Back Alley Customs ... best mods for SM!

They are on the list, along with a half dozen others

Made my own shooter rod. 3D printed the head, hand painted, and then heated the rod and installed the head. It won't come off even with a hammer. I think it turned out really well.

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Just got the powder coated parts back for the GTB Spiderman I’m restoring. Blue and Red Metallic.
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What do you want modified? The call-outs are some of the best ever in a Stern game and the custom guitar rock music is very well suited to the game.

Not having the tournament button installed on the lockdown bar is a good start! I hate that mine has that....

I like the calls. I would like the music the b.s.o of the movies

Pete was correct, i found the shitty original plastics up the back of the cab while hooking up an external subwoofer yesterday. One of the previous owners must have sourced the web plastics somewhere, bless his heart.

Has a big pinball speaker sub in the cab too.

Anybody ever try puttin the vault edition plastics on the original? I’ve often wondered what that might look like....

Not sure it fits the movie theme version, the appeal to me is Toby Maguire and the rest of the actors on this pin I feel like im playing these three movies. For vault edition I feel like im in a comic like you should be. Stern did a great job on keeping the same layout but you get two completely different adventures. In my opinion this will always be a top 5 pin, either version.

I've been toying with changing out Sandman callouts (I mean you can only hear Thomas Hayden Church say "ok" so many times. Really?!) and also adding Venom callouts, (actual speech from video games or cartoons) instead of just the screech. I would keep everything else though.

I would only change the music .... I like the calls

Simple but still a cool little mod. Im still waiting on 5 boxes of new goodies to pimp my spidy out.

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That looks great nice work. Is it a pain to swap out the coin inserts? I always struggled with the Williams ones

Does venom have more than 1 callout tho? If there isn’t more than at least 2 it’d prolly feel even more repetitive.
Dunno if it fits but in the animated series venom spoke w/ like a demonic synthed voice.. there is likely some good content to pull from

I think he actually says something at some point, but I don't think it's a lot. There's lots of good stuff to pull from. I just haven't had the motivation to do it

Sandman is starting to get on my nerves though. When you hit him and all he says is "ok," it feels like a bit more effort could have been put in.

There are a few Venom call-outs, "Never wound what you can't kill" is certainly in there and one other one I believe. The main one is the screech from the movie which has never bothered me at all, then again I've never been bothered by the Sandman ones either.

Isn't there an intro and final shot ready audio cue for each Sandman mode? "There's something up on the roof" and "I don't want to hurt you" are the two for the first mode I think. Each shot in between is a noise he makes when getting hit. Other ones I can remember off the top of my head are "End of line Spider-Man", Spidey's "There's a new sheriff in town" and the line from the scientists about a bird or something that will fly away.

I can hear all of those call outs as I read them lol You're absolutely right. I really didn't care for the SM3 movie (as I'm sure a lot of people didn't) and THC didn't do a great job as Sandman either. I'm sure there are other, more suitable callouts that could be put in place for both Venom and Sandman out there. I already clipped a bunch of Venom videos. I can't recall doing Sandman or not but that's as far as I've gotten. Definitely won't be movie accurate, but I'm not thinking about the movies when I play either. I'm thinking about the cartoon/video game characters.

Not at all its four screws to remove the coin reject bezel less than 5 mins and your done. Aurich made quit a few different coin symbols. Just do a search.
Harley D.

I just played a couple games.. seems to be 3-4 distinctive venom growls that I picked up on. I think there is certainly some room for improvement here.
The goblin callouts are just perfect tho. My fav in the game next to Macho Man!
That said, some tweaking to Bonesaw callout volumes would be awesome... i always felt there were a little faint

Hello to all,
Ive join the club once again, if found a very nice spider man, and it looks in great conditions, is all original and almost perfect cabinet.
The playfield have one mark on the playfield im wondering if someone else have seen it already, it doesnt look any wear or damage, it looks like a "print-fault".
Some pics of it

Glad that im back
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It's likely a print fault if you can't feel the wear and it still has clear on it. Congrats on returning to the club. There were times where I think I want to sell this game, but then I start playing it, and it just feels great! A lot of people prefer Star Trek over this game due to the similar layouts, but I must be in the minority because I definitely enjoy the flow, theme, and rule set of this game more!

Ive had them both, sorry to say but no way that st is better than spider, the rules are very well implemented, makes all the sense to fight against villains, and on st, all the modes fell the same, i like machines with progression and that tells you a history, i feell that with spider man.

Before I owned Spider-man, I played Star Trek Pro and I actually didn't like it at all. I picked up a Spider-man on trade and really like it. So I'm definitely in the Spider-man over Star Trek group.

Spider-Man is the way better game. Getting medals for modes is weak plus the Venom shot from the upper right flipper is more satisfying than the warp ramp. ST is a great game, but SM is a epic game.

ST definitely has the "shoot the blinky lights" feel to it. I also don't like most of Dwight's games. None of the modes really "mean" anything, they're pretty superficial. So when I hear "ST is better than SM" I always think...(in Sandman's voice) "ok" lol

Star Trek has easier to hit ramps because they are quite a bit wider. To me, I almost wish the sandman target was a 2 bank that way the ramp on either side would have been another 1/4 inch or so wider. Talk about flow...

I like the tighter ramp shots. Makes for a better player than easy to hit wide ramps. Plus, you can't go wrong with the AFM style target bank. Would have been cool to have Sandman do more than just stand there, but you can't have them all. The OG gets a shaking Goblin. I'm cool with that.

I see also some irregularities in my playfield. Seems to be in the print. Playfield is not damaged

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Ha you mean the bk2k style target bank. A year or two ago I updated the trivia portion on Sm’s page about Steve going back in time

So I got a few mods in today.
Back Alley painted speaker panel
Lited speaker kit with Pinbits acrylic Spiders. A Modfather super size spidy shooter rod and custom free play cards. I still have 4 more boxes of goodies plus a Color dmd coming. This is going to be one bad ass Spiderman!

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a question.
disassemble all this part to put the playfield protector and I have noticed that when replacing it all this part vibrates and moves when doc raises the ball to the ramp.

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Does it happen to someone else? Is it common for that area to move and vibrate?

I think so

I agree as well. I owned a beautiful STLE for a few years. I still think it's a great game, but the modes feel much more like chopping wood than the modes on SM. They did a great job of incorporating the theme on both games, but I think SM is just more fun to shoot.

Any of you guys found that the lock eject behind the sandman is to strong!? Mine is kicking the ball so hard, that area is mylared from the factory but im afraid that damages the playfield..

Here’s a update to my modding of spidy.
I added the pinbits web protectors, titan rubbers in clear and red. Target decals, 3 bank decal, colored webbies and color matched flasher leds. Im still waiting on a few other items. And then it will be ready to play harcore.

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Got my city scape pin blades installed tonight and back alley sandman, just need to install my ColorDMD tomorrow.

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So im finally finished with my spidy. Here are the upgrades from Starting with a huo Spidy in perfect working and cosmetic condition. It is by far the nicest looking and playing Spidys I have owned. (2 other spidys)
ColorDmd
Pinblades
Color matching Led inserts non ghosting.
Color matching led flashers
Frosted Leds in the GI
Pinbits Webbed Slings and Spidy Sense.
Color Webbies
Shaker
Flipper Fidelity Speaker upgrade
Speaker light kit with Red Spiders.
Titan rubbers throughout.
Target Decals
3 bank top decal
Back Alley Sandman and Speaker Grill.
Modfather Shooterod
Red Start button
Red coin reject with spidy inserts.

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Very nice machine! Spidey rules. I would suggest doing the spider sense to shooter lane mod to complete it.

Does anyone have a scan of the Doc Ock magnet area? It would be greatly appreciated and would help get a SM looking great again.

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Hi Everyone, I am looking for two plastics for the SM that lyonsden is restoring and was wondering if anyone has either of these. They are the two plastics with circles around them in the attached pic. Would rather not buy the entire set Thanks for your help!

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Somebody did not have the magnet core at the same level as the playfield. If you cannot get a scan, you may want to try filling in the damage and putting in one of Cliffy's carbon fiber version of the magnet protector.

Excellent idea and the #2 choice.

While shopping a SM, I had a chance to replace the GI with addressable LEDs. Get ready for full color controlled and interactive GI! This video just shows some demo code that I quickly wrote up to test the layout, but since I'm using the pinduino, I'll be able to monitor all the game activity happing on J6 and J7 of the power driver board. Since Spiderman has tight integration of specific flasher for each of the villains, I'll be able to use the pinduino to do full-game color effects such as Venom causing the GI to turn blue, Green Goblin green, Doc Ock red, and Sandman yellow.

If you can turn that into a retail plug and play you'll be on a winner. Well done.

the LED ocd board is easy to install
just use normal LEDs for the inserts, (you do not want to use non-ghosting)
i used LEDs with frosted domes for the GI
i just use white LEDs, not a fan of colored ones
but I did use colored LEDs for the flashers , including a green one behind the goblin targets

You don't need the LED OCD board to convert to LEDs. The OCD board makes the LEDs fade in/out, as opposed to instantly flash on/off. A nice-to-have, but not necessary.

As far as changing bulbs, you'll need a combination of bayonet base and wedge base. The bulbs themselves just swap out. Nothing special about it. My suggestion is to buy bulk in your preference of white (warm, sunlight, or natural) with a frosted lens. I go with cometpinball.com 2SMD LEDs for brightness, reliability, and longevity. The other brands tend to flicker or aren't reliable and it's annoying to have to lift up the playfield for one bulb that doesn't work 100% of the time.