helpful tips as well. It isn't really just about the problem I found. It's explaining how it works. Because I'll never participate in a group and somebody will post a question and I'll just read all these answers that I just want to drive 100 miles an hour to a telephone pole when I see some of the well-meaning people and their answers. You don't understand what does, how it works, why things will fail. So you kind of need to understand what you're looking at. And it will make it a lot easier to track down problems. Frank also makes, if you have a Tommy, he makes the new blinder board and it comes with a motor that will match up to it and the Frankenstein board with the intermittent head movement Frankenstein head is programmed to move but it doesn't interact with the gameplay because obviously of the copyright with Rudy and the pinmation copyright so the head does not follow the ball it turns randomly and Frank was able to program the random turning because as you know you can't get that fixed. Your only option is Frank's board. So he's very, put that new board together which is really good. We sold a lot of them. We have one final video. We got some of the guys at the shop to put this thing together. It's very quick. Well that's the end of the seminar boys. I hope you get all this stuff delivered by the I get back hurt he's in bed
    72:39
    adios good night now get out this Frenchie designed that logo for me so he did that for me that was very nice so we appreciate you all coming I hope you learned something, you picked up something, this video was streamed live and it'll be available for future viewing. I hope future viewing, right? And by the way, Jillian designed my end logo here with the bags. At Pentastic. That's right. Bags originated at this very show right across the hall, didn't it?
    73:21
    Yeah. That was it. But thanks again guys for coming and hope you all learned something. One more thing I'd like to add. Many of you have probably gotten one of Todd's trading cards from him in the past, and he probably autographed for you.
    73:40
    Well, no, this year he has a new trading card that you probably don't have. That's right, with Barry Osler's joust. So I have a new trading card.
    73:50
    And I got my Twippy on it, too. And we also have posters. We have posters. will be at the autograph session. Frank will be there too. He has his cards. And the cards are always free, of course. And we have in Mike Dodona's booth, please stop by, we have TNT embroidered hats, both the trucker cap. We have them on sale price, $20 for them and $15 for the knit hats. So we have them in the booth. And we have a rubbers package. If you have mechanical games, we have a huge package of rubbers, brand new weight rubbers. I think there's over 120, and we have them for $30. So pick up. We have 11 bags left, and they're over at the automated table. Thanks for watching, guys. And listen, part one of Pentastic is already on YouTube, and I've been filming part two. As a matter of fact, I'm going to film you guys right now, so you'll be in part two, too. See, this is very clever of me, because I decided to do it in the camera.
    74:57
    So here we go. Let me put this on. Then you'll say, I know when that was filmed. Well, here I just finished my seminar, and everybody was on the way out, and I said, I didn't film anything here, but here they are. I just bored them to tears. I think I did. We have some thumbs up. Yeah, we do. Frank and John assisted.
    75:21
    Oh, I owe them all $10 each. well we had a good seminar and it is live so you can see the seminar on the Pentastic website the YouTube page of Pentastic so this whole seminar we bored them to tears for over an hour and 45 minutes and you can always watch my YouTube video you're going to see all yourselves tomorrow on the YouTube video thanks everybody for staying for my quick video
    75:54
    We'll see you next time.