Congrats! I know you have been waiting a long time. Generally, you should not need wax on a NIB game. Be sure to dial down that trough eject so it's not blowing out your shooter lane, though.

Yea I only had mine a few weeks and already theres a dent and chunk of wood broken off in my shooter lane

Congrats! As noted above, waxing a new clearcoated playfield is more a preference than necessity. Wax can speed the game up some tho. I do prefer to clean all my playfields with simply Meguiar’s Carnuba wax or cleaner wax. I seldom ever use anything abrasive like Novus 2, except on used playfields with swirls or scratches. On new pins like EHoH, I would play it and maybe do a light wax/cleaning every hundred or couple hundred plays. I also replace black rubber with a color or clear rubber from Titan, another preference. I feel like pins get less dirty or collect less black dust without black rubber, but it’s probably all in my head!

You would think you should, but for me I think they do something other than impedance matching with this setting. Try it. I find the 4ohm setting makes the soundstage ridiculously compressed, and in 8ohm it opens right up.

Mine is a March 24th......

This game is awesome. Even the wife likes it.

What did you lower it to?

Put mine at 150.... how much power does it really need (sheesh, Stern having it at max by default..... why?)

Wow, what a game! Glad I listened to a good friend who convinced me I needed this game! So deep, so many modes, ball locks, sounds, scripts! It just goes on and on. First thing I’ve noticed is the darn gargoyles sound like they’re smashing my precious voodoo glass! The multiballs are also wonderful!

..

Yes I did. The cat5 cable from node 0 is going into node 9 under the playfield. Unplug that and all the lights making trouble and that are surging turn off. I isolated it to that connection. The thunk is due to the power surging in that connection. I bought a new node 9 and changed it out. I also tried changing all the cat 5 cables. I changed node 0 out with a spare I had and nothing changed. Stumped on what to do next.

Nothing in the active switch test. But I do see this surging behavior during that test, it’s not registering as any switch activity.

I did.

Don't remember but also don't know if it's helping, cause the damage was already done. Big ol dent in the lane where the ball lands and there was a piece of broken wood laying in the lane from the ejects. Lowered it down, but like I said who knows if it's helping cause it's already hurt

I have mine at 160. I had it at 150 for a while and that worked pretty good too, but every once in a while the kicker would have trouble getting the ball out on the first shot. YMMV

Finally got my game yesterday as well-- March 24th build date.

Has been pretty well behaved so far; had to turn down a few coil powers and I've had some issues with balls randomly ending (seemed like loose cables on the trough optos, I think I fixed them) but it's been great otherwise.

After long play times the coil will heat up and power is reduced a bit. I start low and increase it if I have issues. Cliffy is backed up. Still waiting for the protector.

So what’s everyone’s solution to shooter lane clunkiness? Reading through the thread there doesn’t seem to be a common fix. Just that folks have issues.

I tried messing with it and I can shove it a little lower or raise it a touch higher over the lip of the right ball guide.

My initial thought was that the ball was hitting the top of the ball guide and getting off track so I raised it up a touch. Maybe it helps but it’s still not easy and repeatable smooth out of the lane.

Thoughts?

I’m still having problems with mine. Tried removing ramp and putting stuff under it, tried shoving stuff under to raise it and it’s still bad.

Quite frustrating this expensive of a game had obvious issues at set up. Like I don’t mind fixing a few things but this one should have been blatantly obvious to test.

Agreed. Mine is still messed up too, tried a ton of stuff. Stern finally responded and wants a video, so I’ll do that soon and if they help me fix it I will share the details.

Anyone know if they're going to be doing another run of toppers? The only ones I've seen on the aftermarket want a 1k mark up and I don't love toppers that much.

You can open the out lanes to help reduce ball times if you like.

Has anyone done the Titan glow rubbers? I'm curious how they look.

I have them on my bone flippers. Looks awesome.

Is this game better then AFM?

Both games are great.

They both have good humor, fun code (albeit really different), great art and sounds, and a similar layout.

I prefer EHoH for the deeper code and the mechs.

If you go by pinsider ratings. AFMs scores higher.

i own both, ehoh is better but afm is a classic and better for newer players

I apologize. I guess I assumed any audible "thunk" was a mechanical thing. I am certainly not an electrician or a tech, but I've never heard of surges of electricity causing thunks. Thunks come from relays closing, solenoids energizing, etc. This might be a good question for the Stern-specific sub-topic thread where you might get the attention of one of the many legit gurus on this site - Dumbass, for example.

A consistent, smooth plunge on a layout where the ball drops from a low ramp to the playfield before proceeding up through an orbit is often hard to dial. That little drop might seem trivial, but it's not. MET is another example of this configuration and a plunge that can be maddening to sort out. GDZ's plunge drops to the playfield and then makes a quick turn, but it can rattle badly, too, just after making the drop. Whenever I have plunge issues, I remove the set screws that anchor the housing to the cabinet, then loosen the three mounting screws that hold the housing in place enough that the housing can be moved to various positions for test plunges and not wander. The right screw tension will usually mean that you'll need to tap the housing with the butt of a large screwdriver to get it to move. Any looser and it will wander when you do your test plunges. Move it until the tip aligns with the equator of the ball and at dead center, left to right, then plunge. If that doesn't help, align the tip a tad lower, or a tad higher, and try again. Sometimes the housing is misaligned in relation to the shooter lane because the cabinet is actually not square. In cases like that, a shim is necessary to correct the offset. Also, remember to "space" your plunger using the right rebound spring (on the OUTSIDE of the housing, not the color-coded return spring on the inside of the cabinet). A shorter rebound spring will bring the shooter tip closer to the ball, and that might be necessary if your stock configuration has the tip fully an inch behind the ball in the resting position. If the tip is just too far away - and this is common on NIB Stern pins because the QC there is so lax - you will have to draw your plunge back excessively far for the same power, and that's not right.

How far should the VUK shoot that ball? Land midway on the PF? The darn thing shoots clear across the whole game, I couldn't tell if it even touched the PF before slamming into the trunk targets. Wow.

Flippers seem super powerful too...... no need to sell the house, the darn wrecking ball will knock it down

I appreciate this level of detail in how you described these adjustments. This write up is really helpful. I made several adjustments to the shooter housing to the point where the 2 red screws didn't fit back into their original holes. I left them out and tightened the three mounting screws and all seems better. The housing is rock solid in place to the point where I don't really understand what those two red screws really do. I didn't realize that the outside return spring could be replaced with a smaller one. I think that my machine could benefit from that

Be proud the VUK shoots the ball that good. A lot of other owners (including myself) would love to have one shoot it out that well.

I tried to fix it in every way possible to no avail, so I just write it up as a failure from the assembly line. Still one of my favorite pins I own.

I received Mageek's awesome camper and while it matches the illustration on the backboard perfectly I thought I'd work on it to compliment the fantastic detail and weathering in the house and found a pic of an old Shasta as reference.

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First thing I thought would be nice is a wheel and had an old model knock-off cobra wheel in a box of parts.

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Next panel shaded w/ pastels locked w/ Dullcote

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Rust, streaking, and silver-leaf added to some of the chrome areas to catch some reflection from the spotlights, rest just some silver paint

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Added a green transparency under the camper to give detail and make it look less like just floating in air?

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Mounted looks good and fits in w/ the house detail, put a yellow filter on the led's inside the camper

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But as expected a lot of the added detail gets lost with all of the led spot lighting in the game, oh well it was a fun few hour project!

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I find after a long play with multiballs the flippers become weaker. It’s starting to remind me of Iron Maiden after a few plays the flippers seem weak. Must be over heating

I kept toning down the power on almost everything, the default of this run feels like it's going to break the machine with how hard it's shooting everywhere. Flippers, slings, vuk, shooter lane, all just too powerful and I keep slowly turning them down. The flippers clearly too strong, as they sound like they are murdering the ramps

I think I maybe notice the same. It won't hurt anything will it? To leave at 8ohm?

Losing the red machine screws is trivial. They are a redundancy for the three screws that secure the housing. Once you reposition the housing to improve your plunge, the holes for the red screws will no longer line up. It’s all too common for games on the line to have their shooter housings eyeballed into position and then fixed with those red machine screws. The trouble is, fixing the housing in position before play testing the game is backwards and unhelpful.

Mine was working perfect....

After turning down the flipper power, auto plunger power and vuk power....... now it's ejecting two balls into the trough instead of one?!?! What's this about?

Looks absolutely fantastic.. great write up and great job!

Maybe check the trough switches in switch test? Or maybe turn the trough eject power up slightly since your variable is that you turned it down? Not sure but that sounds annoying.

Hmmm, that didn't do anything.

Weird. It was fine last night. At the start of a ball, it does one ball and then bang right away puts another ball.... one, two.
I shoot the balls then let them drain, on the ball save it puts one ball into the trough and auto launches it (although twice I watched it put two balls into the trough during ball save - twice out of six times). Not sure how it would be smart enough to do one ball on ball save and not smart enough to do one ball for the start of a ball.

You checked the trough opto switches? Maybe reseat the connections?

I just had this problem & for me the right outlane switch was stuck closed. Needed adjusted.

SPIKE2 games have a test called "CLR" in the diagnostics menu. It basically lets you check the trough optos. In this test mode you see the balls in your trough represented in a graphic on the display. You press the start button to eject ball into the shooter lane and you see on the display how the row of balls in the trough suddenly has one less ball. The ball is then autoplunged onto the playfield, drains, and returns to the trough, showing all six balls again, etc.

If you haven't done it already, you should also do a simple switch test of the shooter lane switch in the Switch Test part of diagnostics. Apart from the lane switch and the optos, I can't think of anything that would fool the game into thinking the ball hadn't settled in front of the shooter. Turning the ball eject power down too much will only result in the ball failing to eject and settle in the lane. It will fall back down and be re-ejected repeatedly until you force quit the game or simply open the coin door. Turning it up too high will pulverize the lane but at least it will ensure that the ball is ejected. I always set my ball eject power - on games that have such an adjustment - to a the minimum power required plus about, oh, ten percent.

Awesome! Congrats! How long have you been waiting? Got any mods ready to go? Got your toolkit ready to go?
What does "Da-da-da-da-da" mean? I'm old enough that all I can think of is the song by The Police called De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da.

By doing this it's possibly giving the drivers less current than they should have; the worst that might happen is you'll fry a driver if you have it so loud that it's distorting/clipping. At normal volumes I don't think there is any risk.

I've just joined the club with an LE! What are people's recommendations for action button surround and shooter plate?

Mine was born on the same day, it's a small world. And weirdly my wife likes this one as well, which, given the backglass I wouldn't have thought to be the case.

This is my 6th NIB Spike 2 in the last year and I noticed several manufacturing changes for the better on this one. They are back to putting the little playfield alignment brackets on the games, mine had one on the left hand side of the cabinet (which seems to be enough to keep it from shifting left and right). And I also noticed one of my recent complaints which were the poor quality wi-fi dongles has been addressed, now the board seems to have wi-fi built in (and is working perfectly). Kudos to Stern for improving things as they go along.

Thanks! I'll try this

What's not for a female to like on the backglass?

Deleted. Wrong thread.