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What can be said about Flash, EVERYBODY knows this machine and I believe that it is the 2nd highest selling machine in Williams history. Back in 1979 when it was released you could find a Flash pinball machine just about anywhere, every Arcade had one, every movie cinema complex had one and a lot of milk bars and corner stores had them too. I loved this machine as a teenager, when I think back about pinball's Flash is ALWAYS the first one that comes to mind and it was always going to be number 1 on my have to have list for many years. Flash was the first pinball machine to have continually rising background sounds that helped to add to the general atmosphere of the game during game play, I am sure that these new sounds also attracted players to the machine as well. Flash also has the typical lightning fast Bumper section that were installed on most Williams machines from this era, as well as having an awesomely fast spinner shot available to fire the ball back up to the top 1-2-3-4 rollover lanes where you can increase your X Bonus. The champion players on Flash were able to score 50,000 points by knocking down the centre 3 targets 3 times to receive "Super Flash", the 5 drop targets on the right could be hit using the lower right flipper or the extra right flipper mounted midway up the playfield. Dropping those 5 targets eventually lights the right eject hole for 10,000 points and then Extra Ball, dropping them again lights the outlanes for Specials. In August 2003 I managed to track down my Flash BUT it was in awful condition and was going to take a LOT of work to get it back to the state it deserved to be in, the cabinet was absolutely shithouse with marks , gouges and scratches all over it, the back glass was probably about a 5 out of 10 as it had been in a back box that had caught fire, and the playfield was a disgrace, it had warped, broken and bent everything and a lot of the inserts were popping out including the large boomerang shaped BLUE Flash insert in the middle of the playfield, it was warped and sticking up on either end about 4 mm. On my link pages you can find information on how I completely re-build pinball cabinets from scratch using 19mm plywood, these pages have a lot of detailed pictures as well. You can also learn how I stencil and re-paint the cabinet artwork on the main cabinet and back boxes as well as see a lot of info on a playfield rip and re-build including a simple method of making the Apron brand new again. I hope that you can pick up some tips from the following pages that may inspire some of you to have a go at restoring that old pin you have been wondering what to do with, or I hope that it just brings you back some memories of this fantastic Williams pinball machine.
Now- onto my main Flash restoration pages - I have spread some of the following chapters over a few pages so that I could show many decent size images without the pages taking ages to download for you.
Use the links below, in order, to see what it started as and move on to see what it became. These pages will show you how I re-built a pinball cabinet from scratch. The OLD Cabinet New Cabinet Page 1 New Cabinet Page 2 New Cabinet Page 3
See the old battered playfield and then move on to see images of it like new again. The OLD Playfield New Playfield Page 1 NNew Playfield Page 2
The Apron gets a re-spray and a new decal and an old Firepower backbox is transformed into my Flash backbox.
After a lot of hard work, Flash is back in the state it deserves to be
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