You keep saying that Dialed In is $9500, its $9k for the LE and $8k for standard. If anyone pays $500 for shipping in the US they are getting ripped off. Some distrubtors may charge $100- $200 for shipping, others may give free shipping if paid in full.

limited sample size (we have TH and not WOZ) but relative to all the Sterns we have bought in the past 3 years to route, TH has been lower total issues and leaps and bounds higher quality.

That's not what Extreme Pinball claims

We've also seen pictures of Stern games with completly shot playfields. It doesn't mean that all Stern playfields wear the same. These have to be one offs or are games that were not maintained properly.

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Mylar on The Shadow still wouldn't have stopped the wood from compressing and getting a divot.

I Misunderstood the price of di in the above posts i made...my bad i thought i was getting a deal lol.

Kudos to JJP for field testing DI.

That damage looks like the magnet core has mushroomed under the playfield to me. Looks a really soft core.

You guys can justify it and tell yourselves whatever you want.

The ONLY reason they are "field testing" it is because they aren't ready to mass produce the pins.

Per Jack many times, "We will follow the Stern model of distributing games in the future, no more deposits, we will announce a pin and start shipping it shortly thereafter".

Straight from Jack. What can we ever believe?

How about 'we are only going to make the amount of CE's ordered by Dec 31st' Now they are going to make 150.

"Don't get me wrong, I've suffered my fair share of JJP failures, and plenty of them. Just today I had to pull the driver board out of a WOZECLE and replace a 540IRL transistor that shorted, which of course subsequently fried the trough VUK solenoid.
It has also been my experience that JJP playfield build & clear quality is no where near the high quality of Stern's..... until recently, of course. The playfield on my WOZ RRLE is pretty much destroyed after only 11,000 plays. Looks just like the pictures of iceman44. Mine is even worse around the 4 pop bumpers. While the playfields on my Iron Man VE at 24,000 plays, and my AC/DC Pro at 16,100 plays, always polish up like new when they get cleaned & waxed.
No comparison..... until recently, of course."

Both have their problems. The high quality high horse has been beaten to death.

I didn't believe it was possible, but here we have field testing, something that everybody used to do with new games and something that, in any case, would seem to be a sound idea no matter who is doing it, spun into a negative. Way to go!

It's pretty silly, yeah. Test games were a staple of the industry and in recent times we've seen lots of examples where field testing could have dramatically improved a product.

So Stern makes a superior magnet to avoid chipping... and then doesn't level it properly at the factory?

You can't make this stuff up.

whoa whoa whoa ice... Wait a sec... You are talking about routed games with over 10k plays. Lets see this destroyed RRWOZLE and when it was built. That game has already more than paid for itself with that many plays. Sure we all know there were some issues to start when WoZ first came out but by and large JJP seems to have made major improvements and continues on the right trajectory.

Whatever OP you are quoting is also complaining about a shorted mosfet on a location game after11k plays, lol. Sorry but on route shit happens and that is normal wear and expected tear. The root cause assuredly being something got loose and was not caught in time which cause a downstream failure with symptom of bad mosfet. Anyone routing games deals with this. That is just pinball. If we want to compare apples lets look at off the shelf newly opened games. I could fill a book with shot that comes wrong from the factory on Stern games. Poor through connectors that cause constant issues and have to be repinned, improper drop bank set up and need to fix to work, ghosting inserts in <200 plays, chipped shooter and exit lane after <500 plays, blown node boards, coil stops disintegrating into dust in <500 plays, decals pealing off, mechs that just dont work without full teardown and cobble... Shall I go on? I have been routing games for about 4 years and Stern games by far have 10x the issue and lack of quality compared to ALL other options. As I said, JJP/ TH has been very solid for us. We had minor issues with troll mechs at start but aside from that it has been very nice (and well liked).

IMO Stern has only gotten away with inferior quality for this long because PRO used to be under 5k. Now with 5200 being the street price, the scrutiny should be turned up.

also, there are some things Stern does well (customer support has been fantastic aside from the recent issues and no reply on GB pf issues).

However, product base quality and QC out the door is not one of them and I would say their biggest area for potential improvement (followed closely by better PR/communication and clear commitment to delivering on code).

My Wozecle HUO had the same transistor short and fry the trough VUK. I'm really not impressed with the reliability of JJP as numerous other problems have surfaced as well. Still, the support has been good which makes me overlook some of the shortcomings. WOZ is a feature packed game with good build quality but I wouldn't say its all that reliable.

Hilton, I agree that JJP support is really great. I've had to use it with Woz so i know. I've never had to use Stern support because my pins haven't ever required it but from what i hear they are excellent too.

You have 1 Hobbit on route right? How many Stern pins? I believed from day one that JJP pins with video should do well on location.

Better built? In some ways sure. Reliability? Not buying that one based on my experience. Quality? Not in any way that makes the pin play any better or make it more fun.

If JJP ever even comes close to making the number of pinball machines that Stern does in the future then we can better compare minor QC issues rolling out the door.

currently 7 (have had more but some left over time). Every single one has had some sort of issue out of the box or within the first 200 plays which took the game down and needed either parts or major tweaking and fixing to get it to play correctly.

4 of them have insert ghosting currently (KISS, SMVE, GB and minor on GOTprem).

I honestly think your reliablity perspective is a bit off based on your earlier WoZ experience (understandably), but my impression and experience is that TH (and the more recent built WoZ) are pretty damn solid with most issues addressed and TH has held up well with more plays than most Sterns and the plays are more steady also.

Trust me, I fought against getting a JJP due to price alone, but in my experience it has fewer issues and is played more. As Stern prices actually grow closer to JJP the dollars/maintenance/earnings/headache/reliability equation starts to look better and better for JJP. We still do this 100% for the fun factor and buy games we want to play and share, but the decision is getting easier to buy the higher quality JJP products while the risks get larger with buying the poor QC and quality Stern products.

You have to also factor in resale value and we have already seen the new Sterns taking bigger hits and buyer specifically avoiding GB with any ghosting...

Yeah, great build quality, iffy engineering. Not bad for a first effort, but there are definitely some issues that have been worked on going forward.

I've just had some very good luck with the 6 Sterns I've bought. A blown ring fuse on LotrLE, reseating a connector on Ac/dc trough, Doc Ock opto on SM and nothing with WPT, TWDLE or GBLE. Hopefully the ghosting issues will be solved going forward.

Are you going to route a DI?

I was at the new Pinballz location in Austin on Saturday. $1 a play for the most part except for the oldies. Newest pin they had there was Star Trek. Played a TOM that was rode hard and worn out. AMH was still in decent shape. I wouldn't go back to that location for pinball.

The main location is much better.

possibly. I would like to, but have to get consensus (and find the $$$ for it, lol)

I will route a DI once I see game times in the 2-2:30 time frame. I saw guys at expo play 20 minute games. Not much $ to be made on 20min games

Some changes in settings for kickback and outlane posts moved will quickly change this....

I'd imagine expo players are better than the typical route customer.

Clearly you weren't watching me play at Expo.

. You can set to play brutal

Def looked like long ball times

If you're reading this Jack, how about another Buffalo Pinball live stream of the current game code? Youtube needs more DI gameplay videos.

Amen.

That stream that the Buffalo Pinball guys did with Steve Bowden convinced me to preorder an LE. That was fantastic content.

Hahaha....well, at the end of the day, an operator can make ANY game more difficult for shorter balltimes by opening the outlanes, turning off ball save, turning off extra balls, etc.

The ball times are gonna be long, because I'm far from a good player and my very first game was pretty easy. I expect home games to err on the epic side.

Whatever though, if you're routing a game this expensive with a theme that won't draw in casuals you're clearly not doing it just for the money.

Someone mentioned earlier that Pat is collecting data from the game at this location and tweaking it to get to optimum average ball times.

Yep, would be great to see how the code is progressing.

If I heard right at Level 257 the average ball times were 72 seconds and Pat would like them at 55 seconds.

That being said I was up and out in no time.

I so wish I could play this particular Dialed In, simply because Pat is tuning and adjusting it personally. It would be incredibly awesome to play a game that was set up specifically as he saw fit to see how well I could do on it.

Wow not bad at all...so excited to get my le

Average ball time should get more interesting once KME gets into town

This is the main thing that concerned me when I played the game at Expo. It's definitely a long ball time game. My first game ever I played for like 10 minutes.

Can anyone name a "short ball time" Lawlor pin? When I think Lawlor, I don't think "fast and brutal". I am sure there is a degree, but generally his games are super forgiving for newbies (Earthshaker was one of the games that got me into pinball in the late 80's).

But that is a double edged sword for home play... Earthshaker was the first pinball I sold as I had thoroughly played the heck out of it, it was not much of a challenge any more.

Funhouse.

Most games can be made much more difficult with some ajustments....

How are the game animations on the new code the one at expo was really lacking different animations feel I might like it better once all those are taken care of and incorporated into the game

that's untrue. Stern had a GB premium on test at 257 as well way before any of us got one.

Updates???
Let's hear from OP about how this is doing at 257 please.
What's breaking, how many plays on this thing?
How are the toys holding up?
Is ball getting stuck anywhere?
Are customers actually using there phones for game play.
I've read a lot here in this thread, but not a lot about actual pin on location thread is about.

ST Pro and LE (not sure if Premium revealed at exactly same time) were launched 4 years ago now. A lot has changed since then unfortunately.

They haven't been putting games on location to test for months with recent releases, sometimes a couple of weeks. Certainly BM'66 got nothing, nor did SM VE. I think GB Pro was put out on location before consumers received any units, but production had already started by then.

GB is a recent release. They tested the premiums new playfields at 257 before being sold to the public. I got one of the first premiums actually sold, and they had it at 257 for weeks.