Numbers reported are really a bad metric to evaluate how widespread or how small an issue is. Pinside is a small portion of the overall pinball community. Not everything will make its way here. Things can look bigger or much smaller than they really are. Reports help explain what an issue is, but they don't give a good representation of how common a problem might be.

Right during the height of the ghosting playfield problems when you couldn't look at Pinside without seeing 10 threads on the issue, I pointed out ghosting inserts to someone on their Ghostbusters. They didn't even know what I was talking about, so I explained and showed them. I have to image that many people like him let that issue go unreported and never addressed.

But the whole thing will fall apart, catch fire, and insult your wife all on day one. Why are you excited about this?

I wouldn't buy a new Stern machine without putting the brackets in. They're cheap and they bring some added peace of mind. The way things have been lately, maybe buying a secondhand game that has proven to hold up is your safest bet. If a game has issues when you inspect it that are beyond what you deem acceptable, keep looking. You can't inspect a new game, and if it has issues, you just have to hope that they're bad enough to warrant replacement. If they are minor (by Stern's standards), but major to your own, it's never going to stop bugging you.

When buying a used machine, check the cabinet edges, check the decals, check for ghosting, check for playfield art/clearcoat bubbling around posts, and look for clearcoat chipping. If you don't see these things in a well-played game, it's probably solid.

My Ghostbusters LE was a quality nightmare, but Stern did eventually make it right. But out of the box, it was literally unplayable due to things installed improperly. It must have been skipped over on the QC check, which I guess can happen. It took a few hours to get the game playable. I was confident enough to do that. The ghosting was addressed with a playfield swap.

The next time I buy a Stern, it will be secondhand, which is oddly the best bet for getting a nice machine.

Yes, good on them for switching back to an old industry standard that they never should have strayed from in the first place. Let's all applaud.