SOME THOUGHTS AFTER OWNING AMH FOR 10 DAYS
I thought I’d share some of my thoughts and experiences, especially for the benefit of those awaiting their machines.
First and most importantly, I love AMH and spooky. I rate the fun factor for this game in the top 5 that I’ve ever played, and the same goes for difficulty level. Especially because of the upper slings, generous outlanes, and trajectories on the lower half of the playfield the game is—as many others have noted—absolutely brutal. I've managed to defeat 4 ghost bosses, but that's it. Even after close to 200 games, I’m still hearing new callouts and with impressively "sincere" delivery, and I’m finding myself talking aloud to the psychic and telling her to shut the hell up. I would repeat some callouts that I think are especially hilarious, but I think it’s more fun to discover them for yourself. My favorite is one of the most simple—nothing but a cheesy, "chilling" scream as the ball drains. These people understand satire.
And I can’t say enough about Charlie’s responsiveness with tech support. As you’ll see in some of what I post below, he has been immediately responsive (twice on Sundays, when I tend to have time to do pin work), detailed, energetic, and empathetic. It's hard (and necessary) for me to ask for help with pins, but he has made it easy for me. And most importantly to me, he has taken responsibility and been honest. In that same spirit, as I detail some of the problems I’ve run into with the machine, I stress that my intention is to be honest and helpful to other AMH owners—never to diss spooky.
PLAYING TIPS:
It might not be profound to say it, but my number one tip is to master calling the hellevator and learn to combine it with other ghost bosses. The safety net that provides as well as the increased scoring opportunities can’t be overemphasized. I’ve found that you can easily trap and backhand the shot from the right flipper, and that you can easily backhand the door from the left flipper. In fact, catching the ball at the correct angle when in motion, you can actually backhand every shot, including the jump ramp and scoop from the right flipper (rare, but possible).
Also, if you haven’t seen them, here’s a nice summary from another thread where Ben gives some playing tips:
1) During normal play pop bumpers advance War Fort and Bar Ghost. Once those modes are complete pops always advance Jackpot value. So beating those modes early gives you more jackpot building time later on.
2) In Hotel multiball, hitting the Ghost Targets adds a 2x, 3x and up to 4x Jackpot Multiplier. It's risky, but can score big. When you're ready to collect, shoot the Hellavator to drop the targets and hit ghost loop to score!
3) There are alternate goals during all Ghost battles. Try shooting the door, loops and other flashing shots to find them.
4) When you make a shot, a camera icon will flash to show you the next shot in the Combo Chain, which can go up to a 9x Combo.
5) Standard Hellavator Multiball can be stacked onto Hospital Ghost, War Fort, and Bar Ghost modes.
6) Hellavator MB and Minion MB can be stacked if you have Hell MB active as you kill the 3rd Minion. (but it doesn't work the other way around) Those modes by themselves are 3 ball, stacked they can be up to 4 ball.
TOPPER HOOKUP ISSUE:
When I compared my Laseriffic topper instructions to my power supply, I did not find a match. Picture of my supply is at the bottom of this post.
As Charlie let me know via e-mail, the lack of a match was due to my looking at the wrong supply. I was looking at the one in the middle of the cabinet (for the 48 V coils) and the correct one was in the left rear of the cabinet. Once things were cleared up and hooked up, I let Joe Kace from Laseriffic know, and he said that he had gotten about a dozen e-mails on this, so I’m not the only impaired party out there. I was smart enough to ask for help, though, and Joe told me that someone did just plug into the earth ground on the wrong one and blew up both topper and supply.
HELLEVATOR ISSUE:
During a multiball the hellevator (with a ball in it) got stuck partway down and then kept going up and partway down for quite a while as I continued a long multiball. I didn’t even notice it until the multiball was over and a co-player pointed it out. After removing the ball I did some hellevator testing, and again it just kept going partway up and down and I couldn’t figure out why until I reached a screwdriver down and shoved something out of the way that was blocking its path. Turns out what had happened was that the curved spring steel inside the hellevator had slipped down out of its track just enough to block it from going all the way down. In the process the servo also started smoking (thankfully, spooky had included a spare servo so I was able to swap it in). As I disassembled and reassembled, I found that the gear stick below the hellevator seemed to have become a bit twisted, as had the servo motor bracket with the three screws, which also had a crack running all the way through it (this was partly my bad, because I should have figured out what was stopping its path before continuing to test it and make it worse). With duct tape I was able to reinforce the bracket enough and tape the spring steel in place (otherwise it continued to keep slipping out during subsequent gameplay), so I got things running again.
I wrote to Charlie and he immediately took the blame (or gave it to the Minions, tee hee), saying that he had not personally inspected my game and that what had likely happened was that a Minion forgot to install a fifth “retaining screw” in the hellevator top, bottom, or both, and thus the spring steel had slipped out from its track. Indeed, I can now verify that there was no retaining screw on the top nor bottom. Charlie generously sent me a replacement hellevator immediately, a few helpful pix, and detailed instructions for installing it.
Here are the instructions from Charlie, with a few pix representing some of what I’ve described above at the bottom of this post:
Ok... with the game off, remove the screw shown in the photo and remove the gear. Don't put the new hellevator in yet. You shouldn't have to remove anything above the playfield except the piece of spring steel that is just stuck on to the top with double sided tape.
Once you have the mounting bracket & servo installed (again, NO HELLEVATOR CART YET), carefully turn the game on. The servo will go to it's down "home" position. Turn the game back off.
Now install the new hellevator cart. Make sure the top is just a tick higher than the ramp so you don't create a ball trap. Put the spring steel back on the top so it doesn't collide with the top of the metal when the hellevator goes to the up position. Put the gear back on with the single screw.
Once installed, go to "servo" in the test menu. Send the hellevator up. Feel it... make sure it NOT making contact with the top or you'll burn up the servo. Then send it down and feel it. If it's out of position you'll feel it chatter. TURN THE GAME OFF IMMEDIATELY if there is any chatter. It means the servo is out of position and needs to be adjusted.
Make your adjustments with the screw / gear. Just turn it one tooth at a time.
Sounds complicated, but it's really not. I'm sure you'll get it.
Charlie also stressed lubing the moving parts (the gear on the servo, the hellevator shaft, and the gear “stick” below the Hellevator) with Superlube.
I think the world of this guy and his business for the way he owned up to and corrected the problem, which was, in all honesty, partly my bad.
BALL STICKS:
Plenty of them—next to the lower pop bumper, behind the hellevator, between the hellevator and ramp, and in the scoop. Some of these are cleared on ball searches, and the lower pop bumper one was taken care of by an extra and larger rubber ring on the post beside the pop bumper (as others have recommended), but the scoop one is worth some mention. I noticed that the ball wasn’t always quite seating itself in the scoop, and was sometimes getting stuck between the actuator arm end and the scoop frame. A slight bend to the end of the actuator did the trick, but I wondered about it and asked Charlie.
His helpful response and a picture of the disassembled scoop follow:
We have to hand make those switches. It’s possible it got bent or is a little out of position. Just so it makes contact with the ball but stays out of the path of the vuk plunger is what it should be.
Indeed, a careful little bend did the trick. And if anyone ever needs it, the scoop microswitch number is D83 0, 1A250 125-250WAC.
BLOWN FUSE:
In the course of my first 100 games, I blew a fuse twice—the one on the left in the group of three on the Pinheck board. Luckily, there was also a pattern. Both times it happened during hospital ghost when ball 2 drained and ball 1 was released for a second chance, and it happened right at the time when the left flipper would usually kick itself three times as a player hint (nifty feature). What seemed to happen both times the fuse blew was that the flipper just went dead rather than kicked (and I may have been holding the flipper up). Haven’t been able to replicate the problem on purpose during gameplay since about 30 games ago.
Charlie suggested inspection of both coil diodes, the EOS switches, and the EOS diodes (yes, the EOS has a diode beneath some shrink wrap), and he had me send him pictures to verify the wiring is correct (it is). Everything checked out and the problem hasn’t recurred, but if it does I think my next step is to replace the left flipper coil, assuming a broken winding or something internal on that coil.
CONCLUSION:
Sorry about the length of this post, but I thought AMH users would find it to be helpful, and once again I have nothing but respect for Spooky. I’ve worked on NIB games from Stern and JJ with similar problems occuring within the first month. That fact along with the plunging downfall of other boutiques makes me all the more impressed with what spooky has already accomplished--much more to come, I'm sure.
cracked, taped bracket.JPG
new bracket.JPG
new hellevator bottom.JPG
new hellevator top.JPG
right vuk.JPG
servo with connector.JPG