Come on guys...feel free to open up a "stern sends sandpaper" thread. I don't want to spend time weeding out 90% off-topic posts (all about the same thing) trying to find the good stuff.

I could give a rats a$$ behind the drama that led up to this decision.....but I'm following this thread because it looks like a fun project for the whole family

Following with interest and amazed Stern sending out sandpaper - couldn't make it up. Boy, I love playing Stern games but they just keep making it harder to support them.

This is how I would feel.....

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There has to be more to this story

OP is this a thread for the judge to see?

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Took the words right out of my mouth. This is exactly why I refuse to shut up and let Stern get away with murder, why I created the petition, why I opened a case with the Illinois Attorney General, etc.

I don't care if this guy is fine with redoing his shooter Lane. Let him do a project he's fine with- but at the end of the day.. he straight up got f*cked by Stern!

He paid $8K for GBLE, then $15K for BM66SLE. Literally $23,000 in purchases for their products and they send him some goddamn sandpaper and clear coat???

Total joke. It's amazing how anyone can continue to defend this company when they are cranking out shit products now when they used to be great- AND they charge more money for them now. You just can't make this up.

To the OP, have your inserts ghosted as well? Are are you just fixing the shooter lane?

Looks like he's having fun re clearing the whole PF

That is what their clear is which is the reason why it just SLIPS off the PF.

Im sure that people get tired of hearing me talk about what a garbage company Stern is and how they knowingly and willfully fuck their customers while happily taking your money but did I read correctly that you live close enough to load that POS in a truck and actually dump it on their doorstep but you decides to go through the trouble and expense of restoring a PF with just a few plays on it? That makes no sense to me. You will have to sand the clear off the PF without getting into the artwork and reclear it. Crazy. It would be easier and cheaper to buy a uncleared PF from Stern if you could take the smirk on their faces when they take even more of your money.

You were doing that BEFORE they reached this level of fuckery. They used to make solid decent games with finished code and not too many QC problems. When they did have problems, they used to quickly ship new parts or even playfields. Games were less than $4k. New collectors don't remember that collectors used to HATE Stern. In the rec.games.pinball days, it was non stop "Cheap toys. Cheap printing. Pixelated cabinets. Bad licenses". You were there lol. When I professed my enjoyment of Iron Man and Avatar, I got REAMED!!!! Today - collectors like Xfassa are happily buying $8k & $15k Sterns that are poorly designed, falling apart, and uncoded...but they look good, eh!?!?!?!?

Trent forgetting to secure the GBLE he promised me was a stroke of luck...and my choice to cancel my GB Prem is the best choice I ever made.

But hey, enjoy "restoring" your 2016 Limited Edition lol.

You are correct there. I have never really liked them. I have always found them to be inferior to Williams games. What I find slightly funny now is that they finally have started putting out games that are equal or better than Williams when it comes to stuff on the PF and complexity of the game which combined with the deep, deep rules would make excellent games but their quality control is so bad and their prices are so high that more people than ever are bitching. It isn't like I haven't tried to like them though. I have owned a Spiderman, LOTR, THPP, RBION and a POTC and I got rid of all of them and replaced them with W/B games. I got rid of my WOZ as well.

No, this thread would lead anyone new to the hobby to immediately leave the hobby...

Being that so much clear is peeling off these playfields they will have to be sanded right down to the color to get rid of ALL the inferior material with the adhesion problem. I cannot imagine how you could remove only the clear without removing some of the color for the artwork.
When most playfields are recleared they simply sand down the clear to get a good smooth surface and then work up the coats from there with additional sanding and reclearing until the desired effect is obtained. You are in a completely different world of playfield work because you have to get every bit of that defective clear off. I don't see how it can be done without being prepared to repair artwork after the sanding.
I understand your motives....but they should be covering it and once you start sanding on that playfield you void any future warranty coverage should they ever decide that refusing to fix these playfields is harming their sales.

How dare you bring logic, based on facts, into this discussion. Everybody already knows that a light sanding and a little fresh clear coat on top will correct adhesion problems all the way down to the original playfield surface. This strategy works especially well on spot repairs.

Good luck with your PF. Even though it makes no sense to me, it obviously does to you so I wish you well with it. GB is definitely a good game. I enjoy playing it when I see it. Are you sending the PF out or are you going to tackle it yourself? I am looking forward to seeing the pics of the progress.

Sorry if I am reading this wrong, But you wanted a new playfield because of chipping clear coat in the shooter lane?

Lol gtfoh with that

Stern PF's delaminate as you play them

Today its the shooter lane, tomorrow the scolari drops, then its (insert everyone else's problems)

just asking, My new playfield is on it's way

With all dew respect to the OP...

Threads like this are nothing but hurtful and toxic to our pinball community period.

With that being said. The correct way this should have been handled would be clean scuff and drip clear over the peeling area and wait for a real problem ( that is more than likely to happen) cracked frosted chipped inserts to show up. At that point you would have been shipped a new pf.

Coming from 20 plus years experience with extremly highend automotive paint jobs I would never completely repaint my gt500 over a rock chip would you? Come on.

I have owned 100s of pins. Im no cheerleader for Stern and dew admit to being f#$%ing pissed at lots of there bisness ethics over the past years. Enough is enough though. How many complaint treads need to keep being posted over non sence. This turns away anyone that could/would be intrested in joining OUR very special hobby.

I'm sure this rant offended other pinsiders. I did not wish to but had to voice my opinion if nothing els but to help pinside stay a positive up lifting community.

Happy Flipping Pinside

Chris

Gotta confess though, Iron Man kicks ass, hence you get my vote on this one, sir.

Yet have to play Avatar on the other hand

Not sure there are any good lessons for newcomers in this thread.

Trying to clear over bad clear is definitely not one. Good luck though.

OP - FWIW I think its great that you are attempting to deal with this problem yourself, seems to be a very optimistic take on things. Time will tell what the most effective solution is, and if/how Stern rights the issue. Being new to the hobby / pinside, I know my opinion doesn't go very far, but I'll be interested to see how this turns out. Best of luck.

Besides drilling a hole in your playfield. Spraying clear over a pf that has possible lifting lamination issues already is a recipe for disaster. It will only make it worst. The solvents in your first medium to heavy coat ( after misting it several times) will soften Sterns mess and watch the havoc begin.

Wow. Just wow.
I consider myself to be a very easy going guy.
But no way would I go through all this trouble.
I have purchased 8 new in the box Sterns over the years and some have had issues that Stern took care of no problem.
Can't believe they said no to an LE customer.
If it were a Premium I would just disclose the facts about it to someone who did not really care, and sell it at a loss. Then just purchase a new one. But since it is an LE your choices are limited.

I can't believe this is a thing. Imagine if you bought a new sports car, and you notice there's a thumbprint in the clear in the middle of your hood. The factory says "sorry, here's some sandpaper and a bottle of clear". Would NEVER happen.

I'd love to see Vid or Clay chime in here about removing existing clear and then re-clearing.

Message from Stern.

And you seem fine with it.

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You've got to remember this is stern's first "green" title. Game is designed to disintegrate in three years. What comes from the earth, returns. Mr xfassa would do well to remember this and to complete his restoration prior to 2020.

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I understand wanting a nice game and at today's NIB prices customers deserve a game with no playfield issues. However, for this issue I would recommend stopping the playfield tear down and play the crap out of your game to see if the clear coat issue gets worse. If the issue does get worse Stern may replace your playfield.

For now I would do a touch repair on the shooter lane, put mylar down in the shooter lane and a Cliffy protector as well.

I disagree that they're on the level of Williams games now. TSPP, LOTR had the design & toys and stuff that was clever and WORKED...and code out the wazoo. Sure, LOTR and TSPP had re-purposed toys on the playfield...but everything else was gold. The magnet causing the ring to hover in mid-air in the magnet: awesome. Balrog was a cool light up bash-toy. The gold wavy-wireforms were very cool. The sword lock was awesome, and the way it let balls go for flow was clever. In TSPP, the garage is cool, the upper playfield was awesome, the TV on the upper playfield was innovative. The physical couch lock is neat and relevant to the license. POTC wasn't my favorite, but it was very popular and had a Williams-level toy with the ship! Plus a nice little half-pipe ramp and other clever features and unique design. FGY by Lawlor felt and played like a WMS game. Spider-Man was awesome. Even though no one gives a crap about them, I think WOF and CSI were very clever games with really cool toys. ACDC is incredible. Metallica is another WMS-esque game. Anyway - my point is, they were making really great games back before the "new wave" of collectors appeared on the scene. Not as solid as WMS games...sure, I'll give you that...but they weren't crap. Playfield clear wasn't chipping off. Things weren't as untested and incomplete as they are now. Designs weren't fundamentally flawed like GB. I'll take the old days of the 2003-2010 $4k games all day long over what's going on now.

It's very similar. Stern was down to a bare-bones staff for a while, and John Borg was designing all the games while Lonnie/Lyman came up with a "stock ruleset" to work with. Rolling Stones (not Borg), Iron Man, Avatar, Big Buck Hunter, and Tron are very very similar in rules and gameplay. The hardcore "B/W snob" collectors massivly pushed back on Stern for these games, claiming they were the epitome of cheap (stock toys instead of custom, more plastic/less molded items, no subways, no metal ramps) and shallow (relatively modeless rulesets). They weren't wrong....but at the time they never bothered to actually PLAY the games to discover if they were fun or not. All of these games are extremely fun (although I'm not a fan of BBH, but that's due to theme). While some saw these as dark times for Stern....I think it was one of their better periods. The games played great, the prices weren't insane, the code was finished, problems were minimal cuz there was nothing to break lol

100%. I really feel you need to re-think this.

With ghostbusters, there is a setting to lower the power on the ball eject. I have mine set to the lowest setting.

Is the plan for the clear to have the old sanded down to the ink and the cleared over? How on earth does that work? It's not like scuffing up the current layer so the new stuff sticks. I'd love to see that part of the process.

Add a shooter lane protector to keep any further damage from happening play the game and see if any other damage happens to the rest of the playfield . If you do have one of the bad playfield you will know quickly and then stern will send you the new replacent playfield. If your Playfield is one of the ones that suffering from delamination adding more clear over the issueis not going to help you at all the problem will still happen but then it will be a year down the road and you will have a very hard time getting any help from stern

I really thought you were kidding when you said this. I hadn't heard that this is Stern's newest solution to their clear coat problems.

Nothing to worry about here folks, Goodie bags will soon be coming with sandpaper and clear. You can go back to buying NIBs

Thank YOU for maintaining such a positive attitude and being willing to share your work I look forward to watching your progress and learning from it!

No WAY they'll send a new play field now. Warranty voided.

This is great advice once the game is done(or for others). It doesn't matter how nice of a repair is done if the ball eject is not set down to low power, it will end up damaged again. As it sits with factory settings, it's a matter of when and not if it will be damaged.

Onya vid well said!

New clear over those two games seems fine if that's what you wanted. However, on this playfield, there are clear issues. What options exist for dealing with the current clear?

There you go.
Not even in the same ball park.