Did a full rubber swap for titans... game plays a bit faster now but no major difference. I was hoping it'd cut down on the amount of side to side bouncing you get on the four upper rubbers (2 per side above the slings), since I feel like I spend a lot of my games watching the ball bounce between those four and the two slings without ever getting a ball to a flipper. Eventually I had an idea, and just removed the outer two posts on the lower rubbers completely:pasted_image (resized).pngpasted_image (resized).png
I think it really improves the play. You still get a lot of side to side action, but it's not *upward* side to side so the ball tends to get to the flippers/slings/lanes quicker. Plus it makes the scoop and bonus x shots a bit easier since there's not a rubber right below them. The outlanes are a bit hungrier, but not much, and I don't mind that since the game can play pretty long anyways.
While I had the upper playfield out, I also tried to tweak the orbits a bit. I feel like they go way slower than they should, when compared to many other games, and the secret passage tends to reject a lot. I found that my secret passage had a really weird shape, with the end of the left guide just smashing into the middle guide at a hard angle.
pasted_image (resized).png I took that left secret passage guide out, and found that it was actually even straighter, only being forced into this shape by being pressed against the other guide, so I re-bent it to aim more parallel to the guide, which smoothed out the secret passage a ton. No more rejects from right flipper shots now.pasted_image (resized).png
Not sure if it was always like this, or if it's flexed over time.... The guide it was pressing against is also leaning back a ton; again not sure if it was like that from the factory or if it bent over time since balls only ever hit it on one side.
The metal used on these guides is super flimsy, making them quite flexible, so I wonder if that contributes to the slowness of the orbits as well? Maybe it's sorta deadening the ball....
I also found that the outer orbit guide isn't a single piece of metal, but rather two pieces that meet in the back left corner, and they don't quite line up properly, so I'm sure that bump is probably slowing the ball down a bit too. Would have been much better as a single long strip of metal.
Anyone played with their guides and found similar issues, or gotten them to go any faster?