As shipped, WNBJM is already LED'd out. As usual for Stern, the LED's are all cold white. On some games, this makes sense (Iron Man, WWE, etc); but for some games.. a warmer tone is desirable. At least, in my book.
Changing WNBJM took:
15 Cointaker Spike LED, Warm White
30 Cointaker 44/47 Retro, Warm White (Might actually be 28. Hmm.)
9 of the Spike LED boards go in the head (8 for the score reels; 1 for the credit reel). The remainder go inside the pop bumpers; plus 1 in the upper left of the playfield.
The Spike LED swap outs are annoying. They require you to remove the old Spike LED board; unsolder the leads; resolder them to a new board (and polarity matters!); and reinstall. Pretty much all the zip ties had to be unbundled, since the Cointaker Stern LED boards aren't a perfect physical match (the soldering pads are further apart).
Pop bumpers with Spike boards are going to earn a special place in Hell. You have to cut the LED board down in size (but don't over-cut). And, the real problem: the wire lengths there were quite tight. One of the pops I had to do the soldering inside the pop housing. Additionally, they used an adhesive on the boards to keep the lights down against the bottom of the pop. This had to be scraped off; and I had to reapply a fresh 3m sticky tape.
The 44's are as easy as any other game to swap. Either do it from the top (removing plastics) or from the bottom (removing sockets). The inlane lights require tackling from up top; the flipper hardware gets in the way from doing it below.
No attempt is made to change the back box lighting *other* than the score reels. IF you look carefully, you can see some of the whiter-white in the highlights of the truck. Colored inserts were also ignored. Only the visible whites were changed.
Tools I wish I had with me:
This machine is in my home, instead of the shop. I had with me only my tool bags that I carry to the Pacific Pinball Museum for repair nights. Most anything I don't carry with me, the museum store room has.
I *really* wanted to remove the score reel assembly. This wasn't possible without an extra long 1/4" driver. The driver set I had with me was too short; the space on the left side of the reels too confined. I might have been able to do a faster and cleaner job if I could remove the assembly, and then removed the bars holding the light boards.
I had my soldering iron with me. I didn't have my desoldering gun. That I needed badly enough to actually go to the shop and pick it up. I could have probably done without but removing the existing wires from the monster solder pads was pretty badly annoying on the first few boards. People with asbestos fingers (or nerve damage) can probably do without.
I lucked out and had 3m sticky stuff for the pop bumpers. I did actually have this. But I didn't plan on having it - and it was sheer luck the wife realized less than a day ago that one of the roles we bought must have fallen out of a shopping bag and was loose in the truck.
Martinez, CA
