My wife and I just got a TAF machine, and it's been tons of fun.

The shooter feels a little...soggy, so we're thinking we'll replace the spring. Any suggestions on the spring tension? I'm very new to this.

Thanks for the heads up, I ended up finding the full shooter part list on a later page of the manual, looked up the shooter spring and found it’s a match for this guy: https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/10-148-4

While I was replacing the rubbers and cleaning the playfield of our new-to-us machine, my wife took the opportunity to paint the electric chair and touch up the playfield.
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I messaged mjenison directly and he said he does still make them, i just received mine yesterday in fact. It’s really well made.

We recently had a weird thing happen - we leveled our machine, with a play field tilt of 6.5, and the ball started getting stuck behind the Thing ramp (middle ramp). Anyone else run into this? How did you fix it?
We tried sticking a strip of foam in there (attached to the left "wall" and "floor", so that it's a little curved - sorry, away from my machine right now so I can't take a picture, but it doesn't work anyway), but that doesn't help. We're considering trying to set the left of the machine a little higher so that the ball will roll down more easily, or putting in a small wedge.

Thanks for the tips. We did level the machine with the glass off, pretty sure our floor is slightly uneven (old wooden floor, some warping) since we've seen some slight differences in play when the machine is moved.

So my wife actually made a little "ramp" inside with Sugru; basically adding a small ramp-like curve to the surface. That seems to have nixed the problem and generally makes the ball play better when going from the Thing ramp to the Thing kickout.

Wow, that's a nice playfield. Is it stock?

So we double checked the leveling and it seemed OK, but it was at about 6.8 degrees. That didn't seem *too* far of 6.5, although I have learned how much of a difference even small measurements can make! Anyway my wife added a small "ramp" using Sugru the now it plays perfectly.

Incidentally, before adjusting the leveling we also had problems where the ball would still inside the Swamp, occasionally needing a pretty significant nudge. We were nearly about to order Lee's Swamp Acceleratorbut leveling it to 6.5 degrees and ensuring the left/right leveling was even seemed to do the trick.

Anyway, with the playfield 100% leveled correctly to 6.5 and with my wife's wild little Sugru ramp in place, the ball doesn't stick in the Thing ramp or in the Swamp anymore!

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Backbox layered lighting (thanks Comet!):

Layered blinking effects using Comet Pinball LEDs.
Cousin It: 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Slow, Warm White
Fester (lower): 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Fast, Warm White
Fester (upper): 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Slow, Cool White
Children (lower): 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Fast, Warm White
Children (upper): 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Slow, Cool White
Auntie: 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Fast, Warm White
Woman in dirt: 455 Dim Blinking Bulb - Fast, Warm White
Behind Morticia and Gomez: 1SMD Bulb - Cool White
Thing and other lights: 1SMD Bulb - Warm White

Where can I find this magical thing?

New coin door inserts, courtesy FilamentPrinting !

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I strongly agree with the LED OCD and GI OCD crowd. I wasn’t entirely sure and didn’t really even know what the GI OCD did, but I took the plunge and ordered them both anyway. Absolutely worth every penny, it’s not sexy like other mods but if I had to choose between a game with LED & GI OCD boards and...anything else, I’d take the one with the OCD boards.

Since I had no idea what they did before buying and couldn’t find any clear answers, I figure I’ll share my experience here.

In addition to evening out the flashing of inserts, smoother dimming of bulbs so they don’t get that weird quasi-flicker when the game dims them, and getting rid of ghosting entirely:
- GI OCD lets you set the Minimum and maximum brightness of each of the 5 lighting “strings”, which also lets you set the overall brightness. It also lets you trigger different brightness values for each string based on whether the game is active (ie if a solo kid has fired in the last X seconds). This lets you do cool things like dim the backbox lights and raise GI illumination when playing the game, and inverse that when a game isn’t going on. There are no presets per game, but there are basically only 5 lights to set (5 strings).
- LED OCD lets you set each individual light on the playfield. There are presets that populate the labels of each light so you can easily see what it is, but no preset brightness settings (they’re all the same default brightness as a normal LED).

It doesn’t let you control flasher brightness, at least not on TAF.

Another note on brightness: you may think the brightness is fine or not too bright, but dimming all the lights made such a HUGE difference. I didn’t realize how fatigued my eyes were from the brighter lights. Also, colours are way more vibrant at dimmer settings. Green and yellow in particular look much more “green” and “yellow” with lower brightness. I did not expect this, but if I did it would have been a huge selling point for me. Plus when comparing side by side with a newer machine (Alice Cooper Nightmare Castle), the LEDs on that machine are not nearly as bright as an LED converted pre-OCD Addams Family. So this normalized the brightness, which is also a plus.

You can also test different settings before you apply them, load all the settings onto your game to see it in action without having to commit (save), and save different overall configurations as files and load them whenever you wish.

Configuring it does require a laptop, which you only need when changing settings. You don’t have to have a computer continually hooked up to your machine.

There is web software that can be used for Linux or Mac, or native applications for Windows. I am a software developer with a Mac and I honestly got a bit frustrated trying to set up the Linux/web version, even with the provided VMware image (there’s no free VMware client for Mac), so I loaded up a free Windows developer image (available from Microsoft) into VirtualBox (also free) and used the Windows apps. They worked great and was easy to use.

Hope that helps somebody!

I got my Thing LED board from Pinshakers this weekend too! I love it and it looks great.

I am having a weird issue where I can't get the translight back in - the bottom of the ColorDMD seems to rest on the "U" channel preventing the speaker panel from settling down to the very bottom, and as a result I can't get the translight over the top ~1/16" of the speaker panel H channel. Any tips?

The problem may be between the stool and the backbox... I just realized there was a mounting hole on the ColorDMD in-between "too high to close the backbox" and "very bottom". Basically one notch below Durzel's pictures above, allows the backbox to close and allows the DMD to settle fully into the U-channel.

It's still a little tighter fit to get the translight back in - but that could be a number of factors (I also replaced the speaker panel cover with a new aftermarket reproduction, and I have had some difficulty getting the LED OCD board positioned to play nicely with the position of the Thing LED board connector). After some jostling around I was able to get the translight over the lip.

Is there a canonical list of where the red mini posts go, and how many there are?

When I got my machine, there was 1 in the back left corner of the ramp near the red flasher, 1 at the front of the left ramp (near where the ball drops back onto the playfield), and 1 on the underside of the Wednesday plastic. But I've seen other pictures where there is not one on the backside of the ramp, and where there is one by the vault.

So I'm curious - how many red mini posts are in a "stock" Addams Family setup, and where are they positioned?

You should have seen the look on my wife's face when I showed her your Fester and bear ramp mods. We don't need them painted (she can do that herself), are you willing to let us pay you for these? Let me know and I can PM you.

If you don't have a 3D printer: https://www.shapeways.com
(Cost me about $35 for the bookcase only, I didn't get the books printed - we are using dollhouse books glued in - but if you want it with books and don't want to paint it yourself, probably just buy Pinballhorse's https://pinside.com/pinball/market/classifieds/ad/91454 )

I just got my coin door and shooter housing refinished from Chris @ pinballplating.com / Hot Rod Arcade, along with a full set of gloss black hardware (rails, lockdown bar, legs, hinges). Couldn't be happier - before & after pictures attached!

We decided to get the existing coin door refinished rather than a new one, since this has the original layout (single return slot, wide spaced coin inserts, and vintage dents).

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I just used normal double-sided tape (Scotch). (I didn't have a rattling problem, but I've been getting into my backbox a lot and didn't like it 'catching' on the channel lip.)

I posted about my (positive) experience with LED OCD and GI OCD a while back: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/bally-the-addams-family-club-tafmembers-fans-welcome/page/73#post-5531866

What a roller coaster! I actually had the same issue (but it was after I had installed the LED and CI OCD boards; I was unseating cables while installing a PinSound to test out). As soon as slam tilt came on I freaked out, powered off the game, and double-checked all my cables which is when I found the ribbon at 211 wasn't fully seated.

I *think* mine makes the same sound (it does remind me of a knocker), but I have no idea why. I never really had anything to compare it to (before buying it in December, the last time I played the game was in 1993). I just got my hands on a second machine but it'll be a few days before it's playable, I'll compare when it's running and see if it sounds the same.

Neat! I like how much light it adds to the graveyard.

I have to repair a bumper light so I figured I'd go through and do something similar. I'm going to try color-matching the bodies and skirts, although if that looks too much like clown puke, I may try either white, green, or yellow (or possibly green with 1-2 in yellow based on position). Whenever I get around to it I'm planning on posting pictures.

I’m looking for a full set of plastics, I’ve found them on a few sites but can’t tell if there is any difference in quality. Any positives or critiques about any of the plastics sets?

Yep just like pinballreno said.

Here's a simple video showing the freeze spray method of removing mylar:

Tho you have to be a bit careful which adhesive remover you use (apparently some can remove the coating or paint from the playfield). Personally, I use the flour-and-naphtha method (rub a light dusting of flour over the remaining adhesive, put on some naphtha (IPA apparently also works but I have and use naphtha), and rub. Basically like this video here

but I wear nitrile gloves, and I use tiny bowls with flour and naphtha - use my "dry" hand to grab a little flour and dust/rub it in, use my "wet" hand and dip my fingers in the naphtha bowl and then rub; repeat until it looks clean, let the naphtha dry and dust on a little flour to see if there are any spots where the adhesive wasn't fully removed. Use a small handheld vac with soft brush end to vacuum up the flour).

100%! That's also a good way to tell if you have the right amount of cold or need more. If it doesn't separate with no pressure, needs more cold.

Honestly, it sounds like you want to keep the game — when you get tired of it just give it some space; loan it to a friend, put a dust cover on it or put it in storage. A ColorDMD isn't going to keep the game feeling 'new' for 2-5 years.

There's a lot you can do to make your game feel a bit more modern (PinSound, shaker, etc) but really the shots are going to stay the same the game isn't going to fundamentally change, and those are all aesthetic choices which will only make it feel revitalized for so long.

That's why I'm recommending you just figure out a way to give the game some 'space' until next time you want to keep it in your active duty roster.

PinSound PLUS + Motion Control (shaker)
Alternatively there's the Pinshaker which is less expensive overall (does not require replacing the sound board like the PinSound does); it triggers on fewer things (basically it can trigger on any Solenoid activation; kickers, magnets, etc - so quite a lot, it's what I use)

I've tried ColorDMD's LED and LCD versions, and prefer the LCD version (looks more like the original DMD but in colour, and is MUCH easier to install and doesn't require modifying or replacing the THING light board). Here's the ColorDMD LCD for TAF.

I also highly recommend both an LED OCD and G.I. OCD board. You can see a side-by-side here and my take on them here.

> I've tried ColorDMD's LED and LCD versions, and prefer the LCD version

As pinballreno pointed out: I *meant* to say I've tried ColorDMD's LED and LCD versions, and prefer the LED version.

"il me perce comme un poignard"
It pierces me like a lance.

(My wife knew the line from memory, just from your clue.)

On our game, the ramp coming out of the shooter lane is slightly misaligned or bent. This basically causes the ball to come out of the shooter lane and hit the area near the post by the VUK, leading to a skill shot every time. Not sure how to fix it, tho'.

You can see the misalignment in the first image, and a correctly-aligned game in the second image.

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