London
It’s me again! Davey from Stumblor here, with another long winded mod introduction. But don’t worry! It’s super easy to politely ignore most of it because hey - paragraphing. Did you know paragraphing was invented just so people could politely ignore long winded intros on pinball forums? Well it was! Sometime in the 1800s. Look it up.
Hopefully you’ve seen our illustrious entries into the pantheon of Godzilla mods - the Tokyo Neon sign, Noodle Bar, and Subway buildings, each more fiendish than the last. Not only fiendish, but also slightly popular - to the point that my wife now isn’t giving me evils every time a new pin enters the house. Win!
But who cares about those other mods - you’re here for one thing and one thing only. Boobs! Sorry, wrong tab - JAWS!
This project originally started out as a sign replacement, similar to what we did for the original Tokyo Neon sign. The sign in Jaws is this one.
Not great. Kinda like skittles decided to greenwash their packaging.
I had a couple of ideas for this, but quickly ran into problems with the amount of space I had to work with, particularly on the premium. There just wasn’t the depth to create a nice, diffused resin sign.
I got chatting about the problem with @joelbob, and we hashed out some alternative ideas. Could I make something else that communicated the same information, but in a different way? Again there were issues - the idea I had was quite complex, using techniques I hadn’t used before, and I wasn’t entirely convinced I could pull it off. It also needed space, on a game that surprisingly doesn’t have a lot of it available. But the idea was a banger, so I wanted to give it a shot.
Eventually, the area around the fishing reel stood out. There was (just enough) space to work with, and it was the same design from both pro and premium, which meant I could stick to one design. With no game in hand, I leaned heavily on joelbob for scans and measurements. At Expo, I pulled apart poor
1956PINHEAD jaws pro on his stall to test fit the main bracket. Since I only received my Jaws last week, this early help was invaluable. Thanks fellas, you da best!
So what is it? It’s a buoy of course! Inspired by the one Chrissie holds onto at the start of the movies before she’s munched by our sharp toothed protagonist.
Ouch my foot!
I say “inspired” because this isn’t a movie replica. You have other options if you want that. To do what I wanted to do, I had to change it a bit.
Did I change it too much? Well, I’ll let you decide.
I give you … The BUOY OF DEAAAAATH
* Motorised “bobbing” buoy, by default on all the time, but can also by triggered by events. Hand painted tough nylon, with a rusty metal effect.
* Wrap around matrix LED screen (Like Elton, only less camp!) with 198 LEDs. Text ticker showing game events pulled from the sign. Ability to show Animated GIFs, like the blood effect when the chum line is hit. We will likely include the ability to change this text and the GIFs.
* Buoy Siren. Triggerable by events, and fully configurable (pattern and colours)
* Water effect resin with over 100 LEDs. Triggerable by events, and fully configurable (pattern and colours). More or less ‘blood’ if you find it too much.
* 100% configurable through the Lolly Web UI
* Fully tested with an awesome-o-meter and scored a very respectable score of ‘highly dope’.
Let’s talk about STRENGTH (baby)
Jaws has an airball problem. There’s a bunch of fixes, but many games will no doubt still have the issue. Airballs create damage. If your game has airballs off the chum line - this mod is directly in line to receive airball hits, and that’s something I needed contingency for.
I’m addressing this by using a super durable vac casted transparent resin product, usually used for things like motorcycle visors. I’m reinforcing the frontal areas. We’ll be testing the shit out of it. But do yourself a favour - kills those airballs. We’ll include all the recommendations for best how to do this as part of the install instructions.
The water
I’m really happy with how this turned out, but it was a STRUGGLE. The LED PCB has to sit on top of the ball guide, since there is no space for otherwise, which meant there wasn’t that much room for diffusing the LEDs. We tried multiple LED varieties, resin products, colour mixes and internal diffusion designs before arriving at this. I hope you like the result as much as I do (and as always, it’s better in person).
I’m not done with this yet either. The next iteration will be less blocky at the front, and we’re also looking at ways to improve how it looks with the game off.
The wrap around screen
Also a massive struggle. But the result is insane. The ability to play GIFs on it opens up so many interesting possibilities too.
The friggin’ MOVEMENT
I was blown away when I saw how InteractivePinball used motors to create movement on his Twilight Zone Playing Piano mod. Such a simple idea but with a HUGE visual impact - it just makes you smile.
Jazzbouche and I have been having a lot of conversations around what we think the ‘next frontier’ is for pinball modding, and for us, this is it. Movement! But then obviously combined with all the bells and whistles too
Extensible
Which is just a fancy way of saying ‘extendable’ ! There’s an output on the PCB so we can create more water areas for other plastics, like the barren upper left area on the pro, or the long plastic on the right of both version under Diddy’s lighthouse.
Price and timings
Based on current estimates, we’ve managed to keep the price of this at Noodle/Subway levels, which is £239 ($295 USD based on today’s conversion). We’ll start sending them out when done with the Subway and the TBL Hollywood sign, which is approximately 3-4 months if all goes well.
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Snohomish, WA
Lethbridge, AB
Oberthulba
Prague
