When I posted some pictures of my Stern Lightning in another thread, I realised there wasn't a club for this pin yet. So... here it is.

'Now why does a pin like Lightning deserve a club on Pinside?' one might ask. Well, I like to think of it as one of those under-the-radar-pins'. A machine that's lots of fun, there just aren't a lot of people that actually know how fun it is. And Lightning sure is fun. A beautiful 2 level layout, fast gameplay, refreshingly quirky Classic Stern-rules, awesome artwork, multiball, speech... I could go on.

So, any owners or admirers of the game here on Pinside? Make yourselves known! I'd love to see or hear about your games.

Let me start with my own machine. I bought it in very sorry condition. Lots of warped and loose inserts, mildew on the playfield and even some small dead animals inside. I patiently took the time to do a small budget renovation. Now it's in very nice and very playable condition.

Among other things, I straightened and reseated the inserts, touched up and clearcoated the playfield and repainted the legs and the coin door. Here are some before, during and after pics.

Before
Before: inserts warped and came loose
Before: the coin door and legs in their original, slightly rusted condition
During
During: carefully popping the inserts out of the playfield
During: some nasty mildew around the posts
During: inserts gone
During: a little help
During: drying from a clearcoat. I put some extra clearcoat in the round inserts to deal with the cupping.
After
After: coin door and legs freshly repainted
After: one of the previous problem areas has been dealt with
After: Yay! No more warped blue inserts either

After: the upper playfield
After: the lower playfield
After: the boards, free of battery damage and with all new capacitors
After: the backglass, lightly touched up and sealed with clear varnish
After: the completed machine

I also installed a small mod: I installed a ramp flap underneath the upper playfield outhole. This makes the ball always leave the top playfield through the right side of the horse shoe. Now, the ball never hits the points switch on the left side when it exits the top playfield. This means you actually have to hit the horse shoe to get those points, which in my opinion contributes to the fairness of the game. Didn't take any pictures of the mod yet, but I am happy to do that if anybody is interested.

Thanks! It works really well. Adds a bit of speed too, as the ball comes out of there a bit faster than it would without the mod.

Cool idea! I think that would make the game too fast for me. It's already lightning fast with the gates on (pun kind of unavoidable).

Well, great club of 2 we got here!

Any other proud owners of this awesome game?

Welcome to our small club!

I don't think there is a ruleset for Lightning available on the internet. Or is there?

Some important rules:
- Hit the 3 drop target banks in the right order (they're numbered) to light Extra Ball.
- After this, the spot where the Extra Ball can be scored switches between the middle target of each drop target bank.
- Hit all the standup targets on the playfield for Multiball.
- During Multiball, playfield multiplier is activated by shooting the horse shoe (2x-4x). This continues during one ball-play, until you loose that ball.
- During multiball, you can re-lock balls. When you do, they stay locked. This means multiball may end by locking 2 balls during multiball. The multiball rules however stay active until you lose your ball.
- Every drop target you hit adds 1000 point to your end of ball bonus.
- Bonus multiplier can be lit in the horse shoe (2x-5x).
- The bonus of your last ball carries over to the next ball. (this might be operator adjustable).
- Valhalla (timed bonus ball) can be played one time each game, after reaching a score set by the operator.
- During Valhalla, you have 30 seconds of unlimited single ball play.
-After 30 seconds of Valhalla time, the flippers die. Unless you scored a multiball during Valhalla time.

Not a complete ruleset by any means, but this should give you an idea.

How's the big blue inserts on your games? They tend to warp pretty badly. On my game, some balls even slammed into the plastic above the horse shoe, because the inserts were acting as mini ramps.

You can flatten these inserts by pulling them out of the game (which luckily went very easy on mine), sanding them straight with high grit sanding paper (carefully), polishing them and then glueing them back in the playfield. Afterwards, you might want to add some sort of protection to it. I clearcoated mine, but mylar should work fine as well.

Think so, yeah. Don't have it here to test, though...

Congratulations! Great title, well worth shopping out.

I'm afraid I can't take a picture of the mod right now. The machine is at my brother's place, a few hours away.

Basically I took the flap from an old Banzai Run-ramp. Cut it to size a bit and fastened it with two screws on the lower side of the upper playfield. The screws are on the left of the hole and make the ball deflect to the right exit of the horse shoe on the lower playfield every time it falls into the hole.

Do you get the idea? If you want a clearer description, I can try to draw it for you.

I don't remember exactly which screws I used. The most important thing is that the head is as flat as possible. You don't want them to interfere with a ball that's shot into the horse shoe. It's a pretty tight place, since the upper playfield is not that high above the lower playfield.

Could you take pictures once you've done the mod succesfully and post them here for reference? I think it's an interesting mod for more Lightning owners.

Hi Josh, welcome! Could you define 'good condition' a little better? How is the backglass? How is the playfield (including inserts: they tend to warp badly.)? Cabinet? Plastics? Electronics?

et cetera.

Hey man, welcome to the club! Sounds like your machine might need a serious makeover, but that's part of the fun!

The voice dying could have multiple reasons. The voice IC that Stern used is not the strongest one. But: it might also be a fuse.

Does your General Illumination (GI) work? This is the illumination that is supposed to be on constantly, mostly found underneath plastics and behind the backglass. If none of the GI lights work, the fuse for the GI might be bad. Don't ask me why, but the voice card of these classic Sterns is on the same fuse as the GI is. So if the voice ánd GI are out, chances are that this fuse is the reason.

The fuse is located inside the cabinet, on the Power Supply board. You can see this board in the 6th photo of the second post in this thread (the one with the cat inside the machine).

If the fuse for the GI is indeed bad, make sure that you use the correct value to replace it. There is a reason that the fuse went bad in the first place, and you don't want to stress components by overfusing. The value that's supposed to be in there is written on the board, next to the fuse. If the new fuse goes bad after turning the machine on again, you probably have a short somewhere.

Good luck!

That's a matter of personal preference. LED puts less stress on things like connectors and produces less heat. LEDs look different from incandescant lamps, both in appearance and in glow. I'm not a fan of using coloured LED in GI in most cases. It washes out the other colors. But, like I said: personal preference.

The lamp driver board of these classic Bally and Stern machines doesn't 'like' regular leds. They ghost and flicker a lot. Only the computer controlled lights are affected by this. The GI doesn't use the lampdriver board. If you do want to put LEDs in the computer controlled lights, you have 2 choices: use special leds or install an aftermarket lamp driver board from Alltek: http://www.allteksystems.com/products-mpu-replacements.html#lamp

Good luck!

This picture shows the mod I did to my Lightning. I'm not big on modding normally, but this one increases the playability of the game dramatically. It's a simple piece of sheet metal (an old ramp entrance, to be specific) that is attached to the underside of the upper playfield, on the left side of the hole where the ball exits the upper playfield.

It makes sure that the ball always deflects to the right when it leaves the upper playfield, making sure that you can never score a playfield multiplier or bonus multiplier without actually hitting the horse shoe.
the mod
Now, pretty please, somebody fix the multiball rules for this great game and we're golden.

Nice restoration! @Evillive69 explains exactly what I don't like about the multiball rules. IMHO, during multiball, the game should spit out re-locked balls. And the multiball rules should end when you're back to one ball. This would make the game much better.

Definitely worth it, if you ask me. It's a cool game to play. Fast and furious, like the name suggests. Cool sounds and a nice set of rules with some interesting Classic Stern twists.

With things like multilevel, multiball and speech, it's one of the most elaborate offerings of the company. A game that has not (yet) been discovered by the solid state afficionados.

Mine had the same problem with the inserts. I took them out, flattened them and secured them back in. After that, clearcoated the playfield. Quite a job, but very doable. The game came out beautiful and played amazingly because of it.

Apart from the filth and the insert problem, your game looks to be in very nice shape. I'd say go for it.

Before
After

Good to know: slochar is busy tweaking the software for Lightning. The game will finally be relieved of the annoyance of balls re-locking immediately. That and other tweaks.

Follow the progress and send your suggestions here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/software-mods-for-classic-stern-games

Nice! I like how the style compliments/matches that of the machine itself.

Is it an idea to add a drop shadow to the font? A con of a busy background like this one is that it makes the instructions quite hard to read.

Another possibility would be the fuse. The original speech board shares a fuse with the General Illumination, however strange that may sound.

So, something else to look at is: does your GI work?

Heads up! New Lightning code from slochar

I can't confirm that, but I do know that classic Stern lamp sockets aren't the most reliable type.