Being a hopeless tinkerer (is that a real word
) I noticed while playing my SSS7, the the Lavender colored Double Bar symbols
would light up pink instead of purple/lavender. So I set out to find an easy way to correct this problem. I first thought of changing out the bulbs in the
reels to leds. I found a video on Youtube by some guy named IGTMAN, (who is that guy?? he has a h_ll of a collection of machines!!), who had changed his out, and
it really made a difference in the colors on his reels. Not sure of which led bulbs I should use, I decided to try to find some purple cellophane to slip in behind the strips.
It was close to Easter and I figured that purple cellophane would be easy to find at that time. WRONG
I did a little more digging around on the net
and thought I would try colored gels that cover flash units on cameras... Good idea..Too expensive
A little more digging and I decided to try regular
theater gels for lighting units....AAh Haa!...
I went to a local Magic/Costume shop that a friend of mine operates, (he also sells, and rents lighting, sound and DJ equipment at his shop). Lo and behold
he had every imaginable color of the rainbow available
I bought what I though would be a suitable color, took it home, measured and cut some pieces to fit and
Bingo! I had my solution.
A single color sheet gel costs about $8.00 with tax, and is enough to do lots of reel strips...It really more than you need, but the price isn't bad.
The first color I bought, really turned out too dark, so I went back to find a lighter color several weeks later. I couldnt really find the color I thought Ii needed so the guy at the shop
gave me a sample pack of gels by Apollo, (shown in the first pic) Well, the size looked just about the perfect to fit the reels, and what do know..It is perfect!
So now I have hundreds of colors to swap and play with, and the sample pack was FREE!
The gels just slide into place behind the reel strips and dont seem to have any real problem slipping out of place.
The first ones I cut from the sheet only slipped slightly on reel #1 after several thousand spins, and it takes about 3 seconds to fix the problem.
Best of all, no tape etc, is needed so it doesn't gum up your reel strips!
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