New JD owner here curious at what setup you folks recommend for flipper travel. The flippers on my unit are strong, but unfortunately the left has the shorter stroke of the later WPC games while the right was replaced with the longer stroke of the earlier WPC games. I intend to rebuild the flips so they have equal stroke.

I initially was planning on going with the longer stroke version to help trap during multiball, but it appears the shorter travel flippers are the standard version for JD. Difficult decision..

What do you folks recommend?

My JD has a minor annoyance where balls that enter the left plunger lane via the air raid ramp during multiball will get lost and just sit there. The machine will enter ball search after all the other balls drain and quickly kick it out, sometimes with an extra ball sent from the trough. As best as I can tell, it only happens when balls enter via the Air Raid ramp; balls that enter from the playfield auto-launch out as usual.

Is this a bug in the ROM? My machine has L-6. I've been treating it as part of the game, but it's feels like I'm cheating when I am able to shoot jackpots with only one ball in play since the machine still thinks the ball(s) lost in the left plunger lane is still active.

Thanks, that's the answer I was hoping for. I'll plan on updating to L-7 unless I decide to go with the DeadWorld mod.

I finally cracked one billion and it feels so good. It probably took me about a billion games, but I'm here to tell the average Joe to stick to his/her dreams and good things can happen.

Still trying to get that Judge Death Jackpot, though. I've had it lit several times but just can't close the deal. I suck at multiball and the Jackpot on JD has got to be one of the harder ones.

What's one change that you think could be an improvement to an existing JD mode?

I think "Blackout" would be improved if the question mark switch was an "add a ball" instead of the bonus 10m jackpot.

My drops go down fine when struck by the ball, but the center "D" has a hard time dropping when actuated by the smaller coil during multiball jackpot and safe cracker. Sometimes it will drop and others the coil will just fire over and over until the mode is over or the "D" drops from the ball.

My supergame button has the diode and looks just like yours. My supergame button also didn't work when I first got the game. My issue was mechanical--there was too much space between the exterior button and the switch.

Is there some kind of software limitation that keeps the replay at 396m? Mine had a replay in the 100 millions when I first got it and it crept up until it hit 396m. It has been stuck at 396m for several months--probably over a thousand games. I am wondering if I messed something up in the settings or if it just doesn't go any higher. I have the L-6 ROM.

So you have run the replay above 396m?

I have the replay set to auto, it just won't go above 396m. I'm guessing there might be some bug or software limitation of the L6 ROM keeping it there. It's really not an issue since it's just on free play in my living room, but I was curious if anyone else observed the same.

I imagine most here have either gone with the Deadworld ROM or have upgraded to the most current L7 ROM. I have been thinking about upgrading to L7 but the revision notes don't make it seem worth the hassle unless there are a bunch of bug fixes that aren't listed in the rev notes.

If you leave it on default does it do 7 for the first EB then 15 for each additional? I feel like 6 per EB would lead to an infinite game as it's pretty easy to collect more than 6 crime scenes per ball.

I have L6, but I'll give it try tomorrow. I've never set it to anything other than the default 7/15.

Does anyone else ever have issues with the center drop not dropping to expose the subway like it's supposed to during multiball and safe cracker? I lived with it for a long time but finally took the plunge and figured out the issue. The linkage on the drop coil is a poor design and took some slight modification, but I'm happy to report it is now functioning with 100% success.

Once I removed the drop target unit from the playfield I was able to manipulated the coil plungers by hand. It appeared that the problem was the link from the plunger to the drops was not rotating to extend the protrusion at the middle drop. Instead, the entire link was just sliding along the metal foundation without rotating.

To fix, I drilled a hole and installed a screw to keep the link from sliding along the foundation. I had to thread the screw almost all the way down so that the screw head was lightly touching the linkage, otherwise the link would ride up the screw and get caught in the threads potentially dropping more than just the center targets or preventing them from going back up.

While I was in there I also filed back some of the spacer that the drops bite into to stay up since the link seemed to sometimes ride up onto it and get out of place.

I have put this thing through the works since putting in the screw and it has been 100%. Attached is my best attempt at a photo. I wish I took photos while the assembly was out of the machine.
DSC_0674 - Edited (resized).jpg

What's the "target trip switch"? I'm not aware of anything that spots a letter other than the subway so I think you have something faulty.

L7 is the most current ROM. According to the revision notes there isn't much different from L6, but L6 has a few bugs, so I have a feeling there might be some more fixes that didn't make the revision notes. I am curious to see if folks familiar with both have any examples of scoring changes.

Sounds like your last trough opto is intermittently failing. It might be worth it to invest in a new tough opto board set since the old ones have a reputation for failing.

That's a tough one and is pretty rewarding when it happens. The only more difficult achievement is getting to watch the safe guy get fried before his turkey dinner and not draining immediately after.

Pc 19 is a small coil with a wire attached to it--the dotted line coming out of Pc 19. The coil rotates the wire when it fires and a bend in the wire bumps the middle target. You can sort of see it in the picture on post #3230

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/dredd-owners-thread-members-only/page/65#post-5224474

I would clean every opto with q-tip and alcohol if you haven't done so recently.

What ROM do you have? I have L6 and it seems a little buggier than most WPC from that era.

Do you have the deadworld planet lock installed? If so, that would be some version of L-1 and probably more likely to have a bug in the code. The ROM version should be displayed on the DMD briefly at startup--it will be an L-?. L-7 is latest. L-6 is probably most common in games that haven't been updated by subsequent owners. My machine has L-6 and there are definitely some minor bugs in the code though I haven't ever experienced your issue.

The game does start to do some weird stuff when the optos are dirty and there are a lot of them, so good idea to try cleaning them all first, especially the ones under the playfield at the upkicks. It also could be the shooter lane switch or trough though I would expect ball search to work through those issues and eventually fire the ball.

Welcome. JD has great dots and is an awesome candidate for color DMD.

I checked on my Dredd out on location today. Played a game to make sure everything was working and it went bonkers during multiball. It held an eternal ball save--four balls until I killed the game through the menu buttons! I played a couple of games after that and everything seemed fine. I sort of remember something like that happening during ultimate challenge once back when I had it at home.

I am going to upgrade to L7 and hopefully eliminate some of the bugs.

That was my first thought as well, but I wouldn't have expected it to keep shooting all four balls like that... I replaced the opto side of my trough not that long ago--maybe I should try replacing the receiver side if it happens again.

From what I remember of the buggy UC round way back, the game was also playing the wrong audio bites as if the ROM was caught up in buggy programming. U6 is definitely not as polished as the usual B/W ROM from that era.

The sound on mine is quite good for an old machine--I would not describe it as flat.

Common problem areas are dirty optos, failed trough optos, sticky drop targets, and crane adjustment if you are running the deadworld mod.

My Dredd has the standard DMD, but I recently got the color LCD for another game. The only advantages of the LED from what I can tell is that it can be set brighter and there isn't any setback inside the backbox. The setback issue is really minor and I think most folks won't even have the brightness maxed out on the LCD anyway. I think the LCD is the way to go since having the choice between the different rendering options is pretty sweet.

Maybe an op back in the day that didn't have one on hand and wanted the game making money again?

I don't remember this. Once DMD hit the scene, the arcades that I went to phased out the alpha numeric and older machines in the next few years. I never saw an EM or very early SS on location in the early to mid 90's. The closest would be an occasional games like F-14 or Space Shuttle if the place had a lot of games.

If the goal was a 3 to 5 year service life than the designers must have went way, way overboard based on all the games still chugging along just fine. I know an older game does require occasional maintenance and adjustments, but it really doesn't take much effort at all to keep these 25 year old games going when you consider all the pieces and parts that have to work together.

The red (and green to a lesser extent) ink on the cabinet art faithfully stuck to the 3 to 5 year rule. I often see pinside posts with some red remaining on the cabinet, but almost every game from the era I see in real life has 100% faded.

Dredd is one of the darkest playfields from the era in my opinion. Nothing a few 2SMD and strategically placed super bright LED bulbs can't handle, but it must have been a hard to see in a dark room when outfitted with standard incandescent bulbs. It would be a great candidate for pinstadiums or spots.

The outer portion of my Supergame switch stopped making mechanical contact with the inner small plunger. After adjusting the alignment it has been fine ever since.