Just experimented with the flipper hold, and seems like the lower you go (original) the more dip and flip you get.

Aggressive setting definitely reduces the unwanted behavior, but there is still some happening.

Does this tell us anything? So the greater the hold, the higher the heat, but the less dip and flip effect.

Does anyone understanding why this happens? I've never seen on any other game I've owned or played.

Thanks!

Just a random shout out to again thank epthegeek for all his hard work and commitment. Not many pins can boast 20 code releases/patches since first public release. Not to mention the regular addition of new modes. I can't imagine the amount of coding that is needed to introduce new content without breaking existing features. Thanks man! Some day I'd like to buy you a beer.

Hey all recently my pop bumper (slam ring) isn't wanting to fire when the ball is coming straight down on it with low force. It has been a real slow progression with this happening as it's getting worse and worse. I can't adjust my switch any more closed as it would start to fire with a bump or flipper hit so that's not the culprit.
It almost seems like the skirt bottom isn't pointing dead straight down into the cup to activate the switch. Maybe its not centred in the cup making it more difficult to activate in that one direction. Also maybe there's just a bit too much friction in the cup from the skirt poker end.

Anyone ever put a tiny dot of lithium grease on a Q tip or something and rubbed it in the cup to create less friction? Anyone had this happen? any thoughts?

I know this is more of a pop bumper thing than a R&M thing, but figured i'd try the masses on this first.

Have you tried cleaning the switch by sliding a piece of paper soaked in isopropyl alcohol through it? Otherwise, maybe just try a light application of wax in that cup, that should reduce the friction (at least enough to know if you are on the right track). Also, if you haven't already, you can remove those two washers from each post (assuming there are three on each threaded post) from both sides of the pop bumper as well, that should bring the bumper ring down a bit and could help.

Avoid lubrication. I suspect you have many plays on the game. I would pull apart/clean/inspect/reassemble the pop bumper plunger assembly. The sleeve should be clean. If showing any wear, replace the sleeve. Make sure the coil is tight in the mount and not shifting if possible. Also check for cracks on the skirt legs.

The skirts start to drag on the spoons right away if the skirt tips were not sanded round when installing.
The little nibs from cutting off the formed skirts are sharp and wear unevenly and are too pointy.

Fortunately you can smooth off the skirt tip with a little 400 sandpaper if you remove the switch.
Dont remove material, just smooth the tip. You can remove the entire coil assembly if you want but I havent found that to be necessary. Little 1/2" strips of sandpaper get in there and do a pretty good job.

The sub assemblers for the factory dont address this.

I apply this with a q-tip to the spoons. It dries and leaves a slick surface. It also slows down the wear and tear on the spoons that cause sticking.

It doesnt collect black dust because it dries off after awhile but leaves a molecular coating.

https://www.amazon.com/Super-Lube-51010-Oil/dp/B000BXOGHY/ref=asc_df_B000BXOGHY/

Put a drop on sling hinges and spinner contact points.

A tiny drop is all it takes. Wipe off any excess.

The spinner will fly !

Yeah, I removed those extra washers 7 or 8 months ago, that I didn't want the loss of threads to be an issue. Thx!!

Thx. The pop is in perfect working order. The only single issue this has is the tip of skirt not sliding in spoon well enough.

Thx, this sounds to be the most plausible issue. I will inspect the tip and see if it has any flaws. Thx all. I'll pull the switch assembly to have a better inspection window to the skirt tip

Yep, I have had this problem too. For me it was dirty contacts for the spoon switch (like klr650 mentioned). You can test this by putting the playfield on the service rails, go into switch test and manually manipulate skirt or the switch blades directly. For me, the switch could be closed and not trigger unless I used extra force on the blades. In game, a slow roller from the top across the outer edge of the skirt wouldn't do anything, but a full hit from the side would be enough down force to trigger. After a quick swipe with my contact cleaning tool, it worked as expected. The interesting thing is that the problem came back after may another 40ish games. I used some contact cleaning solution and cleaned again. If the problem comes back I am going to try replacing with new contact pieces. It seems strange to me that the contacts are having difficulty conducting after such little usage.

When I install new skirts, I automatically smooth the tips off.

This was a "tip" from LTG !

Pop is next to the flippers, might be getting more black dust that typical on the contacts.

If that was the culprit, wouldn't it be more of a problem with the EOS switches?

Try putting a little flitz on a q-tip, polish the contact and buff off with a couple clean q-tips.

I have done this with finicky contacts and it works wonders.

The flitz keeps the contacts from oxidizing and also dries out leaving a slick coating.

It also works for old crusty blackish looking, gold contacts that paper wont clear off.

As always, dont sand gold contacts, it ruins them.

If you see color on your q-tip, you know its cleaning off some oxidation.

If flitz gets on the leafs themselves, this is a good thing. It slows down the oxidation on the copper.
Just clean them off with fresh q-tips.

Though gold doesnt oxidize, oxidation from the copper leafs gets on them and plates them with gunk.

More like oxides from the copper leafs.

Good tip, I'll try that next opportunity. I use deoxit for chemical cleaning.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00I3G272M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title

Right, never sand paper. I use the GC contact cleaner stick. Business card/equiv works fine too.
https://www.pinballlife.com/contact-burnisher.html

that burnisher is way too aggressive!

I have that tool, be very careful with it.

I mean it works, but if you use it twice it removes all the gold.

Its really for nickle plated contacts.

I have since been using flitz. It works better and leaves a surface treatment. you might have to do it a couple times to get contacts clean.

I just brought the pops back to life on a Taxi that has sat for years with black contacts.

Flitz also works a bit better on leafs than deoxit as it leaves a longer lasting treatment on the metal.

I use deoxit on circuit board connections and sockets, sometimes on molex pins and lamp sockets.

If I use Deoxit, I do so sparingly and I follow it up with something like Flitz (contacts) or Pro Gold (contacts/pots/wipers). Conditioners work well for me.

I have some of this:

https://www.amazon.com/DeoxIT-Gold-Brush-Contact-Conditioner/dp/B0015A7CYG/ref=sr_1_6

But the flitz seems to do an effective job on very dirty contacts and I can put a dab on a q-tip for more aggressive rubbing.

I mean, theres no audio/noisy connections really...I use pro gold on my music studio connections that are gold. But Deoxit5 on my XLR's and stuff.

I have experienced this as well. I have not yet tried any of the remedies suggested by others here in regards to the switch contacts or sanding the plastic end of the skirt but I did change the number of washers on the pop bumper unit.
First, I went from three washers on each "arm" to one on each and I think the problem got worse. I then went to two on each side and the pop bumper function has returned to basically normal. I've played several games since and have had maybe one or two instances where the bumper didn't fire. These were soft contact instances and may not have been "failures" at all. If I wasn't purposely paying such close attention, I may not have questioned them at all.

I recently installed a new pop ring and the part came with 2 washers on each side and it works perfectly. 3 washers weren't working great for me and ultimately led to the pop ring breaking.

After a bit over a month of ownership, happy to report everything has worked great out of the box with minimal issues. Loose plug on a couple lights, but no problems of any substance. Certainly haven’t dealt with flipper issues or unmakable shots (just tough ones)

Finally got my preferred mods placed. Nothing too drastic - ready for some snake jazz

2022D848-B1EB-48FF-B6AD-F01C53D4BDB8 (resized).jpeg

Flippers and pop bumper totally suck after the update. Were perfect before. In case anyone gives a crap.

I finally got around to adjusting the EOS switches from the recommendations and with the new code my flippers are now amazing. Had no idea how much of a change it would have. Feels overall way more solid on the default settings with the small EOS adjustment. I could probably do a tad more of a bend but its a huge change already. Thanks for the update

Recheck / Set your EOS and also check / adjust your Flipper Button Switches.

Minor adjustments, here, yesterday yielded great results.

Is there a specific post number on here that you referenced for the adjustments?

Im not sure of any specific post but I know some have made detailed ones about the EOS adjustment, I just googled 'EOS flipper adjustment pinball' and it had a nice man on youtube explaining what the switch was and how to adjust it.

The general idea, i think from my short video knowledge, is that the EOS switch should be engaged when the flipper is fully activated/up/whatever. And when you take it down a tad, like when a ball slams into it, that switch should open so the game knows, hey the flipper is knocked down. No matter how amazing the code is if the switch is still saying 'hey yeah im not knocked down at all, all is well' it will keep getting knocked down. If you change the switch to be more sensitive so that it takes much less of a down movement to open that switch it makes it so it holds it up much quicker. I was noticing that it would almost reflip the ball because it was taking too long to re-engage the power so the code was working and holding real strong but by the time the game knew the flipper was down it was down far enough to send the ball flying instead of just holding it up.

Again this whole explanation could be entirely wrong and people much more versed in flipper magic are in here and they can feel free to tell me all im saying is backwards but with some small adjustments to try and make it so me nudging the flipper down from full up opened that switch sooner caused a HUGE difference.

Just wanted to say, after the latest update my flippers feel great, hardly any knockdown, snappy with lots of power, I even turned the power down a tad.
Bushings shaved, Normal hold.
Having said that, I've never had a problem with it in previous code, eos adjustment, and button leaf adjustment sorted all that out ages ago.
Love the moonmen mode

This is just crazy, some people report the flippers are worse, others report the flippers are better, so what gives? The multitude of flipper settings doesn't help imo. But assuming we're all running the same code version, my guess is it's the EOS that's causing all the knock-down and bounce-back variations. This is an analog adjustment. Even if Spooky said for example, the EOS should close at exactly 1mm before hitting the stop, there's no way we could all get it adjusted perfectly. And we shouldn't have to get it adjusted perfectly. Pinball flippers have been working fine in SS, DMD, and modern day pins for better than 40 years. Just say'n.

The millisecond pulse time needs to be boosted back up in the latest code in settings. That should fix most things

Dear Spooky pinball.
Bad time to end the podcast.

Would love an offical update from Charlie.
New Factory?
New Ben Heck bourd system?
Last 50 R&M bieng built.
CGC partnered game?
What Scott D is up to?

What's the real story?

Cheers.

My lower flippers are working great on the default settings (the bushing are lowered). Still having issues with my upper flipper (which hasn't been lowered and doesn't have an EOS).

The variability in peoples feedback is odd. arzoo is probably right...largely related to EOS. I think the bushings also play a role (since everyone that lowered them introduces variability). In theory, once Spooky shipped the standardized/lowered bushings, it will remove that build difference/variable.

Disappointing that we still haven't heard from Spooky on the flipper bushings. Seems like 5-6 months have past without any update.

To what setting?

Add me to the my flippers were dialed in, and this code borked them. I've tried a number of settings and I can't get them to feel good on any of them. I'm not sure if the pulse time needs to go up or down.

A few notes about the song modes...

1. Please add the sound for the magnet, with it missing it's hard to know if it is even working
2. Please add the sound for meeseeks (doesn't have to be them yelling, but the box noise...something.

As it is there is no feedback at all except for mode shots. Makes the modes seem unfinished. I've thought this all along, but thought it was a matter of adding them later, but now I see the Moonman mode does the same thing. I understand not cluttering it up with a ton of sounds, but some minimal feedback seems necessary.

JMO

I’m sure they will be on several podcasts immediately following their next game being announced, which will be soon. They’ve done a fabulous job protecting the theme of the release, this is good as it helps them build excitement for the release. People want to know the game is on the line, it adds to the FOMO and drives sales. Stern always says you have 90 days from announcement to sell your games, then the buyers move along to the next new shiny thing.

At the same time, I’ve got money and a slot right now for one more game. I’m assuming Stern is going to announce either Godzilla, Fast and Furious, or Mandalorian next and any of those are a threat to be an instant buy from me, taking both my available money and the valuable line up slot.

We’ve had a bit of a dead period with no major game announcement yet in 2021. The first new game announced is going to hog the air waives and be the Bella of the ball. That said, it may be wise to let Stern announce first and then go in right behind it, taking the wind out of their sails rather than Vice versa.

Edit: I thought I posted this in the spooky game speculation thread, it was accidentally posted in this thread.

Agree with that, I've let balls go because I thought the magnet wasn't working ( Yes I know, the meter is still lit, but the lack of feedback overcomes the visual that it is charged )

I received game #639 yesterday. Want to add another data point to the flipper behavior. Played a few games and then updated code. On the old code the flippers seemed okay, but not real snappy. Pretty hard to make the skill shots. Update the code and the skill shots became easier as the upper flipper seemed more responsive. But the lower flippers are just terrible. Lots of droop and hard flipping when a ball hits it. I contacted support and he suggested checking the the EOS switch as it probably needs to be adjusted, but it didn't on the old code. They also seemed to flap at times, starting to fire, stop, drop and then continue. Not normal at all.

Worked for me because I jumped over from the spooky game thread right over to Rick and Morty thread and your post was the 2nd one I read!

BSE #706 invoiced and paid today!

Are they building them in order? A fella posted a few pages back that #252 was paid for and invoiced so that kinda threw me off. I’m second to last to have a BSE built (#710) and I’m curious if I’m just four spots away or like ten to fifteen if they’re being built out of order. Wasn’t there a list going somewhere on build list/invoiced/shipped?

Believe he was Down Under and held off for a later date...

More R&Ms up in NorCal, big flex!

Apparently the last batch to europe was delayed so spooky could finish the machines for pickup, is what i heard. So expecting mine in june :/ 598 i believe.

I see. Anyone have the link to that updated Google Drive list or whatever?

#655 invoiced (and paid here shortly) today.

BSE #707 was invoiced and paid in full toady as well.

I am #647 Standard got to be getting close.

How quick has it been for you guys from making the payment to the pin shipping?

epthegeek - In Looks Who Purging Now, if mystery awards a grenade during the mode, how do you use it? It doesn't seem to relight the blue arrow for collection on the left loop. I think I am missing something.

2 weeks.

I paid on 3/23 and received my game on 4/15, so about two and a half weeks here.