An absolute pleasure @Dave Playman - my word what a difference. Looks great thanks for sharing.
Pinball info
Register a free account today to become a member! Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site by adding your own topics and posts, as well as connect with other members through your own private inbox!
Today I worked on......
- Thread starter kevlar
- Start date
View attachment 140870
I was busy last night installing Comets in Diner. Thanks to @James at Pinball Bazaar
Only about a million times nicer!
I will be placing another order when I’m due to tear down and re-rubber. I noticed your 3-1/2” white Perfect Play are on back order. Do you know when you expect more to arrive?
Also, do you intent to stock star posts etc?
It’s night and day! Literally. It was looking so dim compared to the others next to it, had to get them swapped out ASAP
Attachments
Said goodbye to my beautiful LOTR today but went to a good mate to sit alongside the best DW in the world (probably)
One down one to go for incoming GnR & JP
One down one to go for incoming GnR & JP
Organising all my bits and pieces.
Finished putting the topside back, a lot of tumbling and polishing as there was a quite bit of corrosion but all gone and shiny now. Flame polished ramps and fitted protectors, very happy with them now. Waiting on cannon looms to be able to test as I chopped the old ones off, new side rails to go on next I think. Getting there.
Fitted all the LED’s and an Afterglow board, the premium 2 warm white LED’s are now closer to sunlight white and suits this pin for the playfield/inserts.
I fitted a mixture of cool white LED’s and incandescents for the backbox and looks pretty good with no hotspots.
Also took off the dented side rails which took no time, never done that before. No damage to cab which is lucky as I’m leaving the cab original as it’s ok.
I fitted a mixture of cool white LED’s and incandescents for the backbox and looks pretty good with no hotspots.
Also took off the dented side rails which took no time, never done that before. No damage to cab which is lucky as I’m leaving the cab original as it’s ok.
Attachments
Was a flakey opto, put new looms in and still had the intermittent opto trigger. Just fitted a pair of new opto’s and all good now.
Thought it was the cable as the lamp had a break as not working, same as other side. One loom from Phil had a pair of opto’s wires on the connector the wrong way around, that confused me for a bit
.All working now, just need to put the new side rails on and have a new spare wide body glass from Neils group buy.
Plays very fast and smooth, make it so
View attachment trim.B357E872-072F-4B81-9C0A-5B35AD10335E.MOV
11 more scorbits installed. Took under 2 hours to do all 11. Scorbit is soooo easy to install and setup.
Got myself a XPin power supply board for my TFTC via eBay US. Came in a jiffybag! (Yikes!) Really should have been boxed but there you go. Also if anyone is buying one you need to either make up an extension cable or order one as you won't get one unless you ask for it, which I wasn't aware of.
Anyway, looks like the problem that existed with it since I bought it is near resolved as it had the wrong board in it. It's a nice piece of kit with a cool addition of LED status bulbs.
This afternoon I put 40 x 1 SMD's in my Class of 1812, yeah some ghost so I'll have to sort some non ghosting for the inserts but it's a step in the right direction. There were already a load of LED's in it when I bought it so it doesn't look much better but the pinks in the pink spots and pink in the AMBER spots looks good! Yeah, who knew?
Also some in the pop bumper caps where there were white 4SMD's I swapped for blue single frosted 1SMD's. Some more chopping and changing but it's looking quite nice!
A deep game it's not but it's fun and that's all I want out of a 90's machine.
Anyway, looks like the problem that existed with it since I bought it is near resolved as it had the wrong board in it. It's a nice piece of kit with a cool addition of LED status bulbs.
This afternoon I put 40 x 1 SMD's in my Class of 1812, yeah some ghost so I'll have to sort some non ghosting for the inserts but it's a step in the right direction. There were already a load of LED's in it when I bought it so it doesn't look much better but the pinks in the pink spots and pink in the AMBER spots looks good! Yeah, who knew?
Also some in the pop bumper caps where there were white 4SMD's I swapped for blue single frosted 1SMD's. Some more chopping and changing but it's looking quite nice!
A deep game it's not but it's fun and that's all I want out of a 90's machine.
Last edited:
Finished my eBay special the other day, stuck the new side rails on, new glass and new legs. Plays and looks amazing, much better than my last one.
Was worth all the work.
Was worth all the work.
Result of the year
D
Deleted member 2463
Masses of cleaning and tweaking at the club:
Installed fans and shaker on Led Zeppelin
Cleaned GOTG which has now hit 3000 plays! replaced all the insane bulbs
Cleaned IMDN which has now hit 5000 plays replaced all the inlane bulbs
Cleaned GOT - replaced the inline bulbs, but put these quasars from Comet and they look fantastic-
Cleaned MET LE - it gets alot of play and was filthy need new snake teeth though
wow it plays epic again!
Cleaned TWD and replaced the inlane bulbs also.
Next time AIQ and Iron Man will get the treatment!
Installed fans and shaker on Led Zeppelin
Cleaned GOTG which has now hit 3000 plays! replaced all the insane bulbs
Cleaned IMDN which has now hit 5000 plays replaced all the inlane bulbs
Cleaned GOT - replaced the inline bulbs, but put these quasars from Comet and they look fantastic-
Cleaned MET LE - it gets alot of play and was filthy need new snake teeth though
wow it plays epic again!Cleaned TWD and replaced the inlane bulbs also.
Next time AIQ and Iron Man will get the treatment!
I received a Fish Tales, which is my first pinball machine (well, full-sized one, anyway) a couple of weeks ago.
It had a bunch of minor niggles despite being sold as ‘in full working order’ (I kinda expected that).
Anyway, I started by fixing a ball jam in the left lane, which was due to 3” rubbers on the slingshots. These have now been replaced by 2 1/2” Perfect Play silicone rubbers in white.
The next job was finding an occasional error in the Caster’s Club, which turned out to be an elderly, broken spring. I’ve also replaced the flipper rubbers with some green Perfect Play silicones and cleaned the playfield.
We’re now both on a staycation and I’ve LED’d about half of the machine so far. I originally illuminated under the ball guides next to the flippers with some green LEDs, but we eventually decided that white ones were better (although the green ones do look cool).
I’m not happy with the LED lighting. The green LEDs are an unnatural lurid green, which doesn’t fit the fishing theme, and I find the contrast between the bright insert LEDs and weak playfield lighting visually unpleasant. I saw an Attack from Mars at Flip Out on Sunday that had strip lighting down the sides to provide extra playfield illumination. Hence, I’m considering adding strip LEDs for illumination of the centre of the playfield and, also, I’ve ordered some Comet extra-bright LEDs to try to brighten up the G.I as well.
I’m also considering an OCD LED to deal with the rapidly-moving insert lights in attract mode, but don’t have a PC to set the levels.
(Picture shows part-LED’ing. There were a couple of LEDS already when it arrived).
The bottom of the playfield seems to have water damage and there’s inexplicable white powdery gunk in some of the insert holes. I also found a *literal* spiders web inside the casing - not sure where it was being stored before I got hold of it. The game (currently) plays fine (cross fingers) though.
My four year old and toddler love it!
It had a bunch of minor niggles despite being sold as ‘in full working order’ (I kinda expected that).
Anyway, I started by fixing a ball jam in the left lane, which was due to 3” rubbers on the slingshots. These have now been replaced by 2 1/2” Perfect Play silicone rubbers in white.
The next job was finding an occasional error in the Caster’s Club, which turned out to be an elderly, broken spring. I’ve also replaced the flipper rubbers with some green Perfect Play silicones and cleaned the playfield.
We’re now both on a staycation and I’ve LED’d about half of the machine so far. I originally illuminated under the ball guides next to the flippers with some green LEDs, but we eventually decided that white ones were better (although the green ones do look cool).
I’m not happy with the LED lighting. The green LEDs are an unnatural lurid green, which doesn’t fit the fishing theme, and I find the contrast between the bright insert LEDs and weak playfield lighting visually unpleasant. I saw an Attack from Mars at Flip Out on Sunday that had strip lighting down the sides to provide extra playfield illumination. Hence, I’m considering adding strip LEDs for illumination of the centre of the playfield and, also, I’ve ordered some Comet extra-bright LEDs to try to brighten up the G.I as well.
I’m also considering an OCD LED to deal with the rapidly-moving insert lights in attract mode, but don’t have a PC to set the levels.
(Picture shows part-LED’ing. There were a couple of LEDS already when it arrived).
The bottom of the playfield seems to have water damage and there’s inexplicable white powdery gunk in some of the insert holes. I also found a *literal* spiders web inside the casing - not sure where it was being stored before I got hold of it. The game (currently) plays fine (cross fingers) though.
My four year old and toddler love it!
I used warm white for the GI in mine which I like, others like sunlight white. Ledocd is a must in this and works out of the box just fine without the need to tweak on a pc but the better option and much cheaper would be to try and get an Afterglow board from @stumblor when he next gets some as I prefer those. I did a test with both in FT and Afterglow was smoother out of the box.
I was kinda using the sunlight/warm white equivalent for GI from Pinball LEDs. I think it's their frosted warm white. It's not the colour that's the problem - it's that there simply isn't enough illumination in the lower part of the playfield, and this means the lurid green LEDs are pretty distracting.
I've now bought some individual Comet LEDs instead - to see if they're better. There were a couple of Comets in the lower part of the playfield when the machine arrived; the seller was trying to brighten up the playfield, but didn't like LEDs generally.
I use the premium 2 warm whites from there and they are plenty bright, his latest warm white are a bit closer to sunlight white now.
Comet do brighter GI ones but hard to find in the UK, unless you order from the US.
You can get Sunlight 2SMDs from Pinball bazaar, they might work well on Fish Tales.
Sunlight and Warm white are different colours, i don't think Pinball Led uk do a sunlight equivalent, Sunlight seems to be a Comet invention but a good one!
But as M4carp says, pinball led uk's warms are close to Sunlight.
Coloured GI is a controversial subject. I personally think if you add coloured GI it actually takes away from the coloured artwork and makes the ball harder to see. White tones will also be brighter to your eyes compared to colours.
In a few of my pins I have used a mix of warm white and sunlight depending on the tones of the artwork on the playfield or plastics and it seems to work well!
The older games do suffer with darkness, the led strips work, but I'm not a fan.
For my Black Rose and Data East Jurassic Park I added two or three spotlights to illuminate areas. It depends if you have suitable locations to put spotlights though.
I have sunlight 2Smds in the spotlights and the GI where theres blues on the pf and warm white in the areas where its more brown, like where the slings and flippers are
I think it works well! (since the photo was taken I added a warm white led strip to the trough which lights the flippers nicely) Another note! Comet do gi towers which work in some locations (where you don't have line of sight to them) i have one under each of the slingshot plastics on Black Rose
Don't forget FT is a lightning flipper game by design....
I read it was designed for standard flippers but a french distributor wanted a shorter flipper so that’s why it was used worldwide, Mark Ritchie said he regretted not shipping standard flippers on USA machines apparently.
Looks a pretty clean machine for a Fish Tales. Does it have a topper? Hope so - Billy the Bass makes this infuriating game.
Lightning flippers a must.
I reckon it’s the classic easy to play difficult to master game of its era.
Enjoy…
Lightning flippers a must.
I reckon it’s the classic easy to play difficult to master game of its era.
Enjoy…
No topper. I got it at a discount because it was missing it!
I’ve found the instructions on Pinside for making a new one and have the components in the post.
I also noticed it was missing its lightning flippers. I read the same as M4Carp - they were requested by specific distributors to reduce ball times and weren’t part of the original design. As I’m a newbie with a four year old, I figured I didn’t want to make it any harder than was necessary - at least to begin with. If we start scoring Monster Fish and Super Jackpots 90% of the time, I’ll probably change them.
And, yeah, I absolutely love this game. It is the definition of ‘easy to play hard to master’ and I don’t know why it’s not rated higher on Pinside (and elsewhere).
Mine had standard flippers on it when I got, after a few years I felt guilty so fitted lighting flippers and smashed my high score
I need to actually *find* some lightning flippers. They don’t seem to be in stock any of the places I’ve been sourcing spare parts.Mine had standard flippers on it when I got, after a few years I felt guilty so fitted lighting flippers and smashed my high score
I got mine from Andy - Pinball Mania - www.pinparts.co.uk
In fact most of my FT restore parts were sourced from him.
In fact most of my FT restore parts were sourced from him.
D
Deleted member 2463
on a BW game normal LEDs just don't cut It- although in normal situation you are looking 60/40 with ambient light in my view. You don't want to be Stevie Wonder after a few games.
There are two bulbs to consider:
One is the quasar:
https://www.cometpinball.com/products/quasar-bulbs
I use these now in my BW games.
For some BW games (WPC95 games mostly) I would use:
https://www.cometpinball.com/products/opmax-bulbs
and chuck anything colour - You rarely never anything other than white, sometimes slightly dimmed bulbs for things that indicate mode/state issues in the game.
And lightning flippers are a must on this game.
There are two bulbs to consider:
One is the quasar:
https://www.cometpinball.com/products/quasar-bulbs
I use these now in my BW games.
For some BW games (WPC95 games mostly) I would use:
https://www.cometpinball.com/products/opmax-bulbs
and chuck anything colour - You rarely never anything other than white, sometimes slightly dimmed bulbs for things that indicate mode/state issues in the game.
And lightning flippers are a must on this game.