Any one hear from Stefan(Pincycle) at RS Pinball in Austria lately? I've been speaking to him for close to month now. He due to send me an invoice so I could pay him for one of his R&M spots but it's now been nearly 3 weeks and no invoice as had been promised. Several PMs and direct emails, but the comms have stopped. Meanwhile I'm keeping an eye for any sensibly priced R&M spots as an alternative. Notice I missed one apparently the other day which someone posted here.

Thanks for the feedback man. Good to know its not just me. I'll assume it's a lost cause and keep my fingers and toes crossed for another opp (besides those trying to scalp them out there).

Thanks but doesn't really work trying to call from Australia to Austria, time change is unworkable. In these days of eCommerce it shouldn't be necessary either really. I've done so many deals with the US and Europe without ever having spoken to any one on the phone. I've thrown the towel in today. His slowness has cost me massively in the exchange drop (to a pathetic US55c). It's now beyond ridiculous to pay the premium on a deposit in $US for me. I may as well now canvass the local pinball forums for anyone nervous who wants to pull out.

Guys I'm officially in the club as at today! What a difference 24 hours can make. I'm glad I posted yesterday. Fellow local member nettek contacted me informing me he was keen to sell his spot #354. We were able to literally sort it all over night. Big ups to him for making my day! Now the wait begins. I'm personally hoping there's some exchange rate recover in the meantime.

Not hard to get around, surely you can use a DNS server. I use Getflix for example to watch 100% US content on a bunch of devices and onto TV's etc. You can switch access to different regions on the fly individually for Amazon, Netflix, and bunch of other services.

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Pretty easy to get around in this day and age with companies like MyUS.com etc... I've been using them for 25 years to get all kinds of stuff sent here. Hardly use them nowadays though with so many more Intl friendly purchasing options (Ebay, amazon, etc). I might use them once every 6 months to year maybe.

Then again maybe actually Google it like I just did for actual shops who ship Intl . For example https://www.bigbadtoystore.com/Product/VariationDetails/106542

Yeah you probably won't in this day and age. I used to have a lot of issues with the stuff like car parts when I owned vehicles like a '99 Ford Lightning and a '03 Mustang Cobra. Naturally it wasn't easy to get certain parts and accessories shipped all the time. Then there was the times over the years where I've been able to air freight pinballs at good rates through companies like MyUS. So definitely had it's place, but not anywhere near as import to me these days bar the occasional large online store that's totally stubborn about selling Intl like Zappos shoes.

Same here I was stoked to get my build sheet back on the 19th June as well, still awaiting invoice - my number is 354.

Got my invoice a couple of hours ago. #354 all paid up now. Ironically had to be two days after I just plonked $$ down to buy a White Water I came across. Expensive week all of a sudden lol.

I just paid it on my phone with Apple Pay, didn't see any further charges. Was just happy to know it's all paid up now.

Not a rumour mein fruend, the 'Aussie batch' is fact

Phil, you back on board already buddy! I feel bad now having taking up yours. Thought you might be back a bit later. What happened man?

I know how it would feel mate. I'd be kicking myself all over the shop. Considering you did me such a kindness in the first place I feel a little obligated to be honest.

Would be remiss of me if I didn't at least pay respect to the generosity you've shown me with it by offering the same back .

#354 to be precise

I've got a back of mind fear about that given mine's getting very close to arriving, but trying to tell myself there's no way it will happen given outside of your post I can't recall anyone else having this happen.

Ok I await your PM. If somehow all goes how south, it's not like I'd do badly if I had to offload it, there's enough local covid over-hyped types here at the moment who are soliciting to want to buy them (for well over the odds) before anyone's even received one locally yet.

So you've had a bunch of unfortunate technical and q.c. issues then. It's not a 'I don't like it as game' type scenario by all accounts. Sorry to hear it's gone so badly. Can't say we have any choice whatsoever in 'choosing our distributor' since there isn't one here, we are at the mercy of what Spooky sent us in the container. We can only hope they took a little extra time to go over them knowing they were going this far without any local support mechanism...

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That's in a way good to hear/know. Fingers crossed for you man and hope it all gets sorted soon. Also, touch wood for the container of ours coming to Oz that Spooky paid a little extra care to ensure they were in good shape off the line, I'd hate for any of us, pretty well skilled in pinball tech (such as myself) or not to have to start dealing with qc issues out of the box..

Glad you posted mate. I was really dismayed when I read your email about the issues and it didn't particular help settle my concerns about our shipment. I'm gonna have to say your example is enough to unfortunately nullify my thoughts of last week (when in discussion with wcbrandes about his Canadian experiences) that hopefully Spooky took some extra care before sending those machines on their way all the way down here to Aus. That's in particular recognition of the fact we have no local distributor to fall back this time who might have had a general spares inventory say to fall back on instead say having to wait on the factory to most likely mail out replacement parts via (now extremely slow since covid) mail/ remotely assist owners via email. At this stage it's very early and we all await other owners getting theirs during the next week. So far it sounds like Mark's one is ok but he hasn't really commented any further as yet. One owner managed to misinterpret the power supply settings and fire his one up at 115V setting with 240V power breaking the power supply. I won't have time to pick mine up till next Monday at this stage (all going to plan). Trying not to get too nervous meanwhile

He's one of the local guys who may have even picked it up himself. So very little transport involved from the container at that. That's what makes it more worrying.

EDIT: Have since heard another Aus owner is having issues with his display not working. This owner is quite proficient at tech as well and can't seem to find anything obvious.

I made of point of mentioning a bit earlier, on the owners behalf, this is out of the container, not some careless secondary transport scenario. It was also noted out of the container to the owner by fellow member Cooked71 (who is helping with temp storage) that this box had the issues as described. The owner lives in Sydney and had an experienced and extremely well regarded (in the pinball community) specialist transporter who is also engaged to also take another 5 machines interstate deliver it to him. Also, the other owners in the southern states have all engaged another specialised pinball transport to their locations, so no excuses for theirs to have any 'in country' transport issues either.

Wayne, that is indeed a very good point mate. It's the one factor that hasn't been made clear yet. I had (quite possibly falsely) assumed the container was delivered to Mark's warehouse for unloading or at least he was there to supervise the unloading of it at the forwarding agent's warehouse. I've asked for that specific as it would most certainly explain the situation. It would also no doubt affect how Spooky views the situation. It also would back up my feeling that it was a mistake Spooky didn't engage you like they have in the past, which is also relevant for the guys already having tech issues out of the box.

Ok so we have established now that Mark 100% sighted the container and confirms damage was due to the way it was packed.

Also we are now hearing that a couple of owners who have their R&Ms already, have discovered broken parts like the right ramp post. We are now waiting to see how the other owners fair as they take delivery around the country across the next few days. I’m now very nervous about what I’m going to find with mine come Monday.

So number 354 in the house, picked up from Mark's warehouse yesterday. Everything was in great condition, I too had been quite nervous much like razorsedge. Cabinet and Cabinet decals all looked great. Took step of adding some clear pincab protectors I had on hand to be safe. After setting everything up and doing all of the requisite checks, it was finally time to fire it up. This is where things got interesting.... I was great by the Rick and Morty splashscreen but it quickly flashed over to this warning. From a power and board point of view, nothing looks out place that I can see and not a single connector loose. I did spend much time on it as I was totally stuffed after getting the machine in place, shifting an machine etc. I will go back to it today when I get home and spend some decent time trying to nut it out. I wasn't exactly stoked but it sounds like this is par for the course for us O.S. Spooky owners who don't have a real distributor to do the Q.C. on the way through.
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Yeah thanks for the tip. I went through from in the cabinet with the power supply up to the boards and didn't find anything at the time. Also restarted a few times. I'll have to spend a while later today with it and try to work out what's happening.

Great tip thanks for that. In tiredness and it being night I could easy have missed that kind of thing too

Spot on there, I finally got back to it just now. As soon as I had a decent look around in the back of the cabinet I soon discovered the culprit, one single connector disconnected on the power distribution board next to the power supply. Game fired straight up. I levelled it and played a first game. Was really happy with the how everything played, interesting shots a and some nice flow around the top of the playfield. Look forward to many more games soon as I load the latest code.

Man that's literally the first thing that stood out to me the big rattle. I am going to have look at mine today as well.

I hear you man. Audio (and Home Theater) is another main hobby of mine, I used to do comp car audio as well many moons ago. I had a good tweak of the stock amp and agree it's way too fiddly compared to what it should be for controlling that sub. A good comparison would be Pinwoofer's amp which I just installed in JP2. It's incredibly simple to dial in to get smooth sub output. I got my R&M stock one sounding ok compared to out of the box, but a ways from ideal as the sub volume is far too granular. I might do something similar to your there to help make it easier to get the level right. No point really in putting in a spacer kit if the sub just isn't blending properly with the rest of the audio, since it's actually too loud to begin with due to the difficulty of getting the settings to well blended level.

Yeah after seeing your pic, I might tweak mine too, as it looks something like your first photo despite having washers from the factory. There's definitely enough ball rejects to warrant doing something on mine I reckon.

Yeah I had it do something like that the other day too. I played through it as I was in the middle of a good game. Seemed to clear itself though, so I didn't end up restarting.

I did that with mine a couple of days after getting it too. Hopefully does the trick.

Search bar is your friend... Has been discussed a zillion times in the thread to date and sounds like you've got plenty of time to go through thread before yours arrives. There aren't a host of 'necessary fixes' btw. I had that anticipation before getting mine and have hardly had to adjust anything apart fact a connector came off in the cabinet in shipping that I had to reconnect to get everything working.

Trust me (or don't...), these things aren't nearly as issue plagued as you may expect by reading here. Our shipment was put through the rigors of sea freight that saw a few machines affected (to very degrees, most minor bar one) through incorrect container loading. I was totally prepared to be troubleshooting and correcting and soooo ready to jump up and down about anything that could be deemed a significant issue after being on the owners thread since day dot. But what I now realise is we are quite ways down the track not and Spooky aren't ignorant of the early qc issues, teething pains, and tweaks. I have a flipper kit on order as well. But again in a standard sessions now after a few weeks of ownership, real world, warm weather usage (even without any aircon), 20-30 mins of pretty constant usage doesn't automatically equate to flipper fade. I'm sure I can bring it on once I've had a bit longer session with friends around to play etc though. So again, as someone very hands on with 20 years+ in the hobby (and as many pins you can see I've gone through), current production examples are not filled with a list of much needed tweaks and fixes. My fellow 30 or so owners from the same container are probably a pretty good survey sample to go off. Probably the NZ owners group (especially by the lack of comments to that effect) are also going really well with theirs. In or group there was one really badly damaged machine and less than a handful that things like guide issues etc, some random broken parts in shipping, plus a couple of unfortunate user mishaps with power settings. I don't treat the sub level being totally wrong through poor amp set up and causing causing glass rattle (that can be adjusted in a matter of a minute or two) or the slightly noisy fan (like Stern's anyway) as big enough issues to fixate on when I got mine. I was looking for genuine major faults, of which there just wasn't anything that took any great attention or distracted from general game play.

I don't mind the postage to Oz with an item that small over stuffing around to re-distribute on arrival here.

Glad I don't have to worry about it with my 15 year old step daughter, she capable of swearing enough in her own right. Then again a close mate had his family down to mine with his 3 year and 5 year and didn't bat an eyelid at the audio coming out of the machine the whole time and they must have been on R&M for half and hour solid lol.

You get it downloaded in the end? Sounds like your ISP's a bit sketchy. I've never had issues with the big download providers like Dropbox, only on rare occasions with the more fringe ones like RapidGator and Nitroflare that I use fairly regularly. The other thing is I've found in using Firefox as a browser, it can't often resume downloads if they fall over part way instead of starting from scratch..

I got the update done yesterday and played a solid 30 mins. Everything felt good flipper-wise. No major score improvements on my part as yet though lol.

Holy Moly! To think I'm here struggling to crack a 10m score after 8 months of ownership! After months of machine tweaks, it seems like I need to do few more.. maybe take the flippers down a smidge more even than I have etc., play with level again.

I love Moonmen but I'm lucky if I can get it going long enough. I had one good run when it first was added but hardly any since then.

Something like 6.7 now from memory after trying many angles. Yep well and truly sorted EOS, it flips great.

I've always used a flipper gauge when tightening the flipper pawls, keeps the correct gap at all times with no fuss.

I finally got some time to inspect my game after scratching my head about the really low scoring/features lately. I quickly discovered the captive ball was hanging up on the rollover and not registering, plus discovered during a switch test, the lighted portal mod I'd added in had screwed up the spinner connection on me. took the portal lighting out for the time being. A couple of games later and I'm up to 17m and finally made it Rick Potion No 9 after all this time. Now the improved shooting I've had for a long while is matching the scoring finally. Time to start clocking up some decent scores!

Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion

Such a great episode. We need a mode based on this one. Would totally make up for fact I have no interest in Ultraman lol. Not holding my breath though though lol, things are probably at bit busy on the code front at moment!

I use Sonarr on my NAS so I get whatever leaks as well.

It's the episode after, has a nod to the incest space baby in it, very funny.

Wait till you see Gotron Jerrysis Rickvangelion, season high point for me. Even better for a mode. Great nod and wink towards Japanese anime and scifi, fits in with Ultraman in that sense too. Great Godfather takeoff too.
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I get them on my NAS, which uses the Sonarr app. Got Amortycan Grickfitti to watch in a min.

I get them on NAS, which uses the Sonarr app.

Yeah of course, I forget about local Netflix differences as I have mine working off US DNS in all my devices. In my program order I can see Aus Netflix is the same as US as in this weeks episode, then comes the Gotron episode next week as scheduled.

Yeah I went through trouble of screen swap out, even though I'd dialed in my screen fairly well. But in the end viewing angle still gets me with new one.

Got an interesting local pinball story involving R&M. It's a bit of testament to what's happening in our local market lately with a plethora of bored overly cashed up newcomers turning up. A guy pops up on FB yesterday saying he's new to pinball and selling his R&M after two weeks. This guy paid OTT for one here ($13K) having never played one as his first ever machine along side a JP2. He doesn't even understand enough to know if it has the recommended tweaks(nor brave enough to even look into it), only that it has latest software. Meanwhile he quotes he (and his family) can't deal with the left pop bumper and doesn't like it as much as DP, IM, or TWD, all of which he has played and could have bought instead. Had to state the painfully obvious to this guy that you simply can't compare the way those Stern titles play in terms of flow etc compared to a Spooky like R&M. I noted it was definitely a game more suited to enthusiasts and getting to play it or even (to a much lesser degree) watch a fair amount of gameplay would have saved him buying one. Just one of those stories I wanted to share.

Ugh, $USD corrected amount for our American friends here, which I always pay them the courtesy of doing. Didn't mean to confuse my countrymen in the process. But if you saw the FB post(with the $A17.5K asking price) you'd probably also realise I'd done the $USD conversion btw.

Decided to order another display panel as the more I thought about my previous upgrade, the more I was certain I didn't end up with an IPS panel (and wasted my time). I sorted it out yesterday and sure enough great blacks at any viewing angle as per other comments. Only issue now is I kinda want a new display protector as I was trying to get a small scratch out of it with some clear plastic polish but it didn't work, made things a bit worse.

Looks much better, kind of regretting having the original now.

I'm in on a kit too now, seems like R&M is such a perfect candidate for these things. Hoping green looks good with my glow titans.

Finally got time to install my Precision Flipper full kit today. Very easy process to do everything. Literally first game I played I got the highest score I've had in recent memory as well as longest game. Incredible difference, so glad I bought them.

I did mine a year ago. Definitely like the way it looks now.

Got an annoying little issue with my machine. After I moved all of my pins 10 feet into a new dedicated room, the only machine to play up afterwards has been R&M. I quickly discovered what seemed like the one simple issue, the P3 board power had come loose. However, upon starting a game I soon found out the scoop coil wasn't firing. Literally the only thing not working in the entire machine. I've been back and forth over everything and cannot for the life of me see any other issues in the machine. Definitely not fuses, that's for sure. Never had this kind of issue with any of my other machines. On top I've got people coming over to play pinball later and always irks me to have one machine out with something minor.

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First thought was to test the coil in the menu, that's why I mentioned it's the only coil not firing. I do think the folding of the head could have something to do with it, good point. I've used meters on a lot of pins to trace issues, so yeah I was thinking of hitting that next unless someone pointed out something I may have missed. Really hate seemingly little but hard to indentify issues like this. Never had an older WMS do this or a Stern tbh.