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Reflex Trivia and Facts:
Well on one
very lucky day for me, Mr. Jeffery Lawton kindly offered to send me a VHS
tape copy of the Pinball Expo Don Hooker interview performed by Russ
Jensen, Dick Buschel, and a few others who had the wonderful experience on
talking to the man himself who designed the bulk of the bingo pins and
circuitry.
During the
interview, one of the interviews was talking about how it was possible for
the owners to change the odds on the bingos to control the payout percentage
from 60% to 90%…
In looking at
my pins (older bingos) I couldn’t figure it out, so I wrote Russ Jensen and
asked if he knew about this and if he could tell me the procedure:
Dan,
I just talked
to my old friend Marc Fellman in NB and he gave me some more info on the
Reflex unit.
First he said in all his years working with coin machines and bingos he has
never seen anything printed on how to change the Reflex Unit. It was
apparently some "secret" knowledge passed on only to people with
the "need to know".
Anyway, I was wrong. What you have to do is change the gears on the unit
to change the odds. So you must have all the proper gears to do it.
All for now.
Well now! A
super secret knowledge only passed on to the “trusted” inner circle, well
who they heck where these guys?
Later Russ
sent a follow-up email:
I found it last night.
What it was was a special manual put out when SAFARI was released. It
primarily shows Illustrated Parts Breakdowns for the major game
assemblies/units. I have included a scan of the first page which
pretty well explains it. It does not contain anything on the Reflex
Unit except a parts breakdown.
As I recall (and Jeff L could surely tell you all) to change the odds you
had to purchase replacement disks to install on the unit for each payout
percentage.
All for now.
Russ
When I
contacted Jeff he kindly offers to email a copy (5 days and 60 emails later) I own the Green
Book:
If you would like a copy of the “green book” or a high
resolution copy of the above “exploded” view please let me know and I’ll
send em right out to ya. Someday when time allows I will post them on this
site.
Well I love when Raymond Watts has his eye on you, this
guys definitely has a history with these machines. In response to seeing
this page from me, he sends a couple of emails my way:
I am glad to see that you are back!
Thanks
for the topic of the reflex unit. The reflex was first used on the
bally one ball machines. Early reflex units were not wipers, but were
snap switches. See my posting, Bally Reflex Unit With Snap Switches,
here:
http://rwatts.cdyn.com/Machines/download_area.html
Attached are scans of two pages from a 1950 Turf King
instruction manual. The first page mentions that two additional
ratchet wheels were furnished for game proportioning.
More
wheels were furnished for the bingos--I don't know how many more.
Attached is a photo of four wheels I have, numbered 1 through 4.
Sorry for the poor resolution of my cheap digital camera. The
No. 1 wheel has the fewer teeth, so resets faster. The No.
4 wheel has the most teeth resetting slowest.
Hi Danny –
I found
this parts list in my instructions for the 1950 Bally Grandstand payout
machine. It describes ratchets 2, 3, and 4 as liberal, medium and
conservative.
Ray
How cool is that, know anyone with a machine shop?
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