My husband recently purchased the AC/DC Drum Mod from Pinball Life, and Saturday night, we decided to install it. Yeah, I know, we lead a life of wild party-filled weekends...
The instructions for installing the drum mod were decent, but I felt that adding our own experience to the mix might help other budding pinball modders. One thing we felt was missing specifically was more detail on the solder points for the wires.
The first step was to feed the wires up through the playfield. The hardest of the two for this step is definitely the lower playfield drum. We had to use tweezers and teamwork to get the wire up through the playfield where it needed to go, because there were already a good number of wires going through that pathway.
Wires feeding up for lower playfield drum
Wires feeding up for upper playfield drum
The trickiest part of this was knowing where to solder the wires, because the instruction sheet we had didn't have a picture of this. The kit said to solder them to the flashers, but we had to do some trial and error in test mode to see when we had the correct points. My husband was already familiar with this type of installation, though, from when he put the under-cabinet LEDs onto Tron Legacy. What worked was having the green and yellow side connected to the red flasher, and the orange and yellow wires (the one with the black tape near the bottom) connected to the farthest flasher from the red one. Hopefully this picture helps illustrate that.
Solder points for drum kit wiring
Installing the drums was not a big deal at all. You have a choice of flasher color for this kit, and we chose yellow. Adding the LED piece to the drums was a simple matter of peeling off the covering for the double-stick tape and just sticking it onto the back of the drums.
Lower playfield drum, side view
Upper playfield drum, side view
And here's a player-view of the completed installation.
Upper playfield drum, front view
Lower playfield drum, front view
The video below shows what they look like in action. It's always hard to film pinball flashers adequately, and they look kind of blinding in this video. I was afraid ours would be like that, but in reality they are very nice, and it's a relatively subtle effect. I recommend this mod to anyone looking to improve what is a near-flawless machine to begin with. :)
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