This is the place for everything Cactus Jack's, the underrated 1991 gem from Gottlieb!

Could someone take a picture of the way their pop bumper cacti attach to the caps both on top and on the inside? It seems like the ones on other Cactus Jack's stand up better than the ones on mine, and I suspect a couple mounting parts are missing or they might even be using incorrect springs.

jagroo Whatever you do, use warm white or sunlight in the GI. Mine came with cool white and it looked terrible. Cool white looks better than warm white in the transparent inserts, though. Other than that, I recommend color matching the inserts, except use warm white instead of yellow for the yellow inserts. Yellow LEDs aren’t as good as other colors. I put Comet LEDs in mine and they’re my favorite of those I’ve used.

jagroo I tried warm white in the transparent inserts and it just looked strange for some reason. Sunlight might look even better than cool white, but I don't have any of those to test with at the moment. I'm fairly sure all of the inserts in my game are two-SMD Comets. If you go with one-SMD ones for the inserts, I'd still recommend putting the brightest Comets you can find in the yellow "throw" inserts. Those inserts very brightly and rapidly flashing are a large part of the excitement of multiball on this game in my opinion. The inserts in my game already had LEDs when I got it and I haven't felt the need to change much. If I recall, all of them are frosted except for the flex head bulbs used in some of the drop target lights and the purple inserts.

I also used cool white for all flashers to make use of the illusion that a cool white light appears brighter than a warm white light of the same actual intensity. I recommend using either cool white or warm white Comet eight-SMD flex head flashers for the ones underneath the diffuser in front of the dancing cacti, as well as flex head warm white one-SMD bulbs for the dancing cacti GI. The flashers will not appear to be significantly brighter than two-SMD GI bulbs there, while the one-SMD bulbs will allow the flashers to retain their effect. You might need to put a small dab of hot glue on (not in) the base of the light sockets there in order to keep the directional flex head bulbs from rotating. Note that the issue is not that the bulbs themselves rotate in or fall out of the sockets, but that the top of the socket (which holds the bulb) rotates relative to the base of the socket. If you put hot glue on the socket, plan to keep the infamous fine strings of hot glue from getting everywhere or you'll regret it. I'm going to add the dab of hot glue the next time I have my game open. I used Comet's 12-chip flashers for all of the ones under inserts, but they wouldn't fit in the backbox light board holes, so I used the eight-SMD flashers there.

The one place I do recommend using yellow or orange bulbs is in the pop bumpers. I tried warm white in them, but yellow looks better with the transparent caps in my opinion. I might change my mind on that later.

For the GI, I prefer warm white on most games, but especially on Cactus Jack's. It's set in a tavern with oil lanterns on the chandelier! Sunlight might also look good, but I suspect warm white will still look better. In fact, Comet's retro bulbs might even be the best here, though I've never used them and therefore wouldn't recommend doing the whole GI with them without doing small scale testing. In the backbox, I recommend making everything frosted and warm white except for the fruit (egg, banana, tomato, pumpkin, watermelon) lights, which I decided to use clear lens warm white bulbs for after finding that I preferred the bright, crisp circle of light that they gave to the fruits as opposed to the diffuse, dimmer circle that the frosted bulbs provided. If you don't like the backbox to be as bright as the playfield, you might want to use one-SMD bulbs in its GI and two-SMD bulbs in the playfield GI.

Penultimately, the insert lights do have some ghosting issues without non-ghosting LEDs, so be warned if that will bother you. Finally, be forewarned that removing the little metal "speed nut" acorn nuts that hold the playfield plastics to the posts is likely to be a huge pain. Some even remove the sockets from the bottom of the playfield to replace the bulbs in order to avoid dealing with them!

I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions!

Does anyone know how to remove the plastic rivet-like fasteners that hold the cover on the right (shooter lane) ramp? That especially is a ramp I don't want to try anything stupid on due to the difficulty of replacement. Not being able to remove the cover makes it a pain to clean.

SVTRondogg I'm pretty sure they're supposed to be loose like that. I believe all of mine are. I'd recommend just leaving them as-is if they're not causing any significant problems.

Ah, that makes sense! Thanks.

I came across these while looking for some parts for my precious anthropomorphic European-American desert plant. They actually look somewhat tempting. Has anyone tried them yet?

https://www.retrorefurbs.com/shop/cactus-jacks-pinball-sideblades/

Congratulations, @snowtrooper! Welcome to the world's most surreal saloon. I'll remove that plastic and scan it for you the next time I clean and wax the game. Would you like me to photograph it or scan it on my printer/scanner combination, or both?