Are you spending too much time installing the GI lighting on your game? Read on for time saving tips! When it comes to General Illumination, it can be quite time consuming to install new pinball LEDs- depending on how you do it. Typically, GI lighting is accessible from under the playfield and this is surely the quickest way to change out the GI lighting to your shiny new LEDs. Simply locate the lamp that you want to replace, and from the bottom of the playfield, remove the small screw holding the lamp socket to the playfield, replace bulbs, and you're done! It really is that simple. Each light should take about 1 minute which can save tons of time over laboriously removing ramps, plastics, toys, etc... For this job, life would be so much easier if you had a ¼" nut driver. Our favorite nut driver is the Klein Magnetic Tip Nut Driver. The magnetized tip is especially helpful if you drop a screw in a tight place where fingers can't really reach. After you change a few GI lamps you'll soon realize that your nut driver went from a valuable tool in your toolbox to a priceless tool.It seems sort of obvious, but one may not have thought about it until shown how to do it. We've had several customers ask what the easiest way to remove ramps was so that they could access the GI. We tell them of this method and they quickly realize that this way makes much more sense. Here are a couple things to remember when doing this. We strongly recommend changing out the GI lights with the machine powered *OFF*... it may be easier to just keep the game on so that you can keep track of your progress as you go, but the risk of shocking yourself and/or shorting something out simply isn't worth it. If you insist that keeping your game on is the way to go, you may want to consider using heat-shrink tubing or electrical tape to coat the shaft of the nut driver and keep it from accidentally making contact with coil tabs, other lamp sockets, etc...Also remember that this method isn't available for all games. Unfortunately some manufactures, such as Data East, didn't make replacing the GI so easy... therefore they may not be accessible from under the playfield.
