By Ken Walker, Team EM
I "met" Brett Davis on line on RGP (rec.games.pinball newsgroup) and entered a discussion that eventually morphed into us discussing our kids and our autistic sons specifically. Through our discussions, I had mentioned to him I had a Gorgar machine coming up for repair and one of the problems with it was the display.
To make a long story short, Brett asked me if I’d be interested in doing some testing for his new PinScore Display kit for Williams System 3-6 games (The PS-8000-P). He also asked me what kinds of writing I had done in the past and I informed him that I occasionally write articles for RePlay magazine. I also have a technical background in Aviation Maintenance and I used to make a living reading technical manuals and writing reports with regard to the work accomplished on aircraft.
I am in no way affiliated with PinScore and my only "bias" (or perhaps "payment") is that Brett gave me a working Display kit to keep and evaluate. I’m really just a random guy. If I didn’t like the displays, I’d probably send it back to Brett and decline to do a review.
The above disclaimer being said, I met Brett in person at Pinball Expo 2007 in Chicago this past October and took possession of the PS-8000-P Display kit. Production was just completed and Brett had 3 kits to be given to various folks for testing purposes.
That’s not to say that’s all he and Marco Specialties had at Expo. My first impression of coming up to the Marco booth (even before meeting Brett) was that PinScore had some really nice displays. Featured were mock-ups of the displays in actual backglasses plus a working Williams JOKERZ! Machine. I happened to be just gazing at the JOKERZ! and not really seeing anything that stood out at me. My friend Chris, who was standing next to me, said something like: “Wow look, those aren’t the original displays!”
This moment of realization was, for me, the main thing that stands out about the PinScore displays. They look like they are supposed to. They are a direct replacement for the original displays and unless you really know what to look for, you’d never notice the difference between two games standing side by side!
Case in point, as I photographed the Firepower used in this article, I had a hard time figuring out which was the before pic and the after pic. If the digital photos weren’t numbered, I’d have had a difficult time getting it right!
Firepower with failing original displays
Firepower with PS-8000-P PinScore displays installed
I will leave it up to the reader to decide how these displays look. Some people may rather do the repairs of an out-gassed display and replace the glass. You may decide that you would rather have ‘original’ equipment and do the repairs to the high voltage sections and the classic missing segment / burned to a crisp resistors on the master board.
Being a technician and pretty thrifty, I totally respect this view and am not knocking it. If you are into getting a game going with your skills with a soldering iron and you want to save a few bucks, then this may not be the option for you.
If, however, you want to get a game running in about 15-20 minutes, can eliminate the high voltage section of a 20+ year-old game and are in business of repairing pinball machines for customers, then read on. I will attempt to explain why I believe the PinScore displays are not only good looking, but a good investment as well.
I’m always amazed how some things work out. Due to production times, Brett was not able to get me the Displays for my Gorgar Repair. No problem. I replaced the broken glass display and fixed the missing segments. I also have a friend with a System 3 Lucky 7 and I figured I might try to get a cheap System 3-6 machine with a blown out display. It turns out that a friend of a friend picked up a Firepower at Expo, but did not have a vehicle to transport it back home to St. Louis. He asked me if I’d grab and keep the machine for a few weeks until he could get back up to Chicago.
Problem solved! There was nothing wrong with the displays on the Firepower, so I knew I had a good working machine in which to test the new displays.
I started out by reading the instructions. I know. Real men don’t read instructions, right? Well, my background in aviation means that I always read instructions. In this case, however, they really aren’t needed. The installation is so simple that with just a bit of intuition, you can replace the displays in no time at all with minimal thinking needed. This doesn’t mean that it’s totally idiot proof, but if you have even a small bit of pin maintenance experience, you can do this without reading the instructions. If you don’t feel comfortable with basic pin repairs, then reading the instructions will eliminate any fears.
What I really mean by this is that Step 4 is important to note that one needs to make sure that the correct polarity be observed on the ribbon cables. I have learned from working on WPC games, that the red wire on ribbon cables is supposed to be connected to Pin 1 (this is also noted in the instructions). I know this, but not everyone might, so this is an important step to follow.
By contrast, Step 1 made me kind of chuckle. It is a caution not to mix original high voltage equipment with the PinScore systems. Since there is no physical way of doing this, it made me laugh a bit. It’s a good warning, but not really necessary.
Getting back to the install. The displays are packaged nicely with little chance of any damage during shipping.
No High Voltage and No nipples! I usually like nipples, but not when it comes to display glasses. In my display swap of the Firepower, I was keenly aware that I had to NOT damage the old displays because I was going to re-install the original glasses before the game went back to St. Louis. Having those glass nipples out there was pretty scary and I also remembered how nervous I was doing the Gorgar display glass repair a few weeks prior. The PinScore displays eliminate the ultra-caution needed when working on the displays.
Displays and the master display are very easy to remove and replace. There are 4 nuts and star washers on each display and 5 or 6 nuts and star washers on the master board. I used a magnetic bowl to keep the nuts and washers at hand. The hardware is small and can go places if you aren’t ready for them. The magnetic bowl usually catches dropped hardware as well.
It took me about 10 minutes to change out the 4 displays and the one master display (not counting the extra time to snap photos).
After I got the displays mounted, I hooked up the wiring harness connectors to the master display. The right connector and left upper connector went right on. The left bottom connector was tight and I had to make sure the connector was completely straight in order for it to connect. In other words, it was a bit tight, but I got it on without too much fighting or finger-pain.
I then started hooking up the ribbon cables, but soon realized that there are two lengths of cables and I was not routing the cables with much luck so I took a bit of a more logical approach to doing it. The Master Board is nicely labeled noting the Pin 1 of each cable and which display goes where. I decided that I would mount the cables using the longest ones for Display 2 & 3 (farthest away) and the shorter ones for 1 & 4 (closer to the master). Once these were connected to the Master display, I laid the cables out in front of me.
At first, I thought that the ribbon cables were a bad idea and that they would obscure the GI lighting and flash bulbs. I found instead that you could roll the cables to fit into the Adel-type clamps provided for the old harnesses. I also realized, after re-installing the old displays, that the old harnesses get in the way just as bad as the ribbon cables do, so my initial concern was unfounded. It wasn’t wrong or a bad idea, it was just different and not a big deal once I realized it.
That’s pretty much all there is. In my experiences with this product, I would definitely recommend this over a complete overhaul of a blown display system; where 2 or more displays are out-gassed or broken; and/or where you are charging time and materials for a customer. In the case of the Gorgar, I charged my customer $300.00 USD to repair the display and parts to do so (That is: a new Display Glass and several Resistors and connector issues on the master board). I could have charged the $200 that the display costs, plus an install fee of, say, $50 and would have had a product that won’t blow up on me a week, month or years later. The customer would be $50 ahead and I would have had the peace of mind knowing that I wouldn’t be called back at any time to change out another burned out resistor or out-gassed glass.
After talking to Brett at Expo, I realized that he has poured his heart into the PinScore products. He has paid very close attention to the small details like the black backgrounds of the LED displays, the thin LEDs with the correct color orange, the modular style design and the custom fit foam boarders that blocks out GI lighting.
It’s these details that made me NOT notice that the JOKERZ! game was sporting new LED displays. If it hadn’t been for the sign on top of the games that had these displays, I doubt very much that people would have given the displays a second thought and that is what sets PinScore apart. I learned a long time ago while doing furniture refinishing and restorations, that whatever repairs you do, it must look like it has always been there so as to be NOT noticed. PinScore displays do just that and are a viable replacement display system that will keep these great games going well into the next 20 years and beyond. My experience is only on the Williams System 3-6 Display kits. There were other kits for Bally and Williams that looked great. I can assume that they meet the same high standard that this system does, but have not used or tested them. Still, I would not hesitate to purchase any one of these systems for any game I needed them for. Now that the Firepower is gone, I still need to find a System 3-6 game, to, ah, test the long-term benefits of the PinScore Displays. Yeah, that’s the ticket!
My wife might even fall for that one.