I've got a couple games that are high tapped, and I've never broken a plastic on them yet.

How do you guys who are so anti high tap square this idea with Williams games that use DC power to the bumpers, slings etc? Those games are way faster than regular tap AC games, but again, I don't see any increase in breakage of plastics etc.

I think a lot of plastics get broken because people crank them down too hard to the posts and leave no give to them. I've seen just as many broken plastics on regular tap AC games as I have on DC games or high tap AC games.

It's your game. Do what you want with it. Groupthink is often not very pretty.

He specifically says in the guides that he likes high tapping games. But do what you want.

I wouldn't say I'm a novice, but I also wouldn't say I'm the most accomplished player ever either. I've only done it when I thought it would make a game more fair.

Example-Top Card. Now, almost every shot on that game is available via a flipper shot. Except, the Ace. There is no way to get a direct shot at it. You either need a bumper hit or a lucky bounce off a side target shot. The bumpers just aren't strong enough to give you a fair shot at the Ace. So I high tapped it. I thought that made the game more fair as there simply isn't any way you can get that target via skill.

I'd rather leave it on regular and shop the game properly and that's basically what I've done on most games. But guys use orange/yellow dot flipper coils all the time, and I don't see a whole lot of difference between doing that and using high tap.

One thing, about the only thing, I like about the modern games is the speed of the game. Once you play those much, or a DC powered Williams, you want games to play like that all the time. When you go back to a regular EM, it seems so slow. I like that ball moving a bit faster, I guess.

I don't see it making the game easier. I think in some cases, it makes it harder. You have to be more on your toes than you do on a game where the ball moves much more slowly. Maybe it makes getting some tasks done easier, but the tradeoff is the increased speed you deal with.

Nobody is saying they should. But they shouldn't play like a 40s flipperless game either. There is a happy medium there.

My objections to DMDs are the ridiculous rule sets and all the ramps and toys. I understand that's where they are, but that also is why I don't own one and don't want to own one (beside the fact that I can't fix the damned things). But I do appreciate a little more speed and action than the ball just slowly rolling around on the playfield.

Where I grew up, the operators evidently though nudging was cheating too, because they set the tilts tight, and if you starting pushing the game around, you were fishing out more money because tilt ends the game.

LOL, they were designed to make money for the operators. I'm not really sure that the level of the player and his ability to win free games was really the most important criteria here.

It's really hard to decide how they were designed to play, given all the adjustments you can make to a game to make it play harder or easier.

It's not just for the flippers. I rebuild the flippers on every game I buy. That's the part that keeps getting lost here. It's the overall quality of the game. Clay talks about that too-he also is a proponent of taking turns off that bumper coils to increase strength.

Car designers designed cars to drive a certain way, but there's a whole industry devoted to aftermarket parts to make them handle better, have more horsepower/torque, look better etc. It's a pinball machine. It's not the Holy Grail. I prefer leaving them stock if the game plays well that way, but if it doesn't, a few mods isn't going to keep you from getting into pinball heaven.

Again, the "broken plastics" argument is BS. I have a Bally game that runs on 50v, way more power than the little increase you get from high tapping the game. Of course, the coils are size appropriately for that voltage. But the bumpers on this game are DC fast, faster than my high tapped Gottliebs, and still, no broken plastics, except for one that would break regardless of the voltage-it's a design issue there. I don't think the designers of WMS DC games, or any game that runs 50v, designed the game with heavier duty plastics because they were worried about this issue, or worried about wearing out components. Because they didn't design the games to still be playing today anyway. They figured a short shelf life because the idea was to keep the operators buying new games to keep the company making money. They looked maybe 5 years down the line. A lot of these games are 50 years old and still playing. It's a testament to the quality of materials, because of lot of these games have been really beaten over the years, but it's nothing they intentionally did.

The advantage of high tapping is it speeds up everything, just not the flippers. Hot flippers alone don't make the game crazy fast, if the bumpers and slings etc are slow.

I've used both yellow and orange dot coils in games. Everything being equal, I won't do it again unless it's absolutely necessary. I put yellow dots in a Big Indian and they were just too strong. I was hitting glass off the drops at the top of the playfield. Orange would have been better there.

The high tap only goes to the 24v circuit. The 6v circuit that drives the lamps in unaffected by the change.

The only possible issue is if you have a lamp that is run off the 24v circuit, where the voltage is knocked down by a resistor. Gottlieb did it with things like the last ball in play light they used for awhile. Otherwise, lamps are not affected at all by the change.