Topeka, KS
Looks very worthy of restore. Can't wait to see you work your magic on one of my all time favorite games! Someday I'll have one of these again. 
(Topic ID: 296744)
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Meteor
Stern Electronics, 1979
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Quoted from HoakyPoaky:Don’t restore! Turn her into a Quicksilver bud! It’s not that hard
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/my-2nd-restoration-quicksilver-scratch-build
...please don't do this 
There are plenty of crappy Stern games that deserve being gutted and converted into Quicksilver or Star Gazer... but meteor ain't it. Imo. QS and SG both look like awesome games (I haven't played either) but so is Meteor!
Excellent job on the QS, that looks really nice. Can't really blame you for doing it, I just hate to see a great game like meteor (I know, I know.. they made 96 million of them) die to make it happen.
FWIW also, I wouldn't personally buy a CPR meteor playfield. I think it looks like crap. I'd be far more likely to pop out all the inserts, replace, touch up, and then clear the original. The CPR absolutely does not seem worth $1000 to me unless your original is just ROACHED... and in that case maybe a QS or SG starts to make sense. Again just my opinion here, and you know what they say about opinions.. 
Quoted from HoakyPoaky:Really? What are the plentiful "crappy" MPU-200 games that deserve to be converted that have the correct 16B-6 transformer? I take it you've never done this. I'll save you the thought process though...
The MPU-200 games are pretty rare, most with production runs below 2500 or far less than that. Meteor & Galaxy are the largest runs, around 8000 & 5000 respectively. The reason they are used for conversions is because they are cheaper, more plentiful, have the required parts to reuse, and quite frankly are not great games compared to Stern's best like Quicksilver, Nine ball, Star Gazer, etc.
And the transformer in an MPU-100 Stern is not powerful enough to convert to an MPU-200 game, especially if you want it to play correctly with enough power. This has been debated & covered in detail in other threads. If I was looking to buy a conversion game with a MPU-100 transformer installed, I'd keep right on walking.
Didn't know that about the transformer, good to know. I understand why Meteor is used for these conversions, it just bums me out to think about a decent Meteor, which I think is a great game, being sacrificed for the cause. Now, one that's all beat to bloody hell? I'd absolutely convert that without a second thought. I'd do that before buying a CPR Meteor playfield, personally. Then again, opinions on how beat games are can vary wildly. My standards are probably pretty low compared to a lot of peoples'. I'm perfectly okay with a player quality game as long as it functions correctly. Cupped inserts are gross but those can always be fixed.
Quoted from HoakyPoaky:You do what you want with it & don't let anyone influence you. Happy reading though! I'm sure you can find some helpful resto tips in there.
Ultimately that's what it comes down to..do whatever makes you happy with your games. No one else's opinion (mine included!) really matters in the grand scheme of things.
1 week later
Quoted from bigguybbr:One last thing, if you are going to have your playfield recleared, you might want to take the opportunity to have someone route out your #3 drop target hole a little larger. CPR made it too small (0.31" smaller than my original playfield) and it can snag the new larger sized new drop targets.
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Man, seeing these side by side really makes me sad for how crap-tastic of a job CPR did with these. I'm sending my friend's CPR Gold off for decals and then clear in the next few days and SURE it will look miles better than it does now when we swap it, but yikes at a lot of the artifacts on the new PF. It's almost like CPR just didn't care enough to do it properly. Really sad.
Quoted from bigguybbr:I was surprised to find that gold-ish outline around the purple/magenta is original to the game, it was just completed faded to nothing on my old machine except for under some of the posts.
Say *W H A T*? Where'd you read that? Send a link over if you don't mind; I just assumed that was lumped in with the rest of the garbage from CPR.
Quoted from KenLayton:Stern really cheaped out on metal plating. Very poor plating job. If a guy had his own home plating setup, he could zinc plate these parts and they'd look great.
Yep, these classic stern parts don't ever 'polish up' like other manufacturer's parts because of the lack of / poor plating. Cleaning them off is really the best you can do with them, outside of plating/painting/coating them yourself.
Looking good.
1 week later
Your progress is looking great! Kind of funny, I was all up in arms about the Quicksilver conversion suggestion but yesterday I bought a fuuuuuugly $500 galaxy with the intent of doing just that. I already have the meteor CPR resto on my list though!
Keep up the good work, it's looking awesome.
IMG_20210806_174047 (resized).jpgQuoted from gdonovan:I'm looking for a Meteor or Galaxy myself for a conversion.
I hate knocking off a Galaxy from existence but this cab is hilarious and the backglass is smoked. Perfect candidate for the eventual conversion. For now it's at my friend's so he can play it. Fun game....but I like meteor far better I think. Couldn't beat the price at $500, IMO..was really happy to find it.
Quoted from gdonovan:I'm building a Seawitch, picked up a repairable playfield and backglass at Allentown.
I saw that! Lucky dog.
Quoted from gdonovan:totally unplanned, just luck.
Out here a player Seawitch is going for $3000-$3500 which for that I'll just build one.
Playfield has some wear put if I can tune up this Flash Gordon (still in progress) then SW won't slow me down much. Another week or two to go on the playfield! I bet it will be a month, lol.
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Looking good. FG is another one I'd love to mess with someday.
I've got a Meteor swap/resto, this Galaxy->QS conversion, and two Mata Hari basketcase builds to do for my buddy. I'm going to be busy forever, lol. Did I mention I've never done a swap before (two hardtops...but no swaps)? Oof. 
All I know is that if I can channel even SOME of the skill that Mathazar is putting into this thing on any of the items in my queue, I'll be juuuuuuuuuust fine. Some serious high quality work going on in this thread!
No thanks on the EMs though... I'm nudging my friend to sell his Continental Cafe, Gottlieb Surf Side, Gottlieb Skill Pool, an awful Beetles retheme Doodlebug disaster, and a couple of bingos. I absolutely won't spend my time on those, especially with the other items in queue. EMs....are a no for me. lol
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