LED displays for Elvira

What, I didn't tell you that I bought an Elvira? Don't tell my wife, ok? :-)
All joking aside, she really doesn't know. But she doesn't need to either, because I purchased it with a plan in mind. A friend of a friend desperately wants an Elvira, and I'm restoring it for him. Hopefully with a small profit.

We quickly realized that the left display had problems. There was no sign of life, and it also looked older than the right one, which must have been changed at some point.



Following Clay's display troubleshooting guide, we eventually found that the display itself was dead.
He even mentioned something which I believe is quite visible here..

Check the displays and if there are little bright speckles like tiny diamonds when the game is on, this usually means the display is outgassed. Also there is a little are below the visible section on the display with two tiny wires. If some white dust is seen, that's also a good indicator of an outgassed display.

Now, I had some options what to buy..

• One original display (approximately USD 160 + shipping from Norway, but it would require soldering)
• PinLED displays (approximately USD 225 + shipping from Germany)
• PINSCORE displays (USD 199 + shipping from USA)
• Rottendog Amusements (USD 150 + shipping from USA)

I chose the latter one, even though I didn't know that the three LED displays were from different manufacturers. I honestly believed that they were all from PinLED.

Soldering this would be quite boring..


I purchased the displays from how_bout_them_apples on eBay for USD 165 plus shipping, before I knew about the Rottendog site. Although a bit more expensive than Rottendog, he was very helpful and nice, and the shipping was lightning fast!
The displays themselves were a bit disappointing, though.
I chose LED displays because of the obvious advantages, even though they are a tad more expensive than an original display:

• They don't need 100V
• They're supposed to last up to 10 times longer than conventional displays
• No need for soldering
• They come in a matching pair

What struck me first of all, was that the segments were much lighter than on a conventional display. This makes the unlit segments more visible, which in my opinion leads to degraded contrast.




Also, the displays seem to be positioned 2-3 mm too high, they're not really vertically centered on the translite. Maybe it's because of the positioning of my translate, so I will test it further. This also leads to the circuit board being visible around the display. It would actually be visible anyway, as the displays themselves are smaller than conventional displays.



They have included masking stickers, which I believe will hide the issue somewhat.



All in all, the conclusion is 2 thumbs up from the boogie men! (Out of 4, that is).



I actually found someone describing the very same problems on RGP:

One issue with the Rottendog display is that it doesn't line up as
good as the original did so it looks odd in my Funhouse. It sits a
little too deep behind the glass so from a playing position the top
actually gets cut off from my view. Also i can see the circuit board
around the display. They give you a black sticker to put somewhere to
hide that, but I didn't really see a good way to attach it. I have to
play around with the spacers(or maybe even remove them) when I get
time I guess, but unless I installed something wrong, it wasn't a
perfect replacement. Also the display shows white letter/number
segments when they're not lit which for me is very distracting. I was
disappointed overall.