Quoted from Pinballer22:Just opened mine this am and was very disappointed this meets their gold standard!
Yup. The gold standard of absolutely PERFECT original Bally artwork.
What you are pointing out in your extreme closeup photos are exactly Paul Faris' original layout. We cannot alter the original films, and they are printed 100.000% in the exact "lossless" detail of the way they were in 1981. Go look at any original, and I challenge anybody to cross-compare any CPR Centaur repro to a Bally Centaur NOS. The Bally's were worse for positionment - because they didn't care where the art package landed on the wood. At least we optimize the final position.
Rest assured, I am a stickler. I did my best to lay down the Centaur artwork in the most 'pleasing' position (averaging across all inserts and openings) to produce the best happy medium result of positionment. If I were to make any further moves east, west, north, or south - then other peekaboos of slivers of wood would appear elsewhere (and increase the size of others). What you are seeing is best case. Remember, the WHOLE art package is one big piece... separate parts within it cannot be discretely moved around.
In conclusion, the Centaur art package NEVER trapped the inserts well... especially around arrows. If the artwork were a CPR-Stu digital redraw, all of this stuff would be controllable and manipulated/improved. Unfortunately we cannot alter the precious original films from 1981. They are one of a kind.
Maybe this was new to some recent customers, but the last 4 runs of Centaur over the last 10 years have ALL looked this way in one form or another. Grading on Centaur 2016 came down to relative overall aestetic appearance and quality of the print/clearcoat. If you got a gold, you got one of the great ones in the run.
KEVIN
Classic Playfield Reproductions
http://www.classicplayfields.com