Testing New LED Displays From Australia For Classic Bally and Stern Solid State Pinball Machines

Today I’m testing some new LED displays that come from Australia.

These new LEDs are a drop in replacement for the standard high voltage displays, but use less power and look almost identical to the original displays.

They’re produced by Wayne Hamilton out of Australia. Here is where you can find his products:

eBay Australia: https://www.ebay.com.au/usr/omfug1190

GeekPCBs: https://geekpcbs.au/

Diagnosing Stern Spike 2 Node Board Problems With Jaws Pinball

In this video I dive into diagnosing an error condition with a 48v node board for Stern’s Spike 2 pinball system. In this case, I have a Jaws Pro where most of the switches went out and a lot of coils stopped working. The machine says “Node 9 not found” so we’re going to take a look at what the problem is.

the fin up kicker coil was melted and shorted

The fin up kicker coil was fried and shorted.

Here is the damaged Node board 9 – there’s a driver transistor that exploded and isn’t there in the middle

corrosion on the underside of the board??

On the underside of the node board, there was a bunch of corrosion. The problem is, there’s no indication of where this came from? It’s at the top of the playfield underneath the playfield, not near any area where any cleaning solvents could lead, and I didn’t use any cleaning solvents on the playfield. It must have come this way from the factory.

Upgrading the bottom speaker on a modern Stern pinball machine

The woofers that Stern puts in their games are pretty flimsy. If you accidentally drop the playfield on them – ooops, you can dent the frame and make the speaker sound like crap. So now I have to replace this speaker but you can find far better quality replacements on Amazon that will drop right in. Here’s a quick video on how to do that without having to spend $100+