The first pinball machine to join our collection was The Shadow. The first thing we did was purchase the Shadow LED conversion kit from Cointaker. Once you know a thing or two about pinball tinkering, you can order individual bulbs to do LED conversions, but since this was our first time, we went with the kit. There are multiple kits for LED conversion typically, for various parts of the playfield, and a set for the backglass.
I think that pretty much all machines would benefit from LED lighting in the backglass. In the case of The Shadow, I think the full LED treatment was a big improvement. I wish I'd taken before photos, but overall the LED lights just make everything brighter and flashier. I feel like they enhance the experience.
So we've been meaning to do a video of the gameplay with the new LED lights for a while, and now I have. It's my first stab at a video of pinball gameplay, and though it's long, I felt like I wanted to include a good sampling of different modes so that people wanting to see what The Shadow plays like could also do so.
We filmed this with the playfield glass off, and minimal external lighting (which is why it is somewhat grainy). I really would appreciate feedback or advice on how to do these videos, because we're definitely going to do one of our blinged-out Tron machine too.
Update: 11/21/2012
You don't often get to know the life of your machine after you sell it. In our case, we sold it to a community member on Pinside. Later on, we bought another machine from him, and I drove to his house to pick it up. He no longer had The Shadow, but let me know that it had gone to a great new home, Reciprocal Skateboards. I've known that for about a month now, so I was just thrilled to the gills to see the following video just now.
So happy to see it there in such a happy environment! Enjoy your Peking Duck, guys! :)
Showing posts with label LED. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LED. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Sunday, September 2, 2012
Personal Pinball Journal 2
Welcome back, Program.
Today I got home from work a tad early to drop off some groceries before picking up the kids. Adam was already home, and had the Tron machine playfield-up, a sure sign he's tinkering. He told me his LED order had come in.
He was busy, so I brought home the kids and made dinner while he worked. After dinner, I helped him install some of the remaining lights. I discovered something cool; on the newer games, like Tron, you don't have to do nearly as much unscrewing of sockets. The sockets are now plastic, and 2-piece, and the actual socket piece comes in and out just by squeezing the two edges together. Nice improvement, Stern.
Anyway, we changed out all the lights, including the flasher inside the miniature Tron arcade machine. Evidently it had burned out at some point. We didn't have the white flasher you're supposed to put there, so we put a red one in instead. It looks sweet, which is lucky because it was a pain in the ARSE to get into that little arcade machine! We turned on the game and just WOW. The lights are super cool as LEDs, dramatically different. I think if a purist were to approve of any machine having LEDs vs. incandescent bulbs, it'd be for Tron (given the subject matter, it seems fitting).
Then Adam said I could have first play to test out the flashers and so forth. I noticed very quickly that the flashers seemed to not only be extra LED-bright, but they seemed to be coming from all over the place. Even the carpet was lighting up! I kept saying, "Did you see that? Those lights are so bright they are shining outside the machine!" He said he wasn't sure what I meant.
After questioning whether or not he had gone BLIND, and several exclamations, he finally admitted that he'd bought an under-machine lighting kit and wired it in to fire in concert with certain flashers (he has the best poker face, and I'm gullible. NOT a good combination). It's amazing. Talk about a light show! I do think our Tron needs a seizure warning now though.
The next thing we need to do is see about getting the disc spinner motor replaced, though. It's loud. I mean REALLY loud. So I just took some video of that, and the whole tape (primarily gameplay of our LED'd out Shadow) is loading into my computer as I type this.
Today I got home from work a tad early to drop off some groceries before picking up the kids. Adam was already home, and had the Tron machine playfield-up, a sure sign he's tinkering. He told me his LED order had come in.
He was busy, so I brought home the kids and made dinner while he worked. After dinner, I helped him install some of the remaining lights. I discovered something cool; on the newer games, like Tron, you don't have to do nearly as much unscrewing of sockets. The sockets are now plastic, and 2-piece, and the actual socket piece comes in and out just by squeezing the two edges together. Nice improvement, Stern.
Anyway, we changed out all the lights, including the flasher inside the miniature Tron arcade machine. Evidently it had burned out at some point. We didn't have the white flasher you're supposed to put there, so we put a red one in instead. It looks sweet, which is lucky because it was a pain in the ARSE to get into that little arcade machine! We turned on the game and just WOW. The lights are super cool as LEDs, dramatically different. I think if a purist were to approve of any machine having LEDs vs. incandescent bulbs, it'd be for Tron (given the subject matter, it seems fitting).
Then Adam said I could have first play to test out the flashers and so forth. I noticed very quickly that the flashers seemed to not only be extra LED-bright, but they seemed to be coming from all over the place. Even the carpet was lighting up! I kept saying, "Did you see that? Those lights are so bright they are shining outside the machine!" He said he wasn't sure what I meant.
After questioning whether or not he had gone BLIND, and several exclamations, he finally admitted that he'd bought an under-machine lighting kit and wired it in to fire in concert with certain flashers (he has the best poker face, and I'm gullible. NOT a good combination). It's amazing. Talk about a light show! I do think our Tron needs a seizure warning now though.
The next thing we need to do is see about getting the disc spinner motor replaced, though. It's loud. I mean REALLY loud. So I just took some video of that, and the whole tape (primarily gameplay of our LED'd out Shadow) is loading into my computer as I type this.
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