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Anyone concerned about playfield issues JJP and Stern? Or seen them?

I wonder what the percentage is of operated machines to home use here in the UK?
I can’t remember the last time I saw a pinball in the wild and I love a drink!
Home users are much fussier and with this info someone is going to take a big hit because these playfields aren’t going to mature like a fine wine!
 
That’s my view M4carp. I mentioned it to the guy who runs electrocoin and he said that on location is huge compared to home use - not sure where all these secret pin locations are!


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I don’t worry about FRUs going pop
Easy enough to sort if/when required.
The PF isn’t in the same category as above and shouldn’t have issues from the outset.
 
M4carp said:
I wonder what the percentage is of operated machines to home use here in the UK?
I can’t remember the last time I saw a pinball in the wild and I love a drink!
Home users are much fussier and with this info someone is going to take a big hit because these playfields aren’t going to mature like a fine wine!
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I’m an operator and also fussy when buying a new machine, but at the same time realistic that there might possibly be some kind of imperfection somewhere on the pf, and only flag them to the manufacturer and or Phil if they are clearly visible. If a mark, scratch, rippling, pooling blah bla is hidden under plastic or a ramp etc I don’t care.
Out of sight out of mind and all that
 
Chief said:
I’m an operator and also fussy when buying a new machine, but at the same time realistic that there might possibly be some kind of imperfection somewhere on the pf, and only flag them to the manufacturer and or Phil if they are clearly visible. If a mark, scratch, rippling, pooling blah bla is hidden under plastic or a ramp etc I don’t care.
Out of sight out of mind and all that
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I seem to remember Phil saying he will not sell them if the problem carries on and I don’t blame him, not worth the hassle if it carries on.
I’m hoping to visit you sooner or later as I’m from Acton and my parents live just down the road, I will bring my glasses😂
It’s only pinball as the saying goes😏
 
My black knight has washers under the metal posts and I don’t see anything major up at the moment. Maybe time will tell. The clear coat seems bloody good to me and isn’t dimpling as much as previous new games as far as I can tell right now. My game was completed/built July 8th but only arrived Friday (20th September). Maybe this helped
 
myPinballs said:
My black knight has washers under the metal posts and I don’t see anything major up at the moment. Maybe time will tell. The clear coat seems bloody good to me and isn’t dimpling as much as previous new games as far as I can tell right now. My game was completed/built July 8th but only arrived Friday (20th September). Maybe this helped
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My Jurassic Park had been unboxed and fitted with metal washers under the front posts of the slings also! Stern must have known there was an issue to do their so so solution but failed to tell Electro Coin or Phil
 
How does this happen on a JP?:-
Friday afternoon exodus or Monday morning hangover on the PF production line?

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I am concerned with the rubbish build quality. Seems safer to buy 70s to 90s machines that have stood the test of time.

If you wanna roll the dice on a new game, bravo.
 
Durzel said:
Yeah. How would they accidentally manufacture a clear insert for it?
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Pinball playfields are a little more piecemeal than that.

Other than a handful of expensive, custom shapes for a specific playfield (rare on any generation of pinball) all of the inserts are standardised shapes and are pre-made, then pressed into the playfield and glued into place.
The printing on top happens well after this stage of the playfield manufacture - as immediately after gluing inserts into place the entire field needs to be sanded flat.

Fundamentally that JP insert is just a square insert and there's many colours of those: https://www.pinballlife.com/34-square-inserts-9835.html

Someone either loaded a machine's hopper with a clear insert, or someone was asleep at the wheel.

You can see a lot of prototype / test machines that can have seemingly randomly coloured inserts ("Whatever works as long as it fits, we're just testing anyway" or more likely "we can't decide which of these two colours would look better, so mix them for this build and see which looks best") or prototypes that have colours of inserts that were later changed for the production models.
 
DRD said:
I am concerned with the rubbish build quality. Seems safer to buy 70s to 90s machines that have stood the test of time.

If you wanna roll the dice on a new game, bravo.
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Well, that's a tautology. All games that remain from the 70s to 90s have withstood the test of time. The ones that didn't.. er... didn't, and have been scrapped or parted out by now.

Avoid falling for the common mistake of nostalgia when it comes to mass-produced items (at any scale) - after a certain point it's too easy to assume the uniform quality of something is much higher than it actually was at the time, because the lemons are no longer around to make things look crap.

e.g. early Williams games had the ability to catch fire!
 
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PBrookfield said:
Well, that's a tautology. All games that remain from the 70s to 90s have withstood the test of time. The ones that didn't.. er... didn't, and have been scrapped or parted out by now.

Avoid falling for the common mistake of nostalgia when it comes to mass-produced items (at any scale) - after a certain point it's too easy to assume the uniform quality of something is much higher than it actually was at the time, because the lemons are no longer around to make things look crap.
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Yes but those machines were hammered in a commercial environment unlike todays.
Dimpling, clearcoat issues etc I don’t see these in any 90’s machines I’ve had but I have seen some insert wear.
 
M4carp said:
Yes but those machines were hammered in a commercial environment unlike todays.
Dimpling, clearcoat issues etc I don’t see these in any 90’s machines I’ve had but I have seen some insert wear.
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https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/playfield-dimple-reality-check

However clearcoat issues are a little more valid. The current failures, like for silver solder, are to do with newer water-based formulations, while being better for the environment, are just outright worse at their job / harder to get as good as previous formulations. The solvent-based urethane clear coat games still look great, but the old 70s lacquer games are usually spiderwebbing by now.
 
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Looks like reported playfield issues are going unanswered, a number of pinsiders with pooling/chipping playfields have gone a couple months now with no word back from Stern.
 
Was the same with GB - they will update at expo.


I think comparing older games to newer ones is a fallacy - older games predominantly on location and ops didn’t give a **** so any problems would be ignored for the most part.


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I suspect they'll deal with it by saying that there are "isolated cases" and "the majority of our customers have reported no issues", and deal with individuals on a case by case basis, maybe with some pressure on people not to go public with whatever resolution they get. At the end of the day there will be a lot of people who just want their pin fixed, who don't want to be a figurehead for the "bring Stern to task" movement, etc. There will, sadly, be a number of people who want to maintain a good relationship with Stern - let's face it who are you going to buy new pins from?
 
Neil McRae said:
Was the same with GB - they will update at expo.


I think comparing older games to newer ones is a fallacy - older games predominantly on location and ops didn’t give a **** so any problems would be ignored for the most part.


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So how many older games that are in circulation now have problems, I’ve had quite a few and they have been good considering they were on site and quite old now?
 
M4carp said:
So how many older games that are in circulation now have problems, I’ve had quite a few and they have been good considering they were on site and quite old now?
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Many be all the ones junked had the problems? :)


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JJP build quality - honestly they make stern look like Oscar winners. For ages I couldn’t figure out why my headphone socket didn’t work. Finally get round to debugging it - it’s not connected! Why not? Some jeenius cable tied the the loom for it so aggressively the cable didn’t reach so rather than fix that they simple left it un-connected...

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Overly tight cables are a common problem at JJP I believe, my DI was reporting no Bluetooth dongle when I got it, all the cables in the head were tied too tight and the USB extension hanging out.
 
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