Just "rescued" this one from 25 years of solitary confinement. Do I need to do something to join this owners' club?

Flash (resized).JPG

"#5293961">Congrats! I am up in the Bellingham area, working on mine. Let me know if I can help<

Thanks, Mark. For one thing, the stickum on the player score displays has failed. If you had that problem, how did you repair it? My displays are all hanging against the back side of the glass.

Greg

All 4 of mine are loose, plus the main display has disintegrating sticky pads behind it from some later repair attempt.

Were you figuring on trying to de-gum the back of yours first, or just insert the carpet tape between the foam and the mounting pad on the circuit board? How delicate are the flexible pins along the bottom of the score units; can you pull the unit out a bit to get at the back side for cleaning?

I've only worked on EMs before, and most of their parts are stout!

IMG_1115 (resized).JPG

IMG_1117 (resized).JPG

IMG_1118 (resized).JPG

...well, to answer my own question, you slice through the foam with something sharp, then use alcohol to soak what remains and carefully scrape it off with a sharp blade. Once the back of the glass is clean and the green board is equally clean and free of residual sticky snot, you can use new double-stick foam tape to re-adhere it. The metal contact fingers allow enough leeway to get your finger or a chopstick in there with a piece of synthetic scrubber soaked in alcohol.

So far, I've done one score unit in about an hour and a half and it looks like it might've when it left the factory.

...and further, it seems that heat (as in hairdryer on low) will encourage the double-sided tape to let go and peel off. Mostly that worked on the next 2 score units I cleaned, and reduced the total remaining gunk needing chemicals and scraping to remove. It's really hard to get all of that stuff off so that the new double-stick actually sticks!

I keep having to remind myself that this restoration is...

IMG_1121 (resized).JPG

Can you give more detail please? What do you mean "correct tension"?

If you're asking how long the shooter main spring should be, I just refurbished mine and the spring is just slightly longer than the shooter main shaft. I had to compress it to get the "E" retaining ring onto the shaft. So, the shooter spring is compressed some even when it's at rest.

When I raise the playfield and support it with the metal support built into the cabinet, my playfield crawls up on the right side and leans to the left. If I ignore it, it will actually fall on me.

Anybody else have that problem? Solve it?

">That's odd, I am assuming you are using the recessed area for the prop rod (so it is not slipping under the PF), and also that the back of the PF is nearly all the way back on the rails against the backing under the head?"

Yeah - there are two vertical metal strips on the cabinet that the far end of the playfield rests against when it's lifted up; it seems to crawl up the right one and get increasingly cocked to the left. For now, I cut a broom handle and used it to prop up the left side.

Hi, mine doesn't have the second pair of switches at all. That's not to say mine is original in configuration, but the flippers work.

IMG_1289 (resized).JPG

Yeah, lower right flipper. This game is a relatively early System 4 game, and that second set of switch blades is a "lane change" switch. I wonder if System 6 games got "lane change" and earlier games didn't?

What was the purpose of the second switch? My game's 2 right flippers are wire directly together on the solenoid tabs. They fire in synch; did the double-stack switch delay the upper flipper a hair?

Thanks for the info. I sniffed around and found this old thread on the subject: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/flash-upper-flipper-switch

I'm not sure I'm going to return mine to factory spec, at least not 'til I understand why the original operator changed it. It lived in a college arcade and had many games played on it in this config.

My friend Ron says that when my machine was in heavy service, the second switch on the EOS stack probably broke or acted up, and the guy working on the machine just yanked it off and resoldered the wires to their current configuration. Both flippers went back to working, arcade patrons stopped complaining - end of story. Seems plausible....

Months ago, I cleaned up the score unit mounting boards, installed new double-sided sticky foam and "fixed" my problem of floppy score units (pic #1 is before). They had chafed the paint off the back of my backglass as they lay against it from behind for who-knows how many years and plays. IMG_1117 (resized).JPG

About 4 months later, one of the new double-stick tapes pulled a little bit loose, so I've moved on to home-made mechanical fasteners. I bought .032" x .25" brass strip at the hardware store and bent it to look like pic #2, after first drilling a tiny hole in one end. Then I covered the back of the bracket with electician's tape, inked the visible part black, drilled another tiny hole in the board behind and above the score unit and installed a short screw. IMG_1304 (resized).JPG

Now (so goes my theory), even if the double-stick tape comes loose, the bracket will restrain the score unit and keep it from flopping against the back of the backglass.IMG_1306 (resized).JPG

Stay tuned....

Is "a smidge" a scientific measurement? The brackets are about parallel with the front of the wood surrounds (probably plastic on your machine) on the "player up" and other special light fixtures. The black foam pads constitute the distance to the glass. I'm hopeful that's enough!

Wow, those look perfect! Since I made my D.I.Y. brackets, I'm gonna' leave 'em in, but if I do another Williams game I'm buying your brackets. Nice design.

...and if I can add to his advice, look straight down on your spinner and see if the "axle" is cocked a bit forward as it comes out of the spinner. You can bend it ever-so-gently to be in line and see if the spinner hangs true. I recommend taking it out of the frame to do this, as it's really hard to do in place. You can just gently suspend the spinner between your finger and thumb and spin it after little adjustments, to see if you're improving or getting worse.

Hi Retroware -

My most successful method is to take the spinner out of its metal frame, adjust the metal wire in the direction I think is appropriate, and then suspend the spinner between my fingers. Using minimal finger pressure its possible to see if you're moving in the right direction without putting the spinner back in the frame each time. You can do that too, of course, but it's kind of a nuisance.IMG_1355 (resized).JPG

If you look closely, you'll notice the wire going to my thumb is just slightly tilted up. If you could see straight down from above, you'd see it's pretty much parallel with the spinner. I think ideally, the center of gravity should be just a hair below the rotational axis.

My theory is that your (and my) spinner gets hit hard and the spinner ends up a bit "behind" the axis, which makes it hang with its base toward the flippers. Form then on, it keeps getting hit hard on the base, further bending the wire and perpetuating the problem.

If you get the wire adjusted about right, once it's back in the machine pressure from the spinner switch will work to keep it vertical. BTW, your spinner looks a bit crowded by the slightly bent frame on the right side; I have my best luck with both sides of the frame truly vertical.

Lowbeau, I like your ideas for mild mods, especially the changed rail color and custom drop target stickers matching your blue-and-yellow flippers. I got some heavily used plastics (in the way Dr. Frankenstein got heavily used body parts), and I'm experimenting with removing the blue color only. My pipe dream is to get blue off and black on, so that the plastics have a "stormy night sky" look. If it works, I'll post pics.

IMG_1312 (resized).JPG

A question: do the Flash lamps (under the blue "Flash" crescent mid-playfield) flash in attract mode?

I'm about to install Kohouts boards into my refurbished Flash and will refer to your experience to set my drop targets properly. Thanks for posting.

Thanks, and same to you. My boards will be brand new, all 4 of them, so maybe they'll give us both some kind of baseline.

Thanks - I'll let you know. My game was DOA, so whatever happens when the new boards go in will be a first for me!

New boards installed today... mostly positive results.

Issues: Lower left kicker does nothing, both drop target sets have trouble resetting during play but work at end-of-ball (sounds very much like your situation), and the upper left rollover doesn't register. Otherwise, everything works and scores every time.

I spoke with a friend who has a Flash and a Harlem Globetrotters, the latter of which has target scoring problems. He replaced target switch diodes and capacitors and thinks he's cured the problem. I haven't gotten that far yet; today I'm adjusting horseshoe contact tension to minimum to see if it helps reset problems.

...a little later.

Some good, some bad: reduced horseshoe tension scores OK and makes for much crisper resets. Unfortunately, the 5-bank still only resets at end-of-ball. However, the 3-bank seems to work correctly!

I don't know; maybe check all the diodes on the 5-bank next? Any suggestions?

It's funny, my DTs score and don't reset, and yours reset but don't always score. I'll be interested in your results - good luck!

Update... I got my drops to reset correctly! The problem was a cold solder joint.

On each PCB the middle 2 holes carry the daisy chain of connectivity toward the uppermost PCB. Checking connectivity across those got a light until I got to the one in which there's no jumper, but only a diode leading up to the reset control wire. Wiggling it around would occasionally get a very weak light on the connectivity checker, so I removed the solder and redid the connection and things worked. ...for about 3 resets.

I went back through and removed old solder and redid each connection across the daisy chain and now the targets score, drop easily and reset!

Butch Peel once told us that the source of most problems is the simplest, most mechanical thing. It was, in this instance.

Man, that's frustrating to do all that and still have the problem. My sophisticated troubleshooting method which turned up the bad solder joint was just to wiggle things with a connectivity checker attached. The bad solder joint would just flicker once in a while instead of lighting. I suppose you could try that across the wires and connectors between your drops and the main boards.

Meanwhile, here's a pic of my game, which seems to work after 9 months of slow refurbishing. If I got mine to go, I bet you'll figure yours out eventually.

IMG_1450 (resized).JPG

Thanks! As is common, some of my drop target guides had split screw holes where the PCBs are attached. I discovered that plastic anchors for sheetrock will work as collars to allow original screws to grip.

This one started out 1" long and 3/8" across the collar. I cut it to just cover the split screw fitting and wiggled it on. The screw snugged up OK and the flange doesn't seem to impinge on drop target movement.

IMG_1451 (resized).JPG

IMG_1452 (resized).JPG

IMG_1454 (resized).JPG

Which is worse, not knowing why something doesn't work or not knowing why something does work?

I've got a Flight 2000 that has an "almost reset" behavior that my experienced friends think is due to an old light socket shorting out. I have a bag of 50 new sockets to start putting in to see if I can find the source of the problem. Meanwhile the game works right about 99.5% of the time.

Thanks, I'll check the power supply while I'm in there.

pinengineer's idea is good; you might start with the return and outlanes next to the flipppers, since they score 1000 and 2000 when lit.

Congratulations!

>"I’ve briefly read the available manual online and it make no mention of the device (that I saw) in front of the sound board and above the tilt sensor pendulum. There’s a little track with a pinball and a switch at the end. What is that for?

I was also wondering how I can tell the year/revision of the machine. I did find a tag that says cabinet 13011. Update: I found the serial # 377986."<

It's OK to not know anything - you'll know a lot more when you get to the other end of fixing your game. The track with ball is a "ball tilt" - if you pick up the front of the machine, that ball will roll to the other end of the slanted track and complete a circuit - registering a tilt and stopping scoring for the ball you were playing.

The game was built in 1978/9 and its revision has to do with the green stickers on the ROM chips on the bottom of your MPU board. You can read more about those higher up in this big thread.

Flash started out with Williams system 4 MPUs, but part way through the production run switched to system 6. The photos you've seen are probably of system 6 MPUs, which have a different battery location for one thing.

You can tell your MPU board had battery corrosion around the lower left corner, where you noticed ICs have been removed. It's possible the corrosion affected the left side of the driver board below as well. The top pin or second one down, if I remember correctly, in the white 8-pin connector at the upper left of your driver board is the switch input for the left kicker - the solenoid you found burned up. On my Flash, that connector was corroded and broken; not making any contact. Thus, my kicker wouldn't fire at all. I don't know how a defective connector there would lock the solenoid on, but it might be worth disconnecting that plug and looking to see if there's corrosion on the tiny metal crimp pin in the top hole.

And yes, Renton. Maybe we'll be able to connect some time in the future.

Last first: yes, we have our Flash and it's happy. It had lots of battery alkaline damage in the neighborhood of where your mpu and driver boards have it. I attempted to repair the damage, but our game still did things like you describe, which in our case was due mostly to shorted trasistors and so forth. So, we bought new mpu and driver boards from pinballpcb.com. They solved the problems we hoped they would solve, and allowed us to troubleshoot remaining problems.

One of those was the left kicker doing nothing, which traced to a broken connector at the driver board end. Another was drop targets which wouldn't reset, which was due to wrong wiring and incorrect tension on the horseshoe contacts. Before we had working boards, those things were hidden in the bigger mess. Anyway, I bet your smoke is from a short due to battery alkaline damage, but that's just a guess from long distance. BTW, that large relay runs the flippers.

Help me sleep at night; I lie awake wondering why Flash has diodes on its lamp sockets, since it was built for incandescent bulbs. Do you know?

IMG_1537 (resized).JPG

I have 3 incandescent GI lamps which come on at full power when the game is powered on, but fade to very dim after a few minutes of play. What would cause lamps to work properly at first and then fade over the next 5-10 minutes?

Later.... new sockets cured 2 of the misbehavors. The third is in a hard spot to get to, but I'll do it next.

Do you know of a source for a new shooter lane ball guide (i.e., the curverd metal strip which guides the ball from the right shooter lane to the left upper playfield)? Mine broke its weld.

I had reason to replace the PCBs, horseshoes and guides in my 5-drop unit. While I was at it, and with the help of a friend, I cobbled together a set of red targets with correct Flash artwork. My game was early enough that all its posts are red instead of the later blue, and I wanted to get some more red onto the playfield. This is what it came out like:

IMG_1711 (resized).JPG

IMG_1712 (resized).JPG

Thanks!

At the beginning, as you probably already know, they tried red and also blue backglasses and finally went with black. I think Williams never did quite figure out what this game should look like.

Nothing official that I know of, though a couple of clever people made their own:

https://flashredo.weebly.com/Flash1 (resized).jpg

https://classicplayfields.com/the-custom-shop-barbarella/Flash2 (resized).jpg

Wow, this game had been in service 15 years at that time! The one we have was thrown out by its operator after 8 years of service, and was thoroughly used up.

Thanks! I saw an old Flash recently which came with red drops and blue stickers. It's funny how many variants there were of this machine.

Yeah, it looks like you got a good one. Backglass seems to be in good shape and even the red is still red!

Do you get individual sounds when you run it through the solenoid self-test?

No sounds in solenoid self test, but you do get the loud, squeely continuous sound when you press the sound board self-test button? ...and both fuses on the sound board are OK?

Well, I've been doing that since Koji (thanks!) sent me a new plunger lane metal guide to replace my broken one. I haven't found the sweet spot and 95% of our plunger shots hit the middle post in the upper left lanes or the tip of the 3rd flipper. So, super soft plunger shots get left drop targets and keep the ball in play....

Hey Mark, is that the topper to Whirlwind?

Plunger lane guide adjustment is dicey; if you have time, please check my "help me" thread:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/flash-plunger-lane-guide-help-please#post-6017194

Stephan28 and I have each experienced complete sound cutoff in the last 2 weeks. His game has rebuilt Williams boards and mine has all new pinballpcb.com boards. His game stays silent until the game is powered off and left to "rest", mine drops background sound (and sometimes all sound) until some big scoring event occurs which has a sound associated with it, and then all the sound comes back on. (@stephan28, correct me if I described your symptoms wrong)

Any thoughts? Has your Flash ever done this?

I asked Lloyd Olson (of "Ask Lloyd" fame on the Pinside front page), and he said: "Boards sound good. I'd suspect aging connectors next. Might be time to replace them."

Thanks - I'll snoop around there as well.

Update - Connector J3 (sound board to MPU) was loose. My game seems better, but I would never claim any late-70s solid state game is "fixed".

True Confessions, episode 3: my solenoids shut off last night and I tested the fuse (visually and with multimeter), followed by checking the solenoid input and output power on my beautiful pinballpcb power supply's built-in voltmeter. Output power was only 2.0 volts instead of 28-38. I wrote piballpcb's Jeff, who asked me to test the fuse again.

Turns out I had confused connector J3 and fuse F2, and tested the wrong fuse. Once the visually-OK but bad fuse at F2 was replaced, power came back up! I love having that built-in voltmeter (and a kind, patient vendor)!

PowerSupply3-6wLED (resized).png

Thanks - hopefully not too many of my mistakes will require a vendor to talk me through what I did wrong. Anyway, no - I don't know what caused the fuse to blow. I have played a few games with a new fuse installed, and so far things work.

Have you made any progress on your sound problem?

I have another game (Star Explorer - a 3/4 scale home game from 1977) which has a persistent problem too. It's a nuisance, as it waits a minute or more before giving you a new ball. With lots of helpful advice from experts, and many(!) new components installed on the boards, it refuses to be fixed. It makes me more sympathetic to your sound problem and that of others with suicidal games.

There's a NOS playfield for sale on eBay:

ebay.com link: Williams Flash Pinball Machine Game Playfield NOS RARE

Interesting...

What I did was spend a couple months cleaning and then hand-restoring the playfield art. Three coats of wax followed by mylar left things looking nice and playing well.

It's not fresh ice rink smooth, but the ball moves correctly and it's fun to play and to look at.

In the process of restoring the art, I noticed the bonus insert circle features black and white fingerprints from one hand painted around the outside of the circle. Are they Constantino Mitchell's?

Practice is a great idea. My playfield looked similar to your bad one:Playfield_Before (resized).JPG
I did it freehand with a couple reference photos alongside. I used liquid acrylic paint mixed with Golden Artists Colors GAC-200, the secret ingredient. It's a clear medium which hardens to a much harder finish than acrylic normally does. It also allows acrylic to adhere to glass, so I used it on defects on my backglass. IMG_1211 (resized).JPG

The most important thing is matching the colors. Most artist/craft acrylics dry darker than they look wet. On the up side, they also can be removed with isopropyl alcohol, even after they dry. If you put a bit of color on and it looks wrong after it dries....

When I got the playfield looking right, I waxed it 3 times and then laid mylar over it wherever I had done paint repairs. So far - about 9 months in - it's holding up.IMG_1816 (resized).JPG

Thanks, @clytor; the skill set I lacked was cpu repair. I tried, but couldn't revive battery damaged MPU and Driver boards. Happily, pinballpcb boards saved the day!

Yeah, that'd be a good exchange and we'd both end up with nicer games.

Be patient with paint mixing, and if you can, print reference photos as close to life-size as you can. You can actually trace the shapes onto the playfield and fill in the lines like paint-by-number!

Yeah, clear tests help. I have a sheet of plex with a bunch of odd color samples on it.

I did mine freehand. You can use graphite transfer paper (like carbon copy but easier to erase) to trace. Or, you can use regular tracing paper to trace your photo and then blue-tape it to your playfield on only one edge of the paper and flip it down and up while you draw in the shape on the playfield underneath.

I put a bunch of layers of off-white paint into the shallow dips where the wood shows, trying to get the playfield smoother. Then I just drew and painted in the various other colors like black and green. Then I coated the finished spots with clear acrylic mixed with that GAC-200 hardener.

Then wax, then mylar....

Cool feature: all reversible with isopropyl alcohol in case you dislike how it came out. The "ice rink" clear coat people don't like reversible; they want things permanent, but that makes for more pressure to get it right in one try.

Perchance have you seen a Flash whose outhole kicker occasionally fires twice? Reliably, but not regularly - like maybe once out of 4 or 5 balls. So far I adjusted the outhole switch, but that did no good.

Thanks, @slochar, I've found what you said to be true on our EM - sometimes the optimal switch adjustment is in a tiny range.

Update later in the day: I tested the outhole switch diode in case it was defective (it was OK) and replaced it anyway.

Then I manually tested the wireform and switch combo. The fish paper between the top switch leaf and the wireform hangs up on the wireform once in a while and keeps the upper leaf very close to the lower leaf. I think it allows for the lower leaf to vibrate and touch.

I'm going to trim the fish paper a bit and see if that eliminates the hangup, as well as adjust the damper leaf a hair to reduce the posibility of vibration.

IMG_1879 (resized).JPG

Well, I did all that, and the outhole kicker still fires twice sometimes.

I'm gonna' check the connector just to have a look at it, but I'm inclined to think my game went to school with your Gorgar and learned the same trick. I guess the double-kick doesn't hurt anything anyway.

slochar - I adjusted the switch and the damper blade so far out that the top blade contacts, but doesn't deflect, the bottom blade. It's just barely enough for the game to "see" the ball and kick it out, but it works. Anyway, the double kick is down to once in 5 balls, and seems a bit weaker.

I'm going to try and observe the wireform and see if there's any hangup. Otherwise I'll accept it as an innocuous feature of this game.

Thanks for the help.

Here are 3 pics of the connector you're asking about. I didn't want to pull mine apart, so hopefully this will give you enough clues.IMG_1911 (resized).JPGIMG_1912 (resized).JPGIMG_1913 (resized).JPG
As for your drop targets, I don't know of any adjustment fore-and-aft for the unit; however, it's easy to get the horseshoe contacts too tight on the printed circuit boards, and that will make the targets not want to drop.
Finally the word "Flash" doesn't flash as it comes from the factory. The game you watched has been modified a bit.

I put blinking bulbs wherever there is lightning on the backglass. It entertains me, at least....

Nice going! Sometimes effective troubleshooting involves ignoring the advice from all of us ringsiders and doing what the machine actually wants.

REQUEST: If your Flash (or similar age other Williams game) has a memory protect switch at the coin door, would you please post a photo or two of the switch area? I'm hoping to add one to my early System 4 machine. Thanks!

I've been underwhelmed with the more generic plastics on Flash, so I made one to replace the 3-drop target plastic. If it doesn't delaminate or overheat, I'm going to try changing the ones on either side of the rollover lanes.

IMG_2046 (resized).JPG

Mine did that and it was because the little spring ramp on that connector broke off. It's probably worth looking at before you start pulling boards out.

Wow!

I was preparing to install a new Inkochnito bridge board today when I discovered this lovely chafed spot on the 34Vdc line, where it lay across the edge of the hole leading down into the cabinet. I've been trying to figure out why lifting my playfield with the power on invariably corrupted my settings - possibly this short was doing it?IMG_2261 (resized).JPG Anyway, the short is repaired and the Inkochnito board went in nicely, after I figured out how to rearrange wire bundles.IMG_2263 (resized).JPG

...all of which raises a question: That white/red wire runs from the bridge rectifier to the on/off switch for the game, then back to the line filter where the 120Vac comes into the game. What's going on inside the line filter that allows that wire to be such a small gauge?

Wow, that playfield is in shockingly good shape. And... am I right in thinking the MPU doesn't have battery alkaline corrosion?

I'm sympathetic! I spent an immense amount of time fooling with battery corrosion and then gave up and bought pinballpcb boards.

I don't know when color changes took place, but my early Flash came with red posts and white rollover shields. My friend's game is blue everywhere. I kind of suspect artistic indecision may have influenced the color changes. Flash had red and blue backglasses during the prototype stage. It's a hard game to make look "just right" IMO.

Please describe the "jolt/jump" behavior further.

Also, that double switch pair on the lower right flipper is the EOS for the lower flipper (normally closed) and the activation switch for the upper flipper (normally open). It inserts a tiny delay in the firing of the upper flipper so as not to incinerate the flipper button switch contacts. My Flash showed up without the second pair.

Congratulations.

Any help?:

IMG_2548 (resized).JPG

IMG_2549 (resized).JPG

IMG_2550 (resized).JPG

Hi - Check to see if a hole has worn through the fish paper in the start button switch. Mine started giving 2 games and it had a hole. New fish paper solved it.

Alkaline damage to the MPU and Driver boards is common and problematic.

Good luck, BTW - it's a fun game.

IMG_1087 (resized).JPG

Yeah... and make sure you're using the settings that match your ROMs. See post 703 above.

Did you get the three plastics missing at the top of your playfield?

Oh, good. Also, it's excellent news that your wife is in on the project. Mine actually let me work on the backbox for a couple days on the kitchen counter!

You might consider including one of the Inkochnito Bridge Boards. They're fairly straightforward to install, and add a bit of protection for meltdowns due to fusing deficiencies.

https://home.kpn.nl/inkochnito/bridge_board.htm

I have one, and it's beautiful. Flash owner friends who've visited comment on how nice it looks; so does eveyone else. It has "features" though:

The mirroring reflects on the playfield glass differently (more?) than the non-mirrored original. The overall image is very crisp and registered nicely. The glass came very well packaged and arrived in good shape. It's thinner glass than the original and needs new lift channel and edge channel material (confirm that with CPR).

It looks more like a nighttime storm than a daytime storm, if you can imagine - it's darker and more spooky looking to me. I put a ton (a ton!) of Comet Matrix LED lighting behind it to get it to light up the way I like it. It has a lot of opaque area and I want the lightning bolts to stand out.

Is it worth $300? I'm happy I bought mine and smile every time I see the game.

Steve Young sells spinner switch rods (most of the way down on this page): http://www.pbresource.com/spinner.html#wms

Probably you can adapt one of them to work with your spinner/switch combo.

Hi John,

Only the predominant blue is a darker hue than that on the original. Plus, the mirroring opaques some areas which were translucent originally - note the difference in the planet on the photos below. The effect is more dark and stormy than the original, which I like, but which took more and brighter lights to illuminate.

Here's the original lit and unlit:IMG_1459 (resized).JPGIMG_1343 (resized).JPG

And here's the CPR glass:IMG_2500 (resized).JPGIMG_2398 (resized).JPG

The Comet Matrix lighting collection helped get more light through - especially their quick connect bulbs, which have a lamp and a quick connect in a single bayonet base. I used those and ran multi-LED mats off the quick connect to get lots more light behind the lightning bolt areas, as well as in spots where there wasn't a light socket at all.

https://www.cometpinball.com/collections/matrix

Greg

Forgive me if this is a dumb question, but what magnets?

Oh - I get it. I just did some horseshoe adjusting yesterday. Fiddly work, but least they don't fall off.

Good question - "dunno" is the answer. Mine have been the way they are for about 1.5 years, except for the one that got adjusted last week. It was a bit too tight to go down correctly. So, you've got me beaten by at least 3.5 years in experience.

I don't know what Todd uses, but I've leveled inserts with mylar. It works, is nearly invisible, and best of all, is reversible if necessary.

I cut triangles or circles of mylar in increasingly smaller dimensions (like a contour map) and bring the cupped area up to level.

You're welcome. I don't know if it's the best route, but it's a simple one that works. And if you screw up, you can just peel it off and start over.

I made some paper guides to trace, so that I could repeat each shape for all the circles of a size, or all the triangles.

Hah! The other walls in that room feature Gamera, Daleks, Creature From The Black Lagoon, Logan's Run.... Those old movies are fun to watch and the posters simpatico with Flash.

Simple thing to check:

Has your credit button switch worn a hole in the fish paper insulator? If so, that'll cause multiple credits to be awarded for a single button push.

@mbenivegna, do these help?

IMG_2920 (resized).JPG

IMG_2921 (resized).JPG

I like how you've emphasized the black and red; it ties the cabinet, backglass and playfield together a bit. Flash is color challenged - especially in the mismatch of blues on backglass, playfield and plastics. Your game looks nicer.

Also, good idea on the wedge sockets in the pop bumpers. I'm changing mine next week.