Is there a way to make the Cousin It awards not random on the Gold ROMs for league play?

No.

How to make thing your “own” thing. A tut for the cheap folks

I tried printing the thing graphics available in this thread and it simply WILL NOT print to the correct size. Since this site won’t allow anything other than pictures to be posted (you’ll see what I mean later) I am going to tell/show you exactly how to get this done. I also cover where I screwed up so you don’t have to repeat my mistakes. And for those that ask why I don’t offer to email instead – people disappear/die. This way the work lives on forever.

Things used in this project: (See what I did there?)

Color printer, vinyl adhesive paper, exacto blade, Thing box artwork from here, Microsoft snippet, Microsoft Word 2016, household cutting board and a little imagination.

Download the graphic from here:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-the-addams-family-club-tafmembers-fans-welcome/page/65?gallery&&&&&&&&&&&&&&galleryp=15

Now open the picture you just downloaded full screen and start Microsoft Snippet. You will want to as accurately as possible trace each individual item and save all 4 pieces as a .PNG file. Try NOT to get any outer “white” when you snip. What you put in is what you get. One at a time open BOTH side pictures and whatever default app they open with should allow you to rotate them 90 degrees. Save the changes.

QUICK NOTE: For the record the attached pictures show my photo customization against a person who sells these decals and the original picture on this site. The colors of mine are much richer, define lines in the leather better and the sheen of the vinyl paper I used is much glossier. Very happy with the end result!

Open Microsoft Word. Instructions provided may have different options/locations due to versions. Start a new blank document. (If you don’t have word then do it at your place of employment.) Open file explorer and browse to where you just saved those 4 photos. Hold down your CTRL key and one by one click each photo. Ensure you choose then in this order (side, side,top,front). Once they are all highlighted, left click one of the photos and keep your clicker down. Move your mouse downward. You’ll see the photos coming with your mouse. Position your mouse over Microsoft Word at the bottom of your screen and let your clicker go. The photos will be imported into your blank document. You’ll likely notice that you now have 2 pages instead of one. It’s OK we’re going to fix that right now. For each photo you are now going to have to set the dimensional parameters.

NOTE: For ALL photos ensure under the scale section that checkmarks are REMOVED from “lock aspect ratio” and “Relative to original picture size”.

Right click side picture – set parameters as Height Absolute 0.78” x Width Absolute 4.45”. Click OK

Right click other side picture – set parameters as Height Absolute 0.78” x Width Absolute 4.45”. Click OK

Right click TOP picture – set parameters as Height Absolute 3.77” x Width Absolute 3.95” – Click OK

Right click FRONT picture – set parameters as Height Absolute 1.27” x Width Absolute 3.95” – Click OK

Now all photos are on one page. To create gaps in between each photo simply click at the bottom right of the photo. You'll see a blinking cursor bar. Just press enter until you have the gap you want. SAVE your document. While the picture sown shows the gaps fairly minimal use as much as you can between the pictures that keeps everything on one page.

It’s time to reap the fruits of your labor! Let’s print this bad boy. The vinyl gloss paper is sticky. REMOVE ALL current paper in printer tray and insert one sheet glossy side down. DO NOT OVERUSE your printer tray alignment tools to “snug up” the paper alignment. Have it sitting flush against the right edge of the tray and gently resting as far forward in the tray as you can. This paper is finicky.

Go ahead and select print. This part is a little grey area as most printer driver options will look different. Some offer certain options that others either don’t or the options are just located/buried some where else. Attempt to replicate my printer settings shown in the pictures. I do suggest you run a test print choosing black ink/gray scale to see if things print correctly. No sense of wasting ink (ask me how I know). When printing is done let her sit for 15 minutes or so. You may choose to use a rattle can clear coat or a self-adhesive laminate sheet. I chose neither originally and found the ink is so easily marred up I'm going to go buy some self-adhesive laminate. Apply it, cut around decals and then apply. Heed my advice

IF you did it right, you should have a beautiful printout laying in front of you. Since most of us don’t have a machine that we can use to scan and cut for us we’ll have to do it by hand. The vinyl material is easily marred, whatever you use for straight edge – ALWAYS lift it up when you move it. Picture showing circled items in blue is showing how I marred the ink and I how also slipped with the knife and scraped the decal. I use a standard plastic household cutting board to cut the decal on. Using any straight edge item you’ll want to align the straight edge to the VERY outer edge of the picture. I suggest you choose a couple spots to test blade depth cut/strength first. You’ll “feel” the blade actually cutting into the paper. The idea is to cut the vinyl and not the paper – which sounds easier than what it really is because the vinyl I used is super thin but did so to ensure no feeding issues through the printer. With your exacto blade (fresh blade of course!) you’ll now cut a line from one side all the way to the other. KEEP THE BLADE STRAIGHT. Cutting at an angle can result in ink damage. Wipe your blade after every cut. A small amount of debris on the blade can cause an ill cut and when you attempt to peel it off it WILL deal you grief. You'll literally feel a difference in blade cutting if you have a chunk of glue get in the way. Cut it again!In the attached photos I show I have cut everything possible so the excess (white unprinted areas) can be peeled off first. Start peeling the excess vinyl off. Peel at an angle where you are pulling the vinyl away from the decal. This is where you find out how badly you suck at cutting things. When you reach the edge of your photo and it appears to be coming up STOP! Put your exacto blade tip in the cut line of the outer cut and follow it back to the graphic pressing down harder. You’re going to likely have to do this more than you care too. The vinyl should easily pull away from the graphic. If it doesn't DO NOT PULL the vinyl. This will distort the graphic piece. (Ask me how I know)

Now it’s not mandatory for you to paint Things box – but c’mon now – you just went through all of this and you’re going to get lazy? Lightly sand the box to rough it up, wipe it down clean so the black rattle can paint has something better to adhere to.

Lastly – to apply the decals. Use the tip of your exacto blade to lift the decal away from the backing so you can get a hold of it. These things are THIN and SUPER sticky. Likely a one chance type of ordeal if you use the dry method. You can shoot Things box with Windex and lay the decal down. When you are satisfied with its location then place a paper towel over the decal and press down gently attempting to squeeze any liquid from underneath and absorb on the paper towel. As a test I sprayed Windex on top of the decal and wiped. Yes, the ink did in fact slightly come off but the effect is was actually kind of cool!
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Although I already have a sticker set that came with my TAF, it is because of people like you who are willing to share knowledge that really make these threads so helpful to so many.

Thank you.

Reporting back on the weak lower right flipper issue I was seeking help with.
Recap, every flipper and its associated playfield lower playfield part was replaced with all brand new parts and properly adjusted. Original problem still existed.
I just recieved the Rotten Dog fliptronics board. After installation and playing 10 games I'm happy to report the lower right hand flipper is indeed as strong as the rest now.
I hate when people don't report their fix/resolve.

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That's what I did in my IJ.

Better, faster and more reliable than a 25 year old board.

And fairly low cost.

jeffro01

I just installed the LED OCD and notice a big improvement. By the way, my machine already had the non-ghost rom in it when I got it. I have yet to hook up the new board to my laptop to program it for TAF, so these are default settings.

Side by side comparison video,

It looks like I will need to find or build a real THING light board rather than relying on the DMD to emulate.

See the issue in the video where the ColorDMD is getting confused displaying the thing letters. This causes the letters to have a constant flickering.

are you using regular or non-ghosting LED's?

From the LEDOCD website. http://www.ledocd.com/faq_led.html

"Standard LEDs will give the OCD board more direct control over the LEDs, but you can still use non-ghosting bulbs with some minor restrictions."

Not certain as they came with game. I am going to swap them all out in the next few weeks to be sure.

I am aware...the reason I ask is because I have comet non-ghosting LED's in my TZ and they don't flicker at all like the video shown. Going to LED my TAF eventually and might skip the LEDOCD if non-ghosting LED's work the same in it. Figured they would.

Okay so I'm at a crossroads here... My TAFG came with a full LED kit and some had already been swapped out but during seance mode last night I finally realized what you guys have been talking about... Thought I was going to have a seizure...

The LED kit I have is based on the ultra bright white bulbs where I prefer the more warm white bulbs... I'm pretty sure the kit that came with my game are "ghosting" LEDs which seem to play nicer with the OCD boards. However, I'm sort of thinking about abandoning the kit that I have (at least the bright white GI bulbs) and going with warm white non-ghosting LEDs which I think look more natural to begin with but don't seem to play as nicely with the OCD board(s).

Perhaps the middle ground here is keep the kit, but buy warm white "ghosting" LEDs for the GI and use the rest of the kit in all of the inserts and such combined with both OCD boards... I don't know... LOL

Thanks,
Jeff

Can't speak to the OCD piece of it, but I'd recommend the sunlight over the warm.

Ghosting and Non-Ghosing Warm Whites should be the same color, assuming you get them at the same time, from the same seller.

How easy is it to do all of that ... and mail it to me? Haha

Yeah, it's more so whether or not I go with ghosting or non-ghosting... I have an email out to PinballBulbs who provided the kit I'm working off of to find out if they ship ghosting or non-ghosting LEDs. That'll help with my decision making...

Jeff

Less than an hour from start to finish. I just tried to idiot proof it

With all due respect, the "kind" of bulb you get shouldn't matter. The OCD boards do remove ghosting but the real selling point is getting rid of the sharp on/off nature and allowing natural fade. All I can say is DO NOT buy these boards if you have more than one pin. You'll seriously hate LEDs without it.

Absolutely agree.
Every led pin should have it.

Oh! I misunderstood - apologies!

In the end it actually does - while both bulbs will get rid of the hard ramp up/ramp down effect, ghosting bulbs will be more difficult to get the ramp set how you like it. Because of the small cap and resistor in there, the lower different brightness stages (B0-b3ish, give or take) will just appear 'off'.

According to the manufacturer, it does. They clearly outline on their website the differences in control they have with ghosting vs non-ghosting LEDs. Based on their guidance, while non-ghosting will work, for maximum compatibility and control it's pretty clear I want LEDs that ghost. Is it a huge difference? Probably not. After seeing Seance mode the other night and almost having a seizure I can appreciate the need for the boards but I'm trying to balance it all since I already have this complete kit.

Jeff

What I meant to convey (and poorly did so apparently) is regardless of bulb type, the board is capable of altering an LEDs inherit sharp nature. Nothing further meant. Herg is a super cool guy. Drop him an email and ask him your questions. Hear it from the horses mouth and then decide.

Fair enough. Thanks!

Jeff

I'm not much of a player compared to most of you guys but I had my best game ever @ 1.2b Doubled my previous high score!

That's almost 3x my highscore on 3 ball. I'd say that's damn impressive!

880m here... Breaking the billion mark and getting 2 tour the mansions in one game are my two current goals

What a rush! I hadn't played any pins in over a year. Decided to give my TAF a try. Absolutely sucked for about 10 games, only putting up 100+ million a couple of times. Then had this beauty. I've been playing TAF since it came out and my previous high was 9XX million. Previous game I hit the chair so hard a light bulb came out. Glad it didn't happen in this game.

A few key points:

- Game took about 45 minutes, all default settings
- Only got one jackpot the whole game (a triple for 60 million)
- Thing missed the 5x flip all but one time (probably 50+ times in all)
- Toured the mansion 3 times (all that was left for a 4th was the extra ball and the question mark). Never done 3 before and only done 2 in a game probably under 5 times.
- Had a couple huge bonuses, 62 million and 82 million
- Started getting super bear kicks near the end. No idea what that was but I probably would have ended up around 110 bear kicks. My previous high I'd guess was around 75.
- My wrist is killing me

IMG_3471 (002) (resized).jpg

Oops. Duplicate.

Sweet! I’m pumped My TAF hand started working after I swapped out the opto board.

+1

Watched 90 special on Raul Julia last night on pbs American Masters...
Wow, what an amazing actor we lost way to soon. Only 54 when Raul died.
The segment on Addams Family just makes you appreciate the game that much more. We are so lucky to have his call outs and voice on this game.

I contacted a mod asking about allowing me to attach a document and the answer was no. However he did mention PDF's are OK, I had no idea. So I just printed the DOC as an 8.5 x 11 PDF and "should" be print ready. Feel free to give it a whirl.

thing.pdf

Really nice!
Works perfectly, more people should do this.

I came up with a "new" Fester mod if you will (granted I haven't seen this before but that doesn't mean someone else hasn't done it)... I had the chair painted by Modfather (the Thing hand as well but not shown here, great work on both BTW) for starters. From there I took the wire that it came with originally inserted into the hands, removed it, pulled the copper out of the wire, found some micro LEDs on Amazon and ran those through the wire to maintain that look of Fester holding the wire. I then added some gold sparks to the end via the ends of gold pipe cleaners that I trimmed off and coated the wire as an additional layer of short protection (the wires on the LEDs were already coated). I then drilled a hole in each side of the chair for the wires to go through in order to make it look like Fester was holding the electric chair wires and wired both LEDs to the "Power" like so they only go off when it goes off. Looks really neat when the game is running and the lights are flashing and still looks cool when the game isn't running due to the gold sparks. Took some time and effort putting it together but I really love the finished product...

Thanks,
Jeff

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Love it!

That Fester looks like a copy of the hand crafted one made by LaRetrotienda (aka @pinballmod), sold here: https://pinside.com/pinball/market/shops/1185-pinballmod/02363-the-addams-family-pinball-uncle-fester-mod
Thoughts?

Nice job, I very much like that more than the EL wire mod. I sincerely wish these mod suppliers of Fester would drop their freaking prices though. My chair sits empty just out of principal

Searched and came up empty - I'm having a stuck ball issue right behind the vault against the rail. Only happens when a super weak shot occurs but it is a B***H to get it to roll back into play. Anyone else deal with this and is there a fix? I believe I'm running ~ 6.5 degree angle on the pf.

Looking for someone that can take a picture of the 2 wires that go to sound board on a addams family. I had 2 wires come out of the connectors when the boards were removed for repair. Manual shows one at j504-2 and the other is at j505-3. The board and manual does not show the pin numbers for those two connections. The two wire are for the speakers and they are black/yellow. A picture or how the pins are numbered would be nice. Thanks

Sorry man I didn't like it. Intentions were good but at first it made me think that this Uncle Fester of yours is audictioning for a cheerleader spot... and he's even wearing lipstick... well, to each his own...

He came painted that way, I didn't paint him... But whatever... Why post something negative if you didn't like it? It's fine if people don't like it but why make a point about it?

Jeff

I like it! Very realistic!
I have the bulb in mouth version. To each his own, who cares?
Less negativity in all threads. There is enough of that in the real world.
Push the start button, "Welcome Honored Guests".

Dude chill, no need to get stressed out... That's just one man's opinion.... What's the point of being in a forum if you can't express your own opinions (or read about somebody else's)? And why do I have 2 upvotes on my post and you have none (0)?

Stressful day. Fair enough.

Jeff

I'm making a harness for a thing lamp board and I'm severely confused. According to the lamp matrix in the manual, it states the thing lamp board matrix is run off header J133 but every picture I find (back box pictures on the internet) it looks like it's plugged into J134? On my machine J133 is open and J134 has a connector with one wire in it which every picture I've looked at on the internet shows this connector on J133 and not J134?
Can someone please clarify and show a pic if possible?

Second problem. Thing lamp board has a a ground pin and from what I see in pictures it's a yellow and (gray?) stripe. Since I can't tell what color that is does that go to J138 pin 9 or J137 and what pin? Right now my J137 has no connector.

Thanks!

I finally found a decent pic of a driver board. Aye yai yai. The previous owner really did a number on this machine. Apparently where J138 is currently plugged into is supposed to actually be plugged into J137 (which dumb luck I had ordered 2 9 pin .156 connectors). J138 pin 9 is where the thing lamp board yellow/grey wire is supposed to connect too. Figured I'd post this for the next poor sap who buys an Addams where someone removed the lamp board, lost the cable and plugged things in wrong lol. The thing lamp board is alive!

FYI - According to the schematics J133, J134, J135 are identical, so no difference which you use, which explains why those are keyed the same. I have found several adjacent connectors on WPC power driver and CPU boards are like that. (room to grow or alternatives if the pins are bad)

Shown on the 6th page...
http://arcarc.xmission.com/Pinball/PDF%20Pinball%20Misc/Williams%20WPC%20Schematic%20manual.pdf

Same applies to J137/J138 - identical. (same page)

That's interesting. Thank you for the reply. I wish I wouldve known that before hand and just punched the ground wire into the existing connector on pin 9 on J138 instead of using a separate connector on J137 for one wire. Wonder why they did that? Seems like a toral waste of time and money.

There is a logic explanation for this...
1 plug for Play Field wiring harness and 1 plug for Back Box wiring harness.
This is so that they diden't have to make one huge wiring harness and also to be able to build sub assemblys: BB on one line and PF on a other line and then gather them at the final... standard factory mass production thingy

Can someone with a TAFG post a pic of the extra ball switch (inside of course) and maybe where it connects to the wiring harness... mine doesn't seem to have the wiring for the light for some reason, just the switch? Thanks!