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CPR BACKGLASSES

DRD

DRD

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Oct 26, 2014
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My fathom backglass arrived today. Was a very expensive operation getting this from Bay Area Amusements in the US.

Usd 200 cost
Usd 60 shipping
£41 uk duties

I think the original fathom backglass is an absolute classic piece of pinball art, one of the very very best. So I was prepared to "go the extra mile" as my games is a keeper and the art is lifting badly from the glass.

the original Bally one
image.jpg

The CPR

image.jpg

Side by side - you can see how much darker and less detailed the CPR is.
image.jpg

Detail shot - Bally
image.jpg

Detail shot - CPR, showing the blurry signature and loss of subtle tones in the surrounding artwork

image.jpg

The CPR also has areas that look like dirty head tracks on an inkjet printer. It is nowhere near the quality of the original.

In short I am disappointed. It is great that CPR is helping to keep old games alive. The CPR plastics seem much higher quality to me than the backglasses.

The original Bally is far higher resolution. The original one is also lighter so the innumerate subtle details of shades and colours in it are just "drowned out" on the CPR one. The CPR one does have better mirroring though, as the mirror is against much darker colours.

Despite the lifting of the art, I think my original looks much better

Based on this I would say that a CPR backglass is better than not having a backglass. But the original needs to be quite damaged (meaningful areas of missing art) before the CPR will look better. So think long and hard before you buy one
 
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DRD said:
In short I am disappointed. It is great that CPR is helping to keep old games alive. The CPR plastics seem much higher quality to me than the backglasses.
Click to expand...
Agreed, I would be too based on these shots, I thought initially you'd labelled them the wrong way around. Does the CPR have a patch of paint missing bottom left too? A patch of light appears to be shining through.
 
Ooh. Tough one. All the points you make are exactly my observation too. I think CPR did a PARAGON backglass at one point and it got a similar response. If yours was missing or really buggered then a CPR or similar repro is a good second best, but whatever method they use it isn't the same as the multi-colour screening of the originals. I have a similar dilemma with GOLD BALL. I just refitted the backglass for the first time since I got it, having complete the playfield restoration I wanted to show it off to visitors. I'm missing a lift bar and the glass is peeling really badly along the bottom. There are some very minor scratches here and there which I can live with happily but I don't know what I'm going to do with the bottem edge, which in some places has peeled nearly 4" from the edge! I was kindly given half a can of Krylon Triple Thick by @astyy so I can only hope it can work some magic because CPR won't be doing a GOLD BALL backglass anytime soon!
 
There are two small areas of paint loss at the top, but I think this will be hidden by the top of the backbox

The bottom left is a mirrored bit, so not a fault
 
I'm sure it will look great once installed, let us know what it's like with BB lights and displays on in all its glory.

@Nedreud the Triple Thick is handy for sticking down flakes it was ripples and bubbles (particularly if not pierced) I found tricky as the original paint is expanded even if you can get the TT underneath it. Since our meet I've since noticed I have some flakes starting at the top down now. Don't you just love this hobby :)
 
I'd be asking for some money back if i'd paid with paypal. Or send them some pics of broken glass ;)
 
yup - I'd be telling them that it's damaged, so they need to do something about it. At their expense of course....
 
you must have a really good eye David, or it's not coming across in the photos you posted (to me, anyway)

should these backglasses be identical in resolution and colour and contrast, everything 100% the same like a print of a fine painting? if so then i agree it's not as good as the original, but the differences are pretty subtle. i admire your eye for detail, but i'm glad that i don't have it, or i'd be doubling the cost of a game that's acceptable to me. when i look at a game in terms of its quality, i look 99% at the playfield, and 1% at everything else combined (legs, coin door, speakers, cab, backglass etc). but i can appreciate that some people see them as works of art that can also be played.
 
It could also depend on the one they scanned the original may of been like it. I'm not defending em just saying not every original is gonna look the same
 
I will dig my slr camera and tripod out tomorrow so that I can be a little more "scientific" with the photos with pure lîke for like shots

But essentially, if you remember the knock off DVDs that were for sale at markets. You could look at the covers and see that there was something cheap and grainy about the printing. This is the same story. And the CPR website says this ....

"The Fathom backglass is a CMYK/Spot hybrid glass - meaning it involves both CMYK (dot) printing, as well as solid spot-color layers.

Greg Freres' artwork was always a painting, which was photographically converted for the backglass into CMYK layers.
Mirror, spot black, white, and lightblock layers were all spot layers (solid fill inks), with the CMYK halftoned layers in between.
CMYK backglasses don't have the hard lines like a pure spot color backglass, but they offer the lush "painting" look of finer art.
The industry moved to CMYK backglasses eventually, leaving the cartooney classic look behind."

I do not claim to understand all this. But I interpreted the above as "at CPR we do things properly"

There were none in the uk that I could actually look at. Rather deflating after all the hassle messing about with Zpeakabonks in France, finding it in the USA, debating whether to order it, ordering it, paying too much for it, waiting, dreading a breakage, paying the duty, then thinking oh sh1t, I have just wasted £200
 
I would say,SOMETIMES don't compare original to repro-just look at as a new image.kinda don't stop buying a pin cos an uber close up pic of pf shows a minor imperfection.

Also just get yer ass ti that pub we went to and buy that one :thumbs:
 
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If it's any consolation @DRD I had a similar deflating experience buying repro parts for PARAGON. They were the first pinball things I ever bought and were a big disappointment for the £75 it cost to import from the US 4 pop bumper covers, 7 drop-targets and the lamest apron decal ever. And when I say lamest I mean utter bollox put together using Microsoft Paint and printed off on a home inkjet.

I think I understand what CPR are going on about. The original "cartoonish" backglasses were created using a similar process to the playfields. Individual colours were applied in layers using a separate silk screen for each. On the PF the white usually goes first, then colours built up on top and finally ending in black to define the crisp outline detail. My PARAGON uses no less than 13 distinct colours! This process is reversed on backglasses and finished off with the solid silver "light block" layer. Fancy backglasses like FATHOM, VECTOR and GOLD BALL have silver mirroring too. Nice!

At some point though CMYK was used to print colour images in just the same way as your home inkjet printer still does. Four inks are used CMYK: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (Black):

upload.wikimedia.org_wikipedia_commons_thumb_f_f7_CMYK_color_s9b4957ae2eea1312e33ba30de0dc5a4a.png

It all gets a bit technical with colour theory but it's a subtractive process meaning putting the CMY inks on top of each other to mask or obscure a lighter background, usually white. This is why inkjet printers have to use white paper:

upload.wikimedia.org_wikipedia_commons_thumb_1_19_SubtractiveC38f165ac84e37388aa9b0208c97b8671.png

CPR state that FATHOM was a "hybrid" between the former solid-colour screening and CMYK, so for the FATHOM backglass they should have done black first as screen print (the K for Key in CMYK) then maybe the mirror followed by the CMY, then a screen layer of white on the CMY so you can see it and the solid-silver "light mask" to define the feature lettering, etc.

It looks to me as though they've done the whole thing (except the mirror and light mask) as a one-shot modern CMYK process. In order to produce colours paler than the C, M, or Y inks themselves they are printed as a pattern of tiny dots. This is called half-toning. The rows of tiny dots are also printed at different angles for each colour. This is to reduce nasty dithering effects. It just looks to me as though process wasn't done at a sufficiently high resolution and/or the half-toning fettled to achieve the optimum result...
 
Is the original not likely to have faded at all over the years? Could that not explain at least some of the differences in colour registration?
 
Right. I have tried to be a little more scientific. I used a proper slr, decent lens, proper flash, tripod, backlighting, good natural light in the room too ... No idea how these will look on here.

The original - detail of diver's face ....
DSC_9142.JPG

the CPR - same shot, same lighting, tripod position, same everything ..... I think the resolution of the CPR is really poor. In my opinion this is not a quality product. It is probably worse than what I could have achieved making my own translite. It is blurred, wrong colour, there are visible vertical stripes

DSC_9141.JPG

side by side shows how the colours vary, this has a much wider field of view so you won't really see the resolution issues ..... the cpr just looks too red and purply

DSC_9143.JPG
 
TYHO said:
I would say,SOMETIMES don't compare original to repro-just look at as a new image.kinda don't stop buying a pin cos an uber close up pic of pf shows a minor imperfection.

Also just get yer ass ti that pub we went to and buy that one :thumbs:
Click to expand...
Was there a Fathom BG in the Tyne?
 
The difference appears far more pronounced in those last shots - could it be faulty?
 
astyy said:
The difference appears far more pronounced in those last shots - could it be faulty?
Click to expand...

Hi. I just fear that it is what it is. Poorer quality than I was expecting. But for me the warning is that if you buy a game with a knackered backglass on the basis that you can buy a CPR one to replace it, tread carefully as you may be disappointed.
 
Much more noticable in those comparison shots. Have to admit i'd be disappointed with that so i'd be inclined to flag it up with them and see what explanation they offer.
 
Thanks for the suggestions guys. I have contacted CPR with my second set of (better) snaps, will let you know what happens.
 
@DRD: Reply from "Stu" on Pinside:

Ok, a few explanations here:

1. Fathom: We didn't do the Artwork for this glass, we borrowed the Reproduction Dilms from Phoenix Arcade ( Darin ) which were actually done by a photographer. A Hi-Res photo was taken and Film Separations were made directly from the Photograph.

1B. Fathom: As for the "lines", this was an unfortunate hiccup in the screening process. Kevin was using a squeegee that was not wide enough for the entire glass width so he ended up having to make 2 passes on it. This has since been resolved. Now all glasses are done with a Single Pass of the squeegee.

2. Medusa / Flash Gordon / Paragon / Star Trek: Unfortunately all of these glasses were done under the 'old' production method that Kevin was using. Most of these glasses ended up with a heavy saturation due to many factors. We have since resolved all issues for CMYK "process" glass projects and have been extremely happy with the results ( ie: Elvira & the Party Monsters Backglass )

Note: We have resolved all the issues with the CMYK Process for silk-screening and all future projects will be done under this new process. We are looking to do Re-Runs of the titles listed above with the Production Process......

Stu
CPR Art Director​

That's nice. So, essentially they've admitted their production process was flawed and sub-standard. I don't see any mentioned on the website that these backglasses were produced using an old inferior method and that current/future products will be up to standard. I think that warrants a replacement when the FATHOM backglass is re-run using the new process. Or a refund. Including postage.
 
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Yep, I'd be filling a complaint with PayPal forthwith
 
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