I am going respectfully decline the second helping, as you suggested. So maybe you can help me better understand where I am going wrong.

Are you suggesting that machines with less powerful flippers, must naturally have significantly fewer dimples in the PF simply due to being equipped with less powerful flippers?

Are you suggesting that older machines (especially WPC) wont produce a significant amount of airballs in a similar manner, as the newer Sterns?

Are you suggesting that the descending balls impact force on the PF is significantly different - simply due to the strength of the flippers?

Are you suggesting that the following formula is no longer applicable, and must be revised to account for either a 1990 pin, or a 2019 pin?

I am just having fun here poking at ya'. But in short. My antiquated FH provides countless high velocity airballs during each and every single play. So how can flipper strength really factor significantly in to the overall issue? Aint airballs - airballs regardless of the pin they occur in?

In the end of the day. I dont believe for a second that airballs and their velocities on newer Stern are significantly different than those of WPC. Maybe someone can post the actual voltages and Ohms between the two just for shits and giggles.
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Plausible. Rudy does blow a lot of hot air. lol

Just watched this Steve Richie video again. Wow! That video is going to follow him around for many years. What a crock! If my 90’s W/B had dimples I didn’t notice them. If they were there they must have been so small and shallow that I didn’t notice them at all. Some of the pictures in here the dimples/craters are huge and very deep. The degree of difference in dimples can be extreme. People might have been able to deal with almost undetectable dimples but won’t stand for obvious deep craters all over the playfield. Steve Richie will probably regret putting out that video. Makes him look bad.....real bad. I understand the dark glasses now. The eyes tell all. Again Wow!

Im just suggesting that older games don't play as fast and furious as the newer games therefore the newer games will dimple more.

You should play more older games.

Xenon is a repro and I believe Monster Bash is as well, not CGC but I have pictures of those as well. The others are original, sorry I should have made note of that. I was trying to cover some from each manufacturer I've seen.

You don’t trust the guy who posts a video with his sunglasses on? Shocked I don’t trust him either...

You wear sunglasses when playing poker and trying to bluff someone... connection?

Uh-I remember seeing a panel at a show where he apologized for the glasses because he had either an eye surgery or an infection...true statement. Yup

Guys guys...I figured out the issue. The playfields aren't lower quality....

...the pinballs have been strengthened.

Stay classy Pinside.

This dimple talk is depressing.

Haha yeah ok. I grew up when pinball was in its hay day. I've probably played more older games than you. Today's stern games are far more faster and wild than Funhouse ever thought about being.

Dont mistake what I am saying either as to the quality of the playfields. I know the playfields were alot bette made back then but the other truth is they didn't take the beating that today's games take.

Yeah, its surprising how fast the ball can get moving on my 1980 Black Knight. Those slings move it fast, and sometimes it positively rockets down from the upper playfield.

EDIT: And that's with the stock 25v flipper mechs!

Hey, I’m only upvoting you the first time.

I'm talking about flipper power and the general speed of the game, the amount of air balls etc.

What's even more depressing is when people dont know that playfields dumpling is part of pinball and they beat the subject into the ground

Right, and so am I. The ball moves VERY fast around the upper playfield. And I get plenty of glass slams, and the occasional airball quite often. I don't pretend to say that the BK's speed is typical of machines of the era. But it can be very fast-playing, as fast or faster than plenty of newer Sterns I've played.

What is even more depressing is when I can sit the two latest Stern games side by side... see differences... and people still play dismissive as if everything is always the same. It's not.

Ive played games with a hardtop and like the play ability. Im wondering if this maybe the future for new titles. Seems easier to build and more durable with out issues described above.

I hope not. It's essentially a laminate layer and could bring on issues of its own later down the line. I like the look and feel of real wood and I feel that long term it is probably easier to repair and maintain. If a hardtop chips or cracks is there a good way to repair it?

Don't get too carried away with CGC quality, sure they are better than the Stern rubbish ATM, but my MMRLE developed dimples straight away and the printing on the inserts is light and difficult to read. CGC gave me a diffuser and Rick gave me his attitude.

I would say ALL pin manufacturers are on notice for producing quality playfields. Sterns look the worst IMO but some of the CGC playfields look real bad also. These pin companies would be foolish to ignore the outrage of this issue. It is not going away. From what I am seeing Spooky is doing the best with PF quality but I will have to see more examples to be sure. Honestly I haven’t seen many AP pins so wouldn’t comment on them. The company who makes the best quality pins will have an advantage going forward IMO. At least for my dollars they will.

You could just cut the playfield protector out and carry-on, or install a new one. My restored Judge Dredd came with a protector already installed, and while the ball does spin a lot more on average, I’m happy with it and totally leaving it in. I’m one to wax playfields regularly so some extra spin is fine.

A hardtop is different than a playfield protector. A hardtop is actually glued to the wood whereas a protector floats. I don't like either option over wood but at least the protector isn't permanent.

Yeah, gluing something to the playfield seems very counterintuitive. Especially if you’ve experienced old Mylar :/

So it is pretty obvious softer wood is being used to make modern playfields. What I would really like to know is can the harder wood still be acquired for a higher price or are these pin manufacturers just unwilling to pay the higher price for harder wood. After we know that we can move on to the issues with the clearcoat. It is either just the wood or a combination of the wood and clear. I lean towards a combination of the two but I am not sure what the percentage of blame goes to wood or clear.

For the money we're paying, holding pinball manufacturers to a high standard make sense...no doubt.

I believe Stern produced ~25,000 machines in 2019 (that's ~500 per week!). They were building ~8 titles in 2019 : Deadpool, Beatles, Munsters, Black Knight, Jurassic Park, Elvira, Star Wars Comic Art, Stranger Things. Of the 8, 6 were brand new releases.

If 5-10% of the PF's are defective, that's still a lot of machines. If you combine all other pinball output in 2019, they don't come close to Stern's numbers.

From my perspective, quality hasn't kept pace with this staggering output (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/continued-playfield-issues-with-jjp-and-stern/page/71#post-5380918). Hopefully Stern can resolve (or improve) their quality issues in 2020. The customer service also needs to improve...the lag time to get parts from Stern is abysmal.

I believe it's softer wood as well. Clear will never prevent a dimple/ding (on a pinball machine OR car).

The 7-ply wood on JP2 appears to be consistent with older B/W games (like STTNG, TZ, etc.)...so it's not the number of layers. It's the density.

IMG_0904 (resized).jpg

It's probably less than 1/2 that, but still a ton compared to everyone else.

edit: I went and compared serial numbers from a Munsters box and a Stranger Things box.
Stranger Things: 300293
Munsters: 286868

13,425 difference approx a year apart. That's the semi real number of what their factory is producing.

Interesting...I got my number from an industry insider (not an employee of Stern) and thought it was on the high side.

Your "algorithm" makes sense. Still a huge number of machines to produce without flaws. Revenue is likely 100-150M. You'd think they could set aside 5M to deal with flawed units? (which includes PF's, obviously).

You forgot the grand-daddy of them all, IMDN!

Bingo. The aged wood sources are depleted while their replants are harvested for a quick turn-around. These younger materials are very soft when compared to an aged relative. The harder/aged materials are gone. I'd like to 'think' a surface hardening technique is used for pinball surfaces. If not; they should.

I designed and built prototypes from Baltic Birch in 2015 thru 19. The best material was sourced from Russia and it was handled with great care to reduce surface scratches. One slip on an edge or a wood-chip produces a scratch. I imagine play-field producers are very careful when handling; They have to be. B.Birch is brutally strong, but its soft surfaces need care.

Right. They've said that they can hit 75-100 a day if needed when really crunched, but that's the exception and not the rule. With holidays and only working 5 days a week, it's nowhere near 25,000.

You are saying the harder/aged wood is gone? Not saying your wrong but I would like to hear more about this. Obviously Spooky is making a tougher playfield compared to Stern so I wonder what the wood options are out there. And is there one better yet more expensive that could be chosen. I believe there has to be a way to get the hardness of the 90’s playfields.

You said you used Baltic Birch? Is that the best out there? Do you or anyone here know what was used in the 90’s wood wise?

Baltic Birch Plywood is a bad-ass product. It's awesome. The Russian material sources and their manufacturing are top-notch. Anyone wishing to produce the best pinball play-field sources Russian BB.

I'm not familiar with the variety of species of used in BB. However, a 20 year-old Birch tree will be softer than an 80 year-old Birch of the same species. For logging; You want to tear that tree down and replant as soon as profitability allows. The old dense wood of the past is in the past. Loggers have acquired a massive quantities of land plots in various locations. Their land cycles of chop and replant are design for speed and profit not a ripe old age.

Young wood is a very strong and very useful. As such, profitability will decide when the tree comes down, not the density of its fibers.

I seem to recall Charlie saying that Spooky has to pay something like $100 per playfield for the high-quality wood they use now, while companies like Stern only have to pay $10 per playfield for theirs. (due to the softer and lower-quality wood that they use)

Of course this leads to the question, why doesn't Stern just raise prices by another $100 and get rock-solid playfields? One easy explanation could be, that it's simply not how they think. Big companies would rather use the cheaper wood (since it's "good enough"), raise prices again anyway, and then pocket the difference. Another explanation could be that maybe Stern can't get the quantities of higher-quality playfield-wood that an operation like theirs would need. Since they're producing thousands where others are making hundreds.

I don't know, I'm not an expert on any of this stuff.

Go back and start here for a perspective from CPR... as a voice of someone who tries hard in this area
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/cpr-playfield-preorders-are-meaningless/page/2#post-4863477

It probably comes down to the availability of the higher quality playfields.

Meaning, in the quantities Spooky needs, 500 playfields a year, is probably easier to source than 14,000 playfields a year for Stern. Just a guess.

in fact, you didnt understand

they have raised their prices by 100$ ! but while still using the crappy wood...

100% spot on.

I would love any type of reference on those numbers quoted.

Good Read. Looks like their play-fields are a 'secret-recipe' that continues its evolution today.

It's an indication that as we've depleted the world's virgin wood resources to extinction it may be time to adapt and start using a plastic-based material for the top coat on a pinball machine. Of course it's not in Stern's best interest if all their great games from the past never wear out. Though, realistically, with a large portion of sales going to HUO market, wearing out games isn't really a thing anymore. I guess that's where complex proprietary boardsets come in - planned obsolecence.

Yeah, me too!

In all seriousness, I think someone re-posted an old message from Charlie where he talks about that stuff. It might have even been earlier in this thread actually. But its a lot of pages to go through!

gotta be an alternative to wood that works better?

Well it seems like Spooky found some better harder wood so I am not so sure all the good wood is gone. More needs to be looked into this subject IMO. I also still think bad clear is a part of this equation. Wood might be a bigger factor but super soft clear you can put your nail through isn’t correct either. Spooky making better/harder playfields kind of fly’s in the face of all the harder wood is gone. Does it not. I am thinking the better wood just got harder/more expensive to source but I really don’t believe you can’t get it even if you wanted.

This is f'n hysterical.