Lightning
Stern Electronics, 1981I just picked up a Stern Lightning in decent shape and it has leds through out. I notice some leds slightly flash when they are not suppose to and become brighter when the switch is activated. Is this a known problem? Love the game besides brutally hard to get multiball and damn speaker hum I cant track down. Thanks any advice
The led issue is ghosting. You can either put in non ghosting bulbs or led flicker eliminator boards. My lightning will be getting the flicker eliminator boards very soon.
The hum can be caused by bad caps on the sound and speech board, old sound cables or a worn out speaker. My speaker cone disintegrated the minute I touched it. Parts express has some nice cheap 6.5 mid range subs. I can look up the one I used if you want. If they have never been touched I would definitely recap the sound board and replace the sound cables.
LED strobing is a known issue on these games. Either buy an Altek lamp board, one of those flicker eliminator boards from Siegecraft (or others) or solder on a 470ohm resistor onto the lamp(s) which are strobing. If you only have a few strobing, then I would choose the last option.
Evilive, you are the first person I have ever heard say they had success with non-ghosting LED bulbs in this application.
Question, are all the affected bulbs on the same row or column?
Quoted from Evilive69:The led issue is ghosting. You can either put in non ghosting bulbs or led flicker eliminator boards. My lightning will be getting the flicker eliminator boards very soon.
The hum can be caused by bad caps on the sound and speech board, old sound cables or a worn out speaker. My speaker cone disintegrated the minute I touched it. Parts express has some nice cheap 6.5 mid range subs. I can look up the one I used if you want. If they have never been touched I would definitely recap the sound board and replace the sound cables.
For right now I guess its not a huge issues for me , its enjoyable and playable but wanted to know what could be done in the future. Ive tried grounding everything and the machine has a new speaker but still get hum. I know sometimes when I move the larger harness on the rectifier board inside the cab it goes away but as soon as I put the harness back down the hum will come back, ive looked for cold solder joints and made sure all pins were making contact and everything is fine.
Every bulb in my lightning is a Comet led, the least expensive ones they sell. Some are color but most are frosted warm white. The flicker isn't that bad so I really haven't been pressed to put in the flicker eliminator boards. Eventually I will because what started out as a project pin to learn basic repair has turned into one of my favorite pins. I will never understand why this pin is rated so low.
Quoted from customken52761:I know sometimes when I move the larger harness on the rectifier board inside the cab it goes away but as soon as I put the harness back down the hum will come back, ive looked for cold solder joints and made sure all pins were making contact and everything is fine.
Sounds to me like the issue is at the rectified board. Have you rebuilt it?
What about routing the speaker wires away from the harness?
Are these the only thing thats added in the circuit to eliminate the flicker issue? Some one(previous owner bought it from a retail shop) has added these components to the back of the lamp driver board but did a hacked job and they still flicker, they also looped a ground wire to each one and a ground going to the back glass, i had to remove this ground as it was causing about 15 bulbs not to work.
The speaker is right beside the rectifier board, i have clipped the zip ties off that harness and tried to route the audio wires along side of the cable away from everything else and still has this is, the hum only goes away every once in awhile when I fiddle with that harness. I tried wiggling every wire by itself at the rectifier board and sometimes cant get the hum to go away. Some times when I wiggle the 5 pin(4 wires) connector top left on the speech board the hum will go away but not all the time
Quoted from SealClubber:Have you re-pinned those connectors?
On the rectifier board inside the cab? Yes those have been repinned but no by me
The sound loops through the speech board so it is possible that the issue is the pins on the speech board. I had to reflow mine because speech wasn't working at all. I also crimped on new terminals.
As a test you could temporarily move the speaker and wires to the back of the cab but I highly doubt that will fix it. I would reflow the pins on the speech board and put on new terminals first.
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Muscatine, IA
Sana'a