It is so junky it is not worth fixing.

Two pieces of overlapped black duct tape about 6 inches long. Over lap so you only have about 1/4 inch of glue showing. Apply above and draped down over the switches.

Not a sexy solution, but a quick one. I'll give this a try until I think of something a little prettier. Thanks!

A word of caution on this.

Short version - Make sure you leave some distance between the new lamp sockets and everything they might touch.

Much longer version - I installed this on my Dirty Harry, drawing power from the coin slot lamp. Set up and worked fine. A little while later while playing, I smell burning. Oh no, what's that?! Coin slot lamp and new lighted buttons are out. Found that the traces for the coin door light have burned off the small interconnect board near the coin door. What happened?
I'm still not sure if there was physical contact, or if they were just close enough for induction to be the problem, but the high voltage from the ball shooter coil seems to have fed through the new lamp socket and blowed stuff up. The LEDs were toasted in addition to the board traces.
Replaced the LEDs, and jumpered the interconnect board. To make sure it does not happen again, I also relocated the lamp socket farther away from the shooter coil. Also wrapped the wire tabs on the socket to protect and insulate them better. Also found that there was no sleeve in the shooter coil. Replaced that to keep the plunger centered, and possibly insulate it a bit. Noticed that the manual shows a small "insulator" behind the coil that was also missing. Replaced that with plastic tape (not sure what it was supposed to be made of).

I think that I'm lucky to only lose the traces on the interconnect board and not damage anything else.

It all seems fine now, but be sure you don't get any stray voltage into your new wiring!

Great post.

Quick solution for flex led light leak. I just fashioned a small hood of card board and taped it to the flipper button pal nut. No more light leak around apron.

I just did this to my BOP. Does any LED manufacturer sell purple flex LEDs that are purple and not pink? The one I tried are from Pinball Life's site. Other than that, I like this mod!

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I rally like this MOD and your easy solution for light leakage. I am picking up a Luci tomorrow and I am going to do this mod on it!

Thanks both of you and this thread!

Try Pinballbulbs, their purple is pretty good.

I think some of the purple LED's are UV or Blacklight LED's. A dark purple (violet) is a hard color to create since it doesn't exist in the visible light spectrum.

http://deron.meranda.us/ruminations/purple/

I have a car I painted purple, but every time I would take a pic of it, it would be blue, that's how I learned about this.

That was an interesting read, thanks for posting.

Yea, I still don't completely understand it.

Did not read entire thread but how do you connect to stern door sockets. Lug not exposed and wire from cab is a connector so no place to solder?

See post #91. There are various connectors available that splice through the insulation.
I like this one:

http://www.radioshack.com/quick-splice-connector-with-male-disconnector-3-pack/6400037.html#q=splice&start=3

For those of you concerned about the bleed of light at the edges of the playfield, check out this solution:
http://www.shapeways.com/search?q=flipper+blocker

I bought a few to support this guy's effort. They worked pretty good. I found a piece of black poster board taped to the cabinet worked good too.

Wolf is a pinsider.

I was thinking about doing this to my Joker Poker, for both the flippers and start button, but mine only have a small post that goes through a plate that would transmit the color, do i need to change the buttons? Is this something that can be done on a gottlieb? Forgive my stupidity...

Older Gottliebs use opaque plastics in the buttons. Not really worth doing without a lot of hacking newer buttons in.

Looks like older Gottliebs used clear buttons but had a metal backing plate. Pinball resource sells clear backing plates that will allow you to light up the button.

Clear Strap #GTB-A13898+ $0.94ea
http://www.pbresource.com/buttons.html

On an AFM, would it be possible to tap power from J2 or J5 on the Coin Door Interface Board rather than running wire all the way on to the coin door itself?

I was wondering if I would be able to tap power from either:

J2-1 Black, Ground from Power Driver Board J141-3
J2-3 White-Violet, G.I. 6.8VAC from Power Driver J104-1

or

J5-2 White-Violet, G.I. 6.8VAC to Coin Door
J5-3 Black, Ground to Coin Door

Also, will the LED's shining on the translucent flipper buttons interfere with the flipper optos on AFM?

If you wish 6.3V Power Tap, A Matrix Bulb can be used anywhere, and draw power from, if this helps....

If you mean that I can tap any G.I. bulb in the matrix, yes, I know I can do that, but I wanted to keep it tidy inside the cabinet. Looking at the inside, it seemed like the nearest possibility to the flipper buttons for 6.3V is the Coin Door Interface Board.

Here's what I managed to do: I re-pinned the J5-1 and J5-2 pins on the Coin Door Interface Board with the wires for the lights. It works great, but I need to add some more LED's as the green translucent flipper buttons eat up a lot of the light.

Thanks again Vid!

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Thanks Vid for a great thread. this is such a cool and easy mod for nearly any pinball machine. i just wanted to let you know, as i did this mod to my own machines i created a video and posted it to youtube. i hope this helps anyone who is considering doing this mod.

Hi guys! Finally I've done my pushbuttons!!!

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Update to this issue. Ran into it again on my Shadow. The double buttons and autolaunch coil on the right side are very, very tight. I tried jamming everything in and electrical taping everything to prevent shorts, but got a short anyway and blew a fuse immediately. Probably lucky it was just a fuse. It's just too tight.
But if you use Comet LED strips, you can mount the bulb socket well below everything else. Since the strips are away from the socket and very low profile, everything fits easily. It's a few bucks more than $4.18, but not much more.

I do this mod to nearly all my machines but I prefer the 555 plastic wedge sockets. Less metal to contact other things and a slightly slimmer profile. Great post!

While I wait for a buyer for my Hardbody, I went ahead and pulled the trigger and popped on the $20 for the parts I need to do this mod on it.
I'll put up some after pics when complete. It'll give me something to do, pinball related, this weekend.

Orange buttons w warm white LEDS on Dr Dude

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Blue buttons w blue LEDs on Demo Man. Wish I would have used clear buttons on this one. But it's sold and gone now.

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Nice & easy update to my Gottlieb Haunted House, the only (minor) hurdle was drilling a few holes through the metal backing plates. I've never tried the clear backing plates on my Gottliebs as suggested above, but perhaps this method is a slight improvement as it traps more of the light inside the button housing. These buttons POP!

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They sure do.

what is on stern Spike Systems?

Where can I have the Volt?

I ran power for my GB Pro buttons off the pf gi, those are 6v I think. If their 5v it will still work, you'll never notice a 1v difference.

Second the change on this to using 555 Sockets.
No metal to metal issues.

Strips are great too!

Sorry to bump this, but we've put this stuff together for you at Comet Pinball as a kit using our Matrix products (meaning: no soldering required). In our case, we give you a bulb with a connector that goes into your coin door, and that provides power to the bulbs that illuminate the buttons. There is a quick video on our page showing how to install them. It's really easy.

http://www.cometpinball.com/product-p/kit-lit-button.htm

Normally we have RGB color changing as an option, but those have been selling pretty well so we ran out! Expecting to be restocked on those in a few weeks.

Nice work and a very fair/reasonable price. I have done my own already but would probably go with your kit in the future to reduce the install time.

Just and FYI: I believe if anybody wanted this for their WOZ they would need 12 volt LEDs. I used a little step down 12V to 6 V transformer board to power RGB flipper LEDs on my WOZ.

I use the twin head flex from Comet.

This is true. There are two obstacles for us to making 12v kits right now. If there is demand, I'm sure we could figure something out.

Mind sharing what you used? Maybe that's something we can add.

There are many choices on the internet. I see them ranging from $1 to around $8. Ebay has a bunch. Here is a picture of the one I used:

IMG_2069 (resized).JPG

Here is a link that appears to be somewhat similar:
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/LM2596-DC-12v-adjustable-Voltage-Regulated-Power-Supply-Converter-24v-to-12v-12-Volt-to-5v/1900707610.html?spm=2114.search0306.3.20.2337362eO1OQwR&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_0_10130_10152_10151_10618_10059_10696_10084_100031_10083_10547_10624_10546_10623_10307_10548_10341_10065_10340_10068_10343_10342_10103_10620_10344_10325_10545_10622_10324_10621,searchweb201603_0,ppcSwitch_0&algo_pvid=960994ec-ba38-4e9d-9e7c-eee62383376f&algo_expid=960994ec-ba38-4e9d-9e7c-eee62383376f-2

That's a pretty good price for that kit. Very clever adding the connector to the bulb. No soldering required!

I'm no electrical engineer and I'm not sure what the inherent risks might be so take this with a grain of salt. When I was building my vpin, I had some buttons that needed 12v and some that needed 6v and I didn't want to run two different wires. A friend suggested using Zener diodes on the 6v buttons to step down the voltage. If I recall correctly, I simple soldered them inline with the wire. It dropped the voltage down to 5v at the button but they look fine. He indicated that the diode might get a bit warm to the touch but nowhere close to anything dangerous. This solution seems to be working perfectly for me. I figure it would pretty easy for Ryan to include one set of wires for each bulb with the Zener diode and one without. Or make that an option when you order.

If there are any concerns here, I'd love to hear about it.

Buying everything needed I spent a little less than $8
2-Wedge base lamp socket (1.29 each)
2- Wedge base 1 smd flexible led (0.99 each)
About 12 ft of 22 guage wire ( 0.15/ft)
Bag of small Zip ties to keep everything tidy (1.20)

My machine already had red translucent flipper buttons which saved on cost as well as time. It was pretty easy. I stole power from one of the coin slot lights. The whole mod took me about 30 min. total to do and I love how it turned out. The only negative is that there is a fair bit of light bleed into the shooter lane that I'll probably make some sort of light sheild eventually for, but for now it's fine.

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I'd absolutely want to VID1900 near decade-old method of lighting buttons on my BK80.
But I cannot find a vendor who offers 1-3/8 inch translucent red and clear buttons!

Who did you purchase the red LED's from; and what model are they?

I bought a pair of red 'Premium Ghost Buster 1-SMD-LED #555 Wedge Base Lamp With Flexible 90° Angle Leads' from pinballlife.com. I'm disappointed with the result: Buttons that just aren't especially bright.

Did you use clear or translucent buttons? I have found that clear buttons with color LEDs works much better than translucent color buttons. Using the translucent buttons really cuts the amount of light that comes through.

That and color LEDs are usually not nearly as bright as white, so color buttons with white leds would probably be better as well.