Random picture of the basement...

Jeff F

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Donor 12 years: 2011-2022
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Finally have enough room down in the basement to get all the pins in there along with the vids. (Thanks again Steve and "Tim the Transporter"!)

ThePins.jpg


It's neat seeing them all next to each other like that. We're used to one or two of them being up in the family room(aka Daddy's Staging Area). :)
 
I've always been a post DMD guy, but if I walked into a room that looked like that, I would be excited as heck to play them. Looking great!
 
Wow three good classics right in a row! I'm all kinds of jealous over here. :cool:
 
Jeff, that Xenon looks a little crowded, perhaps I should buy it from you to give you some more room! Looks great by the way.
 
No problem Jeff!

Thanks for the GREAT deal on the Arabian. :)

Thanks to you too Tim for meeting me in Amsterdam with the game. Hope you get the Super Breakout up and running soon. :)
 
Very nice Jeff - I'd love to have those 3 as my next pins. There are a few others I played regularly bitd, but those 3 are definitely 3 of my top 6. Too bad they are in everyone elses as well :(
 
Thanks for the kind words guys. I wish I could say that I hunted for those specific pins but I think they are the ones who did the hunting. It seems like all of them were just meant to be, as in I got lucky replying to an ad or they were cheap enough to get me interested in the first place. I do have to say that I'm happy with all of them... except for Firepower being a fickle b&tch some days. ;)

Are they LED lit?

Xenon head = 70-80% LED
Xenon playfield = 50-60% LED
Firepower head = 100% LED
Firepower playfield = 25-30% LED
Gorgar head = 35-40% LED
Gorgar playfield = 0% LED

We're getting another order of LEDs in this week so the Xenon will be 100% LED soon. Firepower's head needs better color matching of the LEDs so that should look better soon also. And then for Gorgar I think I'm going to do 100% LED in the head and then just a few in the playfield since I actually like the incandescents in it.

I'm lucky that my 7 year old daughter likes to do this with me since I'm soo color blind. :) She doesn't mind me changing bulbs back and forth to see which ones look best. My son tries helping now but he's almost 10 so his mind is on other things already. :( Man they grow up tooooooo quick!
 
Where do you get your LED's and have you been getting non-polar LED bulbs?

I've been working with a company to get some custom ones produced that look almost exactly like incandescents but it's not easy to get 6.3V AC at the right Lumens and appearence....

There is such a variety of LED's available on the market, however, there seems to be a lot questionable stuff and I keep getting very mixed messages about the importance of non-polar LED's in the GI circuit.
 
I personally think LED's are very nice addition IF they are used sparingly and tastefully. I think pins that are 100% converted look gawd aweful. I have also heard of someone else whom is working on a much improved LED design. I would love to convert over but until LEDs become power manageable I'll stick to running colored bulbs.
 
Where do you get your LED's and have you been getting non-polar LED bulbs?

All I've bought is 44/47 bulbs from Cointaker and Pinball Life. I haven't specifically asked for non-polar but they are. (my understanding is for 44/47 polarity isn't important and in my limited testing that seems true)

I've used 1k Ohm resistors on the Xenon to smooth out the LEDs in the controlled circuits. General illumination isn't a problem with this one at all. The Xenon was meant to use LEDs imho... loads of cool white and blue just make it look awesome(again, imho).

We just recently started on the Williams pins and for the controlled lights I'm not happy with the LEDs. I haven't tried the resistor trick yet but I'm thinking the flicker has something to do with the loan diode on the sockets(maybe it's acting like a half-wave rectifier?). It's the same flicker you get with cheap Christmas LEDs which I absolutely HATE! :)

Like I said, the kiddo and I are having fun with this and after getting used to how colorful the LEDs make everything... it's just soo dull going back to incandescents... even for a color blind guy. :D
 
I just heard that if you fill you entire GI circuit you basically create a capacitor, because all the diodes are oriented in one direction and the circuit is AC.

I'm not going to steal the thread, they look GREAT. The colored bulbs are easy, I've been working on getting warm whites that look like incandescents, that's my goal, if I can pull that off with the right luminosity, the rest is easy. That was always my issue with LED's they were never quite as bright in all directions.

Props to Pinball life though, those guys are great!
 
Oh Lordy... looks like I won't be completing the Xenon or any other pin this week.

I just went to use the LEDs I received from Pinball Life and the 44/47 cool white and yellow look terrible. On top of that, they won't work at all in the Xenon head infinity sockets. Not sure what's going on there but the Cointaker LEDs work great... the Pinball Life ones just plain don't. :(

I also tried the PL LEDs in GI sockets and they flicker like you wouldn't believe. Did that on both the Xenon and Firepower.

Whatta bummer.

I'll write them to see if maybe there was a bad shipment or something. But I already ordered replacements from Cointaker since I've had GREAT luck with their LEDs.

Oh well... live and learn. :beerchug:
 
It's my understanding that the flicker can come from non polar LED's since they are only lit 30 times a second and it's not a square wave form. The color thing sucks too, it's hard to mix and match, the range usually given by companies is large so it's best to order all you need from one company. It's too bad, I've always had great luck with pinball life, but I haven't ordered LED's from them in a while...
 
Received my order from Cointaker a couple days ago and put them into the Xenon infinity lights and it looks awesome!

I'm going to give the Pinball Life LEDs to a guy I work with. I told him if he can use them I'll just charge him 50% of the price I paid. It'd only be ~$8 so no biggy.

I'm just glad the LEDs I got from Cointaker were the same kind I bought from them at the shows. Man the Xenon is looking pretty darn awesome... I just wish the playfield was in better shape but it works... for now. ;)
 
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