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Fish Tales LED or leave incandescent.

Kenny Taylor

Kenny Taylor

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Jul 27, 2015
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North East of Scotland
Well finally resurrected my Fish Tales from my garage. Wow this game has so much flow. Highly addictive little game this. Really loving it but not sure whether to LED or leave it with incandescent bulbs. I’ve replaced the faulty bulbs on the playfield so all bulbs are working. I already have a few older pins not LED’d as I think it’s in keeping with age and theme.

So who has a Fishtales and lets share your photos of it :)
 
I have a Fish Tales and I put LED's in about a year ago. Not at home so can't send you any pics just yet.
 
Going against the grain - prefer incandescent, with just a few LED - like on jackpot inserts and a few others.

Mine had LED's and I took most of them out.

Very addictive game trying to get the super jackpot..... drives me nuts but one of THE best games of it's kind out there.

IMG_3978.jpg
 
Options:
  1. Fit Sunlight White frosted LEDs + an LED OCD board
  2. Leave the incandescent bulbs in.
Bright blinking LEDs on their own will look terrible.

All my opinion, and not one shared by everyone.
 
These days I've started to favour leaving inserts as incandescent and putting sunlight/warm white LEDs in GI unless I'm fitting LEDOCD as I really don't like the harsh on off blink as @Monkeyboypaul says above. Did this on my Tron and really pleased with the look of it so will also do the same for TZ when I start messing with that :thumbs:
 
I think with all these bright new stern pins. It makes a change having original incandescent machines. I tell you what those looping boat ramps are fast. I never thought the game would flow as well as it does. Just fantastic design. As far as I can make out the rules are fairly simple but it’s implemented to perfection.
 
I did my FT with LED's HOWEVER i used frosted warm white above the playfield which look very close to incandescent. I find white LEDS does the inserts just fine . The only coloured LED's I put in were behind the translite which worked really well.
 
Led all the way, lots of different types to get great lighting effects including old incandefunct
 
ronsplooter said:
These days I've started to favour leaving inserts as incandescent and putting sunlight/warm white LEDs in GI unless I'm fitting LEDOCD as I really don't like the harsh on off blink as @Monkeyboypaul says above. Did this on my Tron and really pleased with the look of it so will also do the same for TZ when I start messing with that :thumbs:
Click to expand...
LEDs in the GI without a fancy GI OCD board will mask any of the subtle WPC GI dimming effects, so be careful! TZ has them.
 
Monkeyboypaul said:
Options:
  1. Fit Sunlight White frosted LEDs + an LED OCD board
  2. Leave the incandescent bulbs in.
Bright blinking LEDs on their own will look terrible.

All my opinion, and not one shared by everyone.
Click to expand...
Basically this 100%. Cheaping out on the LED installation makes the entire thing look and feel like utter ****e to me. I'm sticking to bulbs in F14 until I can afford to do LEDs properly - because bad LEDs in F14 sounds like it would be against the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol IV for 'Blinding Laser Weapons'
 
PBrookfield said:
Basically this 100%. Cheaping out on the LED installation makes the entire thing look and feel like utter ****e to me. I'm sticking to bulbs in F14 until I can afford to do LEDs properly - because bad LEDs in F14 sounds like it would be against the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, Protocol IV for 'Blinding Laser Weapons'
Click to expand...
I have still never seen a game with LED OCD board so have to admit to being pretty curious!
 
LEDs in the GI without a fancy GI OCD board will mask any of the subtle WPC GI dimming effects, so be careful! TZ has them.
Click to expand...

I thought the dimming effects were pretty minimal in TZ though (as compared to TAF say) hence why I was going down this route as I won't be missing out on much?
 
ronsplooter said:
I thought the dimming effects were pretty minimal in TZ though (as compared to TAF say) hence why I was going down this route as I won't be missing out on much?
Click to expand...
Mainly the PowerBall callouts down the right side, mini-playfield fluctuates all GI and Jackpot award dimming. Congo is another that has some mental GI dimming.
TAF would be a mandatory GI OCD candidate with GI LEDs!
TZ is probably more optional, but i personally went with it. Like i say; You don’t notice it, til you’ve noticed it!
 
Whether you need it or not depends really on how bother you are by the digital nature of LEDs. LED (and GI) OCD boards make LEDs act like incandescents - as in it allows them to fade. Without the boards LEDs are either off or on.

The ROM hack you speak of modifies the duty cycle of LEDs to eliminate or reduce ghosting, which is a separate thing to dimming. As I understand it Bally/Williams added it to later game ROMs (Twilight Zone was the first I think?) and others have hacked the fix into older ROMs.

Personally I'm not massively fussed by the digital nature of LEDs, but some people hate it.

Having said that, as mentioned above some games - e.g. TAF, Funhouse, etc - use dimming functionally as part of the experience, so simply replacing incandescent bulbs with LEDs diminshes that. On some other pins you actually lose information from having digital on/off lighting (I think Spiderman is commonly mentioned as one that suffers)

All things being equal LED and GI OCD boards will give you the best of both worlds - a lighting experience that was originally intended by the people who made the game, with the reliability and much lower energy usage & heat output of LEDs.
 
Durzel said:
Anyone got any video of TZ's GI dimming?
Click to expand...

yes:

Quick scan through shows GI roughly dims at:
4:04 for MB start.
4:15 for Jackpot.
8:30 for Powerball callout.
14:10 for Power field.

GI OCD accentuates this dimming a bit more by making the GI LED's lowest brightness setting much dimmer than this example which uses bulbs. It accepts that LEDs are brighter generally, so the 'least bright' setting is very low to compensate and give a full range of noticeable brightness's.

J.C.Rox said:
Do you need ocd board with one of @Paul's fancy led friendly roms? My ft came with shocking flickering and ghosting and Paul's Rom sorted it out nicely.
Click to expand...
You never need one, but it's an optional extra to make things more true to the original game. Like aircon & posh leather seats in a car; better with, but it still drives without.
 
J.C.Rox said:
Do you need ocd board with one of @Paul's fancy led friendly roms? My ft came with shocking flickering and ghosting and Paul's Rom sorted it out nicely.
Click to expand...
The ROM code handles LED ghosting but still doesn't allow dimming. The ROM update is necessary in some machines if you put LEDs in the inserts (Ie, those that don't handle LEDs properly, I think most Bally / Williams prior to 1995). Looks bloody awful otherwise.

If you need (and want) dimming, I think you need the led-ocd. More prevalent in the GI. However you might still need it even without dimming if you notice LED flickering. I don't think I do; some do, some don't.
 
Digging this up because I'm going to redo the LEDs on my TAF (too warm for my tastes)

I have a bunch of bulbs already but will probably end up buying a load of new ones... what are peoples thoughts on GI (assume a WPC game rather than something like Tron)? Natural white? Sunlight? OpMax? Frosted even below plastics?

And even more controversial... same bulbs throughout? Or Ice Blue under blue plastics, for example.

And for inserts - frosted again?
 
Durzel said:
Digging this up because I'm going to redo the LEDs on my TAF (too warm for my tastes)

I have a bunch of bulbs already but will probably end up buying a load of new ones... what are peoples thoughts on GI (assume a WPC game rather than something like Tron)? Natural white? Sunlight? OpMax? Frosted even below plastics?

And even more controversial... same bulbs throughout? Or Ice Blue under blue plastics, for example.

And for inserts - frosted again?
Click to expand...

Having owned TAF in the past; this is what i'd do second time around should that ever happen:

  • Sunlight white frosted for inserts (as neutral white as i have found).
  • Colour-matched frosted LEDs for the chair, centre ramp and vault etc...
  • Warm white frosted for GI.
  • A green LED tied to the GI to accent the swamp.
  • Sunlight white frosted for Backbox.
  • GI + LED OCD.
It is entirely down to personal taste though.
 
I'll get a photo or two of mine tonight. It's definitely too warm for my tastes, though I suspect it's actually probably quite close to what you've described above (minus the GI/OCD boards and swamp light). I'm definitely more of a cooler white guy.

At first glance the guy/girl who restored it used warm white LEDs throughout, and the only bulbs that are frosted (not fully) are the chair, swamp and vault.

When you say "centre ramp" do you mean the clear one?

Where do you mount the green LED for the swamp? I was surprised to see no GI around that area at all.
 
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