Maybe now there is an in within the topper mod community. I mean who wants to spend $2500?

Allow me to introduce you to my free pinstadium alternative, you'll be amazed with the results:

LIGHTSWWITCH.jpg

I have those in every room

POTW

HurryUpPinball has an excellent DIY guide on YouTube for making your own. I think all in it’s $100 and you can make 4 sets. It just doesn’t have the flasher integration.

There were some cheap alternatives for a while, but seems they were threatened out of business due to PinStadium patenting this "technology", ha.

I find them unnecessary but what's wrong with DIY?

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/poor-mans-stadium-lighting

If pinstadium was really smart they'd have a budget version in the $100 range but no they just keep coming out with "fancier" versions that are more and more expensive. There is certainly room in the marketplace for a no frills, ready to go stadium lighting mod. No dumb wifi, no app, no flashers even, just white lights, maybe your choice between cool, medium, and warm at the very most.

Or they'd be able to explain new product details in simple English without being cryptic or dancing around the subject.

Yeah, the marketing wank dripping off all their products is very cringe, but a lot of people eat that stuff up. Especially a lot of the people who don't mind dropping 600 bucks on lights for their pinball machine. I imagine it helps you convince yourself that the price is worth it.

Shittiest part of cults is they're usually more expensive than you'd think

Ah. I see you have a plain old white light switch.

In my game room, my "Neo Fusion Lighting Actuator" switch is outfitted with "Thor's Hammer" and a "Platinum Photon Power Cover." It also has an integrated app that injects INSANE levels of performance to my pinball play. And when I say "insane," I mean INSANE!!! Even better, it's friendly with EVERY pinball machine EVER made!

So, you might have paid $16.99 for your plain-Jane switch... and I paid $599.99 for mine. But, sorry, you're missing out.

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JFC I choked on my coffee laughing at this

If you want pinstadiums just buy them, they exist and they work. Plug and play just like you want!

All this pleading for a black-market knockoff is unseemly!!!

You want your bright ass strips of LEDs, you gotta pay for them!

After looking through their products, it seems that the pricing isn’t that outrageous. There’s quite a bit of engineering in their products so why is $600 for their top of the line product “overpriced”, compared to other mods that are just 3D printed and painted plastic objects which sell for more?

I mean, you get RGB LED strips in a what seems clean attachment system, electrical integration with the pinball machine and application control on a cell phone. That looks fairly decent from a bang/buck perspective. DIYing that on the same level (!!!) won’t be cheap either and take many hours.

$600 is nuts. I bought a set a while back to see what the rave was about and let me tell you it was NOT a clean attachment.

What a bunch of cheap asses c'mon guys you're paying thousands on games & people going to bitch about a couple of hundred dollars shameless...
Bunch of cheap fat old dudes...

Pinstadium is a joke! But there are plenty of jokers in this hobby with money to burn which is why they keep advertising them.

I told you Im on a diet!

The do offer "24/7" customer service. I can't think of any other mod maker that promises customer service action at 3AM on New Year's Day!

Man those were the good old days of pinball.

But you remember them I'm sure

Because you're cheap

And old

I read the thread title and figured it would go something like...

"I've already bought the $2500 topper, $500 mirrored backglass and $300 Invisiglass
. . . are Pinstadiums next?"

Pinstadium is for suckers. How people managed to see the ball for decades without Pinstadiums I do not know. One of the worst puke your pin, piss your money away mods ever. I will literally offer less for a pin with this product installed.

Hey, I gotta stand up for The Law and say that I've seen him win at least twice.

I mean I CAN afford them, the part aboot them looking fucking stupid somehow keeps me from pulling the trigger.

Luckily I still have young eyes so I dont need them yet.

A rule of thumb is you need 5x COGs to make a profit on a physical product. Back of the napkin math from the DIY thread has the ballpark of COGs at $100 so pinstadiums don't seem outrageously overpriced.

Would I pay that money for solving the problem vs turning on the lights? No but other people might have a different game room setup where it's worth it.

Nice try, but wrong. Color dmds are universally loved and add equivalent value at resale. This is a decade-old fact.

Pinstadiums are largely despised, add no value at resale (except perhaps to another pinstadium fanboy), and rose to popularity based on the shameless spamming of fake/doctored before & after pics making pins look unplayable without them. Many fell for it. There's a sucker born every minute. Need more light? Add a couple spotlights for $5, or a few 2 SMDs. Problem solved.

Go back to baking cookies; you're comments are stupid & bore me... agree to disagree [Removed]!

Really? you don't like ColorDMD's? This is a first. To each their own

I really don't get this mindset. You've already paid a lot so why not be OK with overpaying for something that goes along with it? How is that logical at all?

That's like saying "you already bought a $40,000 car, what's the big deal about being charged $5000 for undercoating?"

Just because the product it goes on is expensive doesn't preclude it from being overpriced. Would you be OK with pinstadiums costing the same as the pinball machine itself? Where do you draw that line?
The simple answer is the line is drawn based on the value of the product, not the value of the product it is being attached to.

Good day, sir!

If he actually believed that he wouldn't have called it an upgrade.

I really like how the posters here on Pinside are so friendly.
Even when they have a disagreement, they still wish the other person a good day.

I must say that I finally bought my first (and last) Pinstadiums last Black Friday. I only bought them because they were on sale, and decided to install them on my Godzilla. They had some confusing name with flasher integration, Neo's maybe? IDK. Here's my two cents...

1) I curse them every time I lift the playfield & forget they are there. Then I curse them as they flop & fall where ever they want when the playfield is up. They are a royal PITA.

2) They are intolerable at 100% luminescence. They wash out the artwork if the wrong color or tone of white (cool vs warm) is used. When fully cranked up my eyes can't focus on the lit inserts. And if you connect the wiring for the flasher effect, you're going to go blind or have a seizure when they kick on. Holy shit the flashers are obnoxiously bad. I disconnected that flasher effect after a couple games.

I keep them at 20% luminescence with no additional effects. It lightens the playfield artwork just a tad. That makes them somewhat tolerable. They are nice for adding some additional light if you are streaming on YouTube. I'll never buy them again, but to each their own.

I haven't been around much lately, life just keeping me busy with other stuff and behind on pinball. Came to check in with Ye Olde Pinside and it's like I never left, people still arguing about Pinstadiums. Makes me feel cozy, like my seat is still warm.

I love pinstadium lights! They really bring the best out of my gold wings!

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Time for someone to bring back all the “blinded by bright light” gifs from the competing QR reader threads!

The Spock one is my favorite.

I don't get the acceptance of this, but it's real. VW owns Audi and Lamborghini. Some parts are interchangeable and price varies significantly. Guess which costs the most and least. I have to guess the company mindset is the Lambo owner obviously has more money and will be willing to pay more. Not a cargument, just an example of how this concept works.

The product definitely has its faults, mostly the magnets and the price, but I like them, my wife likes them, and most of my guests like them. While it DOES need competition in a big way, I'll still buy and enjoy them.

Proper game room lighting will prevent the need for such things and will look much better and more natural for your playing pleasure. I love ceiling track spot lights on a dimmer.

I've never understood this logic. I used to hear the same thing when I used to frequent A/V forums. "Hey, you're spending $$$ on speakers. Why cheap out on speaker wire?"

Um, because it's copper, and you guys are insane.

That is like comparing Jeeps to Dump Trucks.