The Who's TOMMY Club - Can you hear me? Members Only!

I installed these and really like them. They are at Marco for $100. They are listed there as Data East side armor. Tommy is not listed to fit.Probably because I had to drill a new hole on each side on the button guards. Easy stuff.If you go with it,don’t forget to get a roll of double stick tape they sell. The upper holes line up. These are on all the Jp’s that I see.

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Just notified that my Pinsound should arrive this week. Do I have to load all the play sounds/music or will it have some default ones pre-loaded (I selected Tommy at check-out from the manufacturer)?

Nothing is pre loaded, just go to their website and download the desired mixes....that board will work on lots of different machines, they want to im sure make sure it fits your machine..so hence the "tommy" version

Ok, the pinsound has arrived and it has been installed. Even got it to work after some playing around. I do wish there would have been more prominent notice at Pinsound, or anywhere, that the first time your sound package loads it is going to be 15-30 minutes (or more) to complete the audio conversion process. Also, the first couple of times I tried it didn't successfully save the converted sound files so it went through the process all over again when I turned the machine on. I was really starting to get bummed because I didn't really want something that was going to delay gratification by 15-30 minutes each time I turned the machine on.

I did eventually have a positive outcome. I took the flash drive back to my computer and checked the self-diagnosis file. Nothing special noted there. Then I walked through the sound package directories and tried playing some of the WAV files and nothing made a sound in VLC. I thought that was odd. So, I reformatted my drive and put a single sound package in the root and tried again. This time came success! The files were converted and were nearly instantly ready each time I turned on the machine. Yay!

My next question is, is it ok to have more than one sound package on a flash drive? If so, how do I switch packages in game? There is a blurb on Pinsound's website about Data East machines but it doesn't really seem to match my Tommy, at least. It says:
"DATA-EAST, System 11: you can change your sound package on-the-fly (if you have at least 2 different sound packages on the flash drive) by double turning (double tap) to the minimum (on the left) the coin box volume potentiometer"

There are no pots on my coin box door. There is one pot (it looks like a 3-inch screw without a head) on a metal box mounted inside the cabinet that I know is used to turn the volume up and down but I don't think it presses in at all, only turns. Can someone explain how to switch sound packages using the actual Tommy machine as a reference?

Thanks

You're better off getting the headphone adaptor that Pinsound sells...you can just reach down and adjust as needed and a double tap to 0 volume to change music jandra's ...concerning the sound packages, you only have to wait through the loading once, afterward it starts right up in a few seconds...I have noticed that if I have a couple packages it seems to do the second one after a reboot, which is what you seem to have experienced....you should be able to use your original pot btw to ajust your volume....not sure where it connects to the board as I never used it....

This is the spot. Turn it all the way down and back up and it will go to the next package.

...but it can be finicky for people, which is why a lot of people do this...

Thanks for the tips. Another Pinsound question while I'm on a roll - if you have multiple packages on a flash drive does it just choose which one to use at start up randomly or should it be alphabetical?

It will stay on what ever you left it on at your last game...

I was able to join the TOMMY club on Friday. A friend of mine from work told me YEARS AGO that she won a pinball machine on The Price is Right (air date of 4/28/94 if someone can help me track it down) back in the 90s. We kept in touch and a few months ago, she asked me if I'd be interested in buying it. The machine was at her brother's house in Cleveland (I'm in SE Michigan) and he was moving. They were looking to get the game moved out. We finalized a deal (which I'm embarrassed to even say how great of a deal I got on this) and I got in my car with my brother for the 7 hour roundtrip drive to Cleveland. We got home around midnight on Friday and loaded the game to what I've dubbed "The Basement Barcade". I shopped the game on Saturday and have it running pretty well. The display doesn't work, but the game is in fantastic condition overall with just a few small bumps and bruises on the cabinet from previous moves I'm sure.

I ordered Titan rubbers and am looking for recommendations on a LED kit. I'm also considering a color DMD display and a Pinsound system. Any thoughts on either of these? Are they worth it?

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looks nice...both are good mods...

I have both, both are top priority. The display is especially so you can test it. The Pinsound is wonderful, and I recommend the speakers with it. Go to YouTube to hear it. Hearing is believing. Congrats on a great game.

Great find. Get the pinsound and consider adding pinwoofer speakers and amp too if in your price range. Sound is great with that combo. I really like the color DMD.
As far as LEDs, that’s a bit more tricky. Some has to do with personal taste, some technical.
I simply switched to comet LED sunshine white bulbs all round and left the flashers incandescent. I’m not a fan of all the colored bulbs.
If you do switch to LED, search this thread and the Data East thread for info on something called the EnerGI board. It smooths out the abrupt on/off aspect of LED bulbs and adds a fade effect that mimics the on/off of incandescent bulbs. Much less jarring and seizure inducing than just adding LEDs. The EnerGI is hard to come by, but I think there are other boards that create a similar effect. You may not even be bothered by the unaddressed introduction of the LEDs.
There are also a few mods floating around that are cheap and kind of cool that add to the look of the game without going overboard.
Great game and a great find. Have fun.

My advice, buy this on Amazon and run the USB cable to the coin door from the Pinsound card. I'm not sure why people like multiple orchestrations on one USB when they are so cheap and I don't ever see the need to play two different orchestrations during the same game. Just buy a couple extra USBs and stick one orchestration on each and you can simply swap them out on the USB cable in the coin door. Very easy. I have had endless issues with more than one orchestration on the same USB as well.

amazon.com link »

If you can get your hands on the original Pinsound Studio, it is a lot easier to upload the orchestrations to the USB with the Pinsound Studio. The benefit is it will load within 30 seconds on your Pinsound card and there is no time sitting around waiting for the Pinsound card to do all of the file conversion for you. This is done by the Pinsound Studio program for you. It does still take about 20 minutes for the studio program to do the conversion but at least you can spend the time sitting at your computer.

Thanks for the tips. I have finally managed to get all of the orchestrations loaded on one usb. Everything now works! I did have to download all of the packages again because PS said it had problems with the archive. And spend about 3 hours all up since, as someone above noted, it only converts one package each time. But it works! Yay! I might consider just running an extension as suggested. I did figure out how to do the package switch with the built-in volume control but I'm still not very confident it has actually changed each time. But everything works!

The USB extension is very helpful when you are doing your own orchestrations and have to keep loading the USB into the Pinsound card. It is a real headache to have to remove the translite and some games you have to lower the speaker panel if you have a LCD colordmd. For under $10, it solves a lot of problems and I have never noticed any delay by using the extension cable.

Looking for simple tips or suggestions on how to...

You know the ball trap/eject on the left side below the flipper? About 80% of the time when it comes out it just goes straight between the bottom flippers, which is really frustrating. Has anyone made any slight alterations to randomize the trajectory of the exiting ball more? Or does every one just grin and bear it?

Have never seen this happen before with Tommy. You have to realign the kicker somehow so it doesn't happen. I had this issue with my Kiss and Gene Simmons head.

Going a little Captain Obvious here, but before adjusting the kicker, make sure the cab is level side to side, if it's leaning to the right slightly it could be having an affect on the ball. My Tommy never drains SDTM from that far left scoop.

I can dig out a level, but there's no obvious tilt that I can tell.

I used a level app on my Pixel and every thing seemed good, so I don't know what to do next.

Make the game steeper. If that doesn't work, loosen the screws holding the kicker under the playfield. Re-tighten the screws while forcefully turning the mech towards the left flipper.

If that doesn't work, you could remove the mech and use a Dremel to make the holes bigger to get more of an adjustment. I had to do that to the Stroke of Luck kick out on my AFM.

I found this fuse in my Tommy.. it is 250 Amp ... is it for the sub woofer ?

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It's probably 250V look for the amp rating

Nevermind... now I see what you're talking about...no that doesn't belong anywhere near a pinball machine...

Maybe his subwoofer is just enormously powerful - you know, "kill people standing too close" powerful.

Actually, I checked the manual (pdf) and it said the angle should be 6.5 degrees. Ours was around 14. I don't know how accurate my level app is, but we managed to get it to about 12 degrees. The back legs are about as low as they'll go so we tried to raise the front up, but it looks like one of the feet rods is stuck. Don't know how to fix that. Might be double-threaded or something like that. Any thoughts?

I think all of this has changed the play noticeably. We just played 10 or so games and only lost the ball from that eject one time, and I think that was during multiball so it might have been player error.

Thanks for putting us on the right track!

I've had my headphone jack sitting on a table for 6 months. Are there any directions to install these? Where the heck do I run the wire from the back board?

Attach to front leg, I run the wire to the rear vent hole that I pop one staple out of, then up to the pinsound board...pretty straightforward

I need some assistance please.

Tommy has been working great. This morning I went out for a game and when I turned the game on it TRIED to start/boot, but failed (the apron blinder toy engaged and is now open and other solenoids fired/attempted to fire) then she just didn't finish booting at all. Only the GI lights are on, nothing else is on including the DMD, playfield lights and so forth.

I'm wondering where to start to troubleshoot? What are the first things (in order) I should be checking?

Here's a video of it trying to boot (you can see that things like the propeller blades on the plane start to engage):

You can start by reseating all the ribbon cables in the backbox. Just pull the connector slightly back and reseat. No need to take the connectors completely off the pins. If you do , be very careful not to put them back on wrong, where one row of pins are shifted off of the connector.

Next thing to do is check all of your DC voltage check points on the power supply. This is the board in the upper left of the back box. You'll need a meter to do this. The check points are labeled with what voltages to expect. If any voltages are absent, start checking your fuses. Check them with a meter. If you are lucky you will see one that is obviously black inside the glass tube. Often a blown fuse looks normal so again, check with a meter.

Thanks! I'll start here and report back. I don't have a meter, but can run to the store when I get to that point.

You can start by reseating all the ribbon cables in the backbox. Just pull the connector slightly back and reseat. No need to take the connectors completely off the pins.

This alone seemed to have fixed the problem. Thanks LOTR_breath

Well done

How much do people modify their machines? I guess this is sort of a casual poll/survey-type questions. Can you do too much? Does it affect the value, positively or negatively?

So far we've...
Changed to LEDs (done before purchase)
Added mirror blades
Changed to PinSound
In the process of changing the coin reject slots
In the process of upgrading to the unofficial Tommy 5.0 ROMs

And we're considering getting one of the color DMDs.

Semi-related question: does anyone have a link to a How-To guide or video for chaning out the ROMs?

Including the color DMD, that’s what I did. I also added a pinwoofer set up to improve the sound, added Union Jack flipper bat covers, Union Jack stickers on target banks, and added a couple of color LED wafers by the backs of the ramps.

Check out this topic re changing ROMs - which is easy if you go slow. They talk about taking the board out to do it - or not. I take the board out. But they also talk about pulling the ROMs and such. If I can do it, anyone can....

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/installing-new-roms-take-off-boards-or-leave-on

I find that a chip puller like this makes it a lot easier ...
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I have done everything possible, with the exception of the Pinwoofer kit. I think the best upgrades are the colordmd and Pinsound. Oh, haven't done Pinstadium either.

It looks like many of us are into modding, which is cool because we've gotten in to making many of our changes because of various comments here and other online communities. Do people think this affects the value of the machines in any way? Increase? Decrease? Nil? It seems a bit a tricky to me because pinball machines are a kind of collectible but at the same time very few of them are in mint or near-mint condition to begin with. We're not really interested in the investment aspects of the pinball hobby, but I'm still curious because I've read so much about that aspect of the hobby.

Here's how our latest mod looks (it came with the three slot door).

new reject slots

I would think it does add value, maybe not how much you have spent. The colordmd usually keeps it value with or without. I have sold toppers separately before as I knew the game with the topper wouldn't get the same value. Really depends on the upgrades.

It completely depends on both the mods and the buyer. As pinballjah already pointed out, a ColorDMD will generally hold its full value because it's a very popular upgrade and it can be easily moved from one game to another. Other mods that tend to hold their value are ones that improve the playing experience such as speaker upgrades, a PinSound board, an LED OCD controller, etc ... Mods which are more cosmetic tend to come down to personal taste. Some people are willing to pay extra for things like mirror blades, speaker lights or an alternate translite, while others see no value in these mods whatsoever. Even something like LEDs can be very subjective. Not everyone likes LEDs, and even if they do, they may not like the ones that you selected.

Agree with your thoughts. I would add that LEDs should DETRACT from the price, as 99% of people who use them absolutely drown a game in oversaturated colors - like a kid who uses markers for the first time. Just terrible (and the reason why there is a thread devoted the the best of the worst in LEDs).

Saw this posted on Facebook, alternate Tommy playfield with six bumpers and apparently the ball drops from the plane. Only 10 made according to the owner.

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That's a prototype. Is it for sale? How much are they asking for it?

100k

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Crazy stuff. Bottom line, it’s a DE. This will be interesting.

The prototype Tommy is actually one of my dream pins, but I've accepted a long time ago that it has soared way beyond my price range. I should have grabbed one years ago. I don't think they'll get anything close to $100k for it, but I could see it going for $50k given the current market on rare desirable titles.

Ha Ha! Even a "serious collector" is not gonna offer more than 10-15K on that.

If there was ever a proper use of the word "retarded", it would be in reference to the asking price of that pin. That and the Matrix/JM/proto JM combo that has a $125K asking price.

A couple of people have already said that they upgraded to a color DMD. Is there more than one brand? Did you have a specific program/file to update the colors or are you just stuck with one color? I am in Australia and I found a vendor that is selling "Pin2DMD Evo 128x32 Colour DMD LED Displays," but when I inquired about pre-sales setup he said there wasn't a Tommy file available for that model at this time. He appears to be sourcing his files from VPUniverse. When I first started looking at his product last week - I hem and haw quite a bit - I really thought I had found a Tommy file but when I went back to VPU I could not find one at the link he was pointing at.

Any help?