Hey Everyone!

We are here on Pinside but don't post very often, though we do make regular donations to help keep the site running! It's nice to see so many positive comments and I think I can chime in to help clear up a few things...

First off, I realize trust is always an issue with new or overseas suppliers so hopefully I can ease some concerns. We're absolutely committed to delivering a great product and great service. We have high standards for our own restorations so this applies to what we offer you as well. None of the artwork is scanned photocopies.

We are implementing new features and making improvements to the site/buying experience all the time, for example with shipping we have just added a function so that the tracking number and tracking link is automatically passed to you with the "Order Complete" email. If you haven't got a tracking number for your order, just ask!

New artworks are being added every month, and now we are also making our own custom and alternative artwork packages, so even more new stuff arriving all the time. Some recent additions include:

- Street Fighter 2 Black Edition
- Street Fighter 2 White Edition
- Tales From The Crypt Red
- T2 Chrome Edition
- The Avengers Galaxy Edition
- Spider Man City Addition

Alternative translites are also on the way.

In regards to decal sizing and overlap - originally we were trimming decals to be exactly the right size (very slightly smaller) so people could just apply them and do less work, but this has proved troublesome as cabinets warp and expand, not everyone has the same size. Now we are adding little extra. Worth noting is that our material is designed to be set with hot air once on your cabinet and if you smooth them out after warming they will expand very slightly, giving you more overlap. Videos for this are in production.

Lastly, we aren't perfect. We make mistakes (occasionally). That's life. The most important thing is how we deal with issues, and its always as quickly and professionally as possible. Replacements or refunds are necessary sometimes. If you ever have any problems, concerns or questions then I'm only a call or email away - usually best to email though and it means we have a record of conversations.

Your feedback is important and I will personally consider every comment and suggestion made to us. Happy to see people sharing their experiences with us here!

Pete
Retro Refurbs

P.S. Mbecker, I replied to your email please check. WPC backbox had to be sent in a separate tube.

We already have them in some colors. Drop me an email with which color/game you're looking for and I'll see if I can help you.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

You don't have to set them with a hot air gun, they will adhere just fine without but the material is designed for vehicle wraps so can be manipulated with heat, creases and wrinkles can be eliminated, and also the adhesive becomes a bit more tacky which once cool will have bonded to the surface a bit better

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Sorry to hear about this. That's either caused by bad shipping handling, or more commonly, customs ripping the end caps and packing off. No problem however, just apply warmth from either a hot air gun or hair dryer on high heat setting. Wrinkles, creases, and curls will magically disappear. No issues at all.

Sometimes in the past this has been a concern for people, and they find it hard to believe how easily creases disappear, which is why im having to shoot some videos to show how it works.

No association or affiliation with us whatsoever, but he does do top notch work and is very nice fellow!

Orafol Orajet. Apparently it's even used on Aircraft, you can read more here if interested: http://www.orafol.com/gp/europe/en/frontpage

Pete
Retro Refurbs

In case of any further doubts, someone posted a nice photo of their LAH machine with new decals here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/retro-refurb-cab-decals-anybody-use-them#post-3581048

And another great review for us here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/retro-refurbs

I would not recommend applying our decals with a squeegee, the drag is too harsh on the surface. Only a soft cloth like a microfibre towel is needed to smooth them out or a good tool to use is a lino brayer (hard rubber roller).

Did he apply them with a hot air gun? If not, you can go back over them with hot air to remove any fine scratches and also help set the adhesive permanently.

Any problems with artwork sizing or mismatch, please email me with the details so we can correct it.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

This might help:

31239376542_a22606c37b_k (resized).jpg

Also, on our Facebook page we shared a post from someone who completed their cabinet with our decals:

16797489_617201318481305_7581717948303537269_o (resized).jpg

You can see that and more at https://www.facebook.com/RetroRefurbsUK/

Pete
Retro Refurbs

I've nearly finished making a video showing us taking decals and scrunching them up into a little ball, stamping on them, and then unfolding and applying them perfectly without any marks.

This should help anyone crying over little wrinkles, and how to apply them with just a cloth and heat gun.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Hi! Just working through the backlog of emails from the weekend and will reply to you shortly. Your coin door with the line through it will be replaced, no issue.

My comment about the video was just a bit of light hearted humour. It's not about showing people how to apply decals, it's about showing how amazing our material is when you scrunch it up and totally screw with it.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Might be the pic that is off. I think the blue is pretty good. Here's a photo I took with my own camera under natural daylight:

31347131146_a6a9a874f8_k (resized).jpg

To be honest, no decal replacement is ever going to be 100% perfect no matter who you get them from, or how they're made. Original is always best so if you can save your cabinet's existing artwork either by touch up or just living with it as is, then that would be my recommendation.

That's only my personal opinion however. For me a game which plays 100% perfect with a nice playfield is worth more than a nice cabinet.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Haha yes, because I'm honest, and no one is getting rich off this stuff so lets just do the best we can for people.

Unlike this idiot and his "gang".....

As we spoke in the other topic, YOU are a liar. You've never had our decals. You bought some crap ones from a guy in Italy. My materials are FAR suprior to your "NextGen" rubbish. It's total gash. Let me tell you why - the last time I had your NextGen crap my customer returned his RFM and told me to take them off.

For starters the print resolution of NextGen was awful, the material was total crap, too thick and threw up bubbles everywhere. It was completely inflexible and couldn't be manipulated. It is the cheapest vinyl I've ever seen and appears to be unbranded. On top of this it seems the makers of this "NextGen" rubbish have no understanding of how to print black, the black was terrible. Full of colored dots, not a solid color.

Finally the texture was the worst offender. Matt!! Pinball2000 games came with glossy decals from the factory, and the correct coin door decal wasn't supplied either.

I have photos to prove all of the above if you want to challenge me, and I'm not even going to mention the price issue.

Why don't we put your decals up next to mine sometime and compare like for like on video for everyone to see how full of crap you, Rick and everyone else in your little gang of NextGen con artists really are.

But, I'm not bitter. Unlike you. At least people now have a choice as to what to put on their beloved games. Choice is everything.

You want half tone dots? Here's some half tone dots!!

WD (resized).jpg

Suck on that for a while.

Digest it.

Then take a laxative. Seems you need one already.

Thank you! Trying to make improvements where possible, but we can't please everyone.

Yes sir, we have them here: -link removed-

Note, our TSPP decals are full resolution with solid colors. They are not the low resoltuion CMYK halftone that Stern originally printed at. Most people seem to prefer our version.

Again, just being honest with people here.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Blah blah blah. No one cares.

Funny how you've only ever got a bee in your bonnet about Bally Williams stuff. What about Data East, Stern, Sega, Gottlieb and all the others?

What about Pinside? You wanna shut down 99% of the mods and replacement parts people are selling on here?

The amount of sheer nonsense that comes out of your mouth is something I find hilarious, but every time you and your buddies create a fuss over it, it draws more attention to Retro Refurbs which gives us a nice little boost in sales. That in turn means I can pay my designers to develop more stuff people need.

Thank you. I'll raise a glass to you my friend.

Difficult to say without seeing them in person but I know Pinball Center don't use the same material as we do, as a customer recently sent me a set of their TMNT to put on his game. While they're not particularly bad I do believe our material is better as we selected it for it's ability to be minuplated, forgiveness, and adhesion strength. It's an industrial grade wrapping material primarily used on vehicles and even aircraft, which obviously undergoes harsh conditions.

So next time you see a plane wrapped in British Airways (or other) branding, you know it's the same stuff

Based on the screen shot preview though, I would say the colours look a little dull and perhaps the red is too dark. Maybe these are scans? Ours are completely redrawn from scratch by an artish. Look at our preview in comparison.

Other than that the only obvious thing I see is that Pinball Center are out of stock and even if they were available are approximately £30 pounds more expensive than ours (before shipping).

Hi Kerry,

Our decals have a small amount of overlap, a bit less than 1/2", but we generally keep it tight so they can be aligned better on the cabinet.

When applied with heat and smoothed out they will expand a small amount too.

Remember as well that decals should be trimmed back slightly shorter and not go right to the edge of cabinet so they don't catch. Not that ours are easy to peel once fully cured but this does help keep them in better condition. The original cabinets were trimmed that way.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Should be up by the weekend. It only shows how to remove creases.

We already do, quality is outstanding with our new process: -link removed-

I need to drop you an email about that order. Will be touch.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Yeah I would say average is 2 weeks

Don't worry about that in the slightest. Here's what's possible:

IMG_9723 (resized).JPG

Video editing is a bitch, especially when you lot keep making orders to keep me busy all the time haha!

Meanwhile, here are a few screen grabs:

1 (resized).jpg2 (resized).jpg3 (resized).jpg4 (resized).jpg

Long term reliability of the ink is exceptional. Remember our decals are laminated, it's the lamination which is being scratched, and even this is more resistant than clear coat.

Light scratches however are easily removed with heat, just like creases.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Why didn't you contact me about this? If the decal colors are off by a lot we can make adjustments.

The problem is that given the age of the games no one truly knows what "original" colors are any more, we can only go off the best examples possible.

It sounds like you may be comparing the new ones with a faded cabinet though?

Here's an original cabinet:
image-7 (resized).jpg

Here's some decals:
raddecal (resized).jpg

The red is slightly deeper on the new ones, but agian we don't know how faded the cabinet is. I'd say it's not off by much, certainly not like some of the NextGen decals we see with vastly different colors.

Drop me an email please and we'll see about getting a better match for you, if you really feel they're not right at all.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Hmm. Yours looks different again.

Seems to be a lot of variation on this one, which is not uncommon. White Water has about 10 shades of blue across different batches.

The flyer for Radical:
1904f1 (resized).jpg

Actually yes you can, it's called a Spot Color. Fluro as well as metallics can be printed. Google it then maybe you'll learn a thing or two about printing since you can't even print the right colors on any of your decals, nevermind fluro, and if you can do better then start making Radical? Ok?

Otherwise I think it's generally accepted that your decals are garbage, as testified by many people.

Anyone considering buying decals from this guy ^^ or his associates should come to us first and we'll do you a better deal, with better quality decals.

For anyone having troubles with Radical, please drop me an email about returning them for a refund or exchange.

It really does show how desperate you are when all you do is spend your time stalking my online presence across multiple sites to try and discredit our decals with lies. You should really find something better to do with your time.

Every time you draw attention to our business, sales go up! I should be thanking you.

Oh and by the way, according to the vinyl manufacturer's specs, the material is guaranteed for 7 years with life expectancy much higher. I mean it would have to be since this stuff is intended for external application on aircraft, right? Overkill for a wooden pinball cabinet.

They would have to be, given they're one of the worlds leading brands.

Like you say, people will decide for themselves who to trust and what to buy. We're doing great, thank you.

Good post with good points. Just a few small points I will add:

- Fluro and metallics can be done with ink, using spot colors.

- The guy who made BOP 2.0 art gave us permission to use it. This is a non issue. I have the emails to back this up if need be.

- Not all our decals are glossy, for Stern games we use a Satin finish to get a much closer look of the original. We also do this for games which were originally stencilled. Yes I know, people will say they should be stencilled and not decalled, but we make them available for people who prefer to use them rather than paint. The choice is entirely up to the customer.

No problem at all. Just drop me a message and we'll get this sorted out.

I do appreciate constructive feedback.

I've got your email about the plastics, just haven't checked over the files you sent yet. Will do that now.

Pretty much.

It's Wayne Gillard from Mr Pinball Australia. He's in bed with Rick and PPS, and therefore despises me because I make better decals than they do. Plus I don't charge $600 for Indiana Jones like he does.

They don't give a damn about anything else in pinball other than Bally Willaims.

Back to the subject of Radical, I found some images of a very nice original game posted on the Arcade Museum forums back in 2014, long before we made our Radical decals.

Here you can see the reds in the skateboard, and how the same color used around the Bally logo has faded to that neon pinky colour.

I'm not disputing that we may have got the reds slightly wrong, but just wanted to point out that it's not supposed to be orange/pinky.

RadicalRightBack_zps6ee4520c (resized).jpgRadicalLeftSide_zps8d47ca49 (resized).jpg

Haha! That really made laugh.

You're bang on point with it though, especially this:

Just had this very conversation the other day with my colleague about our Rocky & Bullwinkle plastic set. Never been made before, a lot of people needed them, I feel we did an outstanding job. Had 1 person from the UK who thanked us and expressed his gratitude for our work. Not a peep from anyone else. They took the plastics and ran away. Hardly any feedback left on the forums.

Got a ton of criticism for not making the 3 backbox plastics in the set (already available elsewhere and no one needs them), packaging wasn't good enough (although none arrived damaged), a small piece of text on piece hidden at the back of the playfield wasn't quite thick enough.

These were done by one of the top graphic artists who's been working in pinball for years. When I look at other reproductions of plastic sets, I thought we were far more accurate than anyone else.

But that's just the way it goes in this hobby, people will always find something to moan about.

Thank you. Yes I did take as no complaints on Pinside means we did a good job lol!

All R&B plastics are sold out right now so until the next batch we'll leave those out.

Got some other new plastic sets coming out soon, perhaps you could review one of those

Because it's a very complex area, for things which are 30+ years old and often involve multiple parties as is the case for Indiana Jones.

There is a lot of pinball stuff which can never, ever, be reproduced "officially" because of these complexities.

If it was so easy, fully licensed product would be available in abundance.

Also we are dealing with a tiny, tiny percentage of the population who are keeping these games at home in a private collection. They are not commercial machines any more. If licensing becomes an issue for these home owners who only want to keep their prized possessions looking nice, then I'll quite happily step aside and disappear, but good luck finding replacement artwork for most of the games we've done.

Nobody else in the entire world has replacement artwork for as many games as we do.

When you get a license for the Street Fighter stuff you make and sell, maybe I'll get one for Indiana Jones. Ok?

Yes I know. If you can drop me an email asap please so we can organise a return and refund for you that would be great.

You sell that translite on Pinside through another member. You've got posts in the Street Fighter topic directing people who to message to get one.

I cannot "steal" artwork from you when it was already available from a DeviantArt user whom you gave no credit to. The full image is available to download!

And, after the fuss you made over it, it was me who gave the artwork away for free first, not you. Pointless telling lies to people here when they can go directly to the topic and check for themselves. Truth will always win.

Anyway, you will be happy: https://www.retrorefurbs.com

Time to take a break from pinball I think, I got plenty of other things going on.

To everyone else, all outstanding orders will be sent.

For anyone needing returns/refunds just email me direct to arrange those.

Peace.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Did you do this wet or dry?

Either way you can work those air pockets out with a heat gun. I'd recommend going over the whole thing with some heat tbh.

Thank you!

It's on the to do list. We're slowing down on the development of new cabinet decals now since we have over 200 and want to focus attention on other projects. We'll be adding more custom cabinet artworks, like Elvis we've just done:

new-mock-1 (resized).jpg

But our next major project is SideBlades™ and these are being added to the site over the next few days. We have around 50 so far, made on anti-scuff material and contour cut to the cabinet shape:

1 (resized).jpg
1 (resized).jpg
tron-legacy-pinball-sideblades-inside-decals-sideboard-art-pin-blades (resized).jpg

Pete
Retro Refurbs

They're long gone, done and dusted. We might do a different set later in the future but these ones are set in stone now.

But you can see what these look like installed in the game by viewing the photo gallery on this page: https://www.retrorefurbs.com/shop/tron-legacy-pinball-sideblades/

I think they look great installed.

No, we're making these on special anti-scratch material that is designed for harsh environments and wear. I believe we're unique in the "inside cabinet art" industry (lol) with this.

It's a lot thicker than standard vinyl but still slightly thinner than mirror blades so you get a nice even surface with no woodgrain showing through and it still leaves a little bit of playfield wiggle room.

I say they are scratch resistant but like anything they are not bullet proof, so if people still wish to take extra precautions that's fine with us

I'll make a separate topic on these SideBlades once we're ready to release all designs for sale.

Pete
Retro Refurbs

Yes, we've got/are doing those

I know there's still plenty of games people need, and we'll get them all eventually, but we made 120+ sets of cabinet decals in 1 year - that's approximately 1 every 3 days, and these things take a loooonnng time to make. Many man hours are spent making each set and we need a break.

We do make plastic sets, look on the website

Feedback from customers have said they are better than original in most cases so we've been making other sets.

A full set of Terminator 2 will be released at the end of this month. Doctor Who is being worked on.

Yes we're doing a full set of Giligans. I've had repro plastics from Pinball Center and wasn't overly happy with the quality of them so this is on the list. The Giligans we've got is sitting in storage awaiting restoration, and there's a whole load of things we need to make for it.

Yes. Busy working out a couple of issues on this one, but we'll get there.

The ink won't rub off because there is a layer of laminate over the top. You can use pretty much anything that doesn't contain harsh chemicals - i.e. if you don't trust putting it on your face then don't use it on your decals.

Microfiber towels are your best friend for all pinball cleaning. Soapy sprays, warm water, but best of all is Pledge. Use it on everything, especially your playfield glass

Yes

We'll make them one day, maybe, but it's a super rare game. Only 500 made.

Getting hold of one to reproduce the artwork and match colors will be extremely difficult.

We have a private video we can share with you. PM me for info.

To keep nosy people out.

...and because it's a shorter clip of a full length video which isn't finished yet, not ready for public release.

It's currently only available for customers to help with their decals. Just PM me your order number and I'll send it over.

Pete
Retro Refurbs