Where is that topper from? Damn looks nice

Good idea. Lots of good pinheads in the area.

Taking a break when it becomes frustrating is always the best thing. Others have said it here ,we have all felt that way with some of our pins. It's also tough to take the high road when you feel like the seller has really done you wrong. I recently purchased a group of pins from a supposedl pinball enthusiast a month ago. I was told how they were all in fine working shape except for one or two issues. I can tell you I spent more than a night or two going through these machines fixing all the non issues. I chose to look at the bright side of it and realize I have learned so much more in diagnosing these things and rising to the challenge. Doesn't change the fact that the guys a douche But Karma is a powerful thing.

That is from PinheadPuckGuy.

Call the $90/hr repair guy that started three threads yesterday

Well there is your first mistake.. Fish Tales doesn't have a monitor. It has an LCD. The monitors are in the remakes.

Actually it has a DMD (Dot Matrix Display) not an LCD,

Come on dude.. dont spoil it..

We are local to Denver As well.

Lets Start by, What are they doing?

Lots of Pinheads here, or if you want we can send a Tech or you can bring em in. Or if you want to come down for some free advice come see me.

Hell if you are really frustrated PM me and I will come by on my own time for a few next week and will see how screwed up the games are. I'm not the best tech but I can normally Diagnose.

But in all fairness, Pinballs do require a lot of work, depending on where you bough them they may not be well repaired in the first place and maybe needing some serous technical love. You did buy two games that are well known for needing quite a bit of work FYI JD and JP

Cool topper CF!

You're not wrong. and that maybe a reason he is crapping himself, and he may not see it from your point of view.

I understand how the OP feels. First three I bought, I didn't know what I was doing. Lots more problems than I thought. And I'm really glad you posted this here... most of the people on this board love ownership and don't really understand how daunting it can be sometimes.

Guessing by the games you bought, they were on the cheaper end of the pinball price spectrum. I bought cheap for my first three (F-14 Tomcat, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and Jurassic Park).

What I've learned in the last year in this hobby:
1. They break. All. The. Time. It's part of the ownership hobby. But quite unexpected if you went in with a small budget. It was for me.
2. You have to buy a *lot* of tools, that you have to mail-order. And even then, you have to make runs to the part store for hardware and such. You also need to have a good way to lift the machines when you need to level them and move them around yourself. Even if you have a toolset for working on your car, you're looking at around another 300USD in parts/tools at a minimum. Even more if you buy nice tools. And sometimes you have to build/mod tools yourself to get stuff working or to even fit in the game.
3. You need to have time and patience to fix them. It takes work, genuine work. Which is super-frustrating if you are new to the hobby, because the whole point of pinball is to *play*. I found it demoralizing after a long day of work to come home to more work.
4. Best thing I've found is to go over and help some pinball friends fix their machines to get comfortable with the work. You help them with grunt work, they teach you how to do it right and fast. I'm starting to get the hang of soldering.
5. You need to have a good environment for it. An old apartment is a pain in the rear to have with pinball or with playing pinball as a hobby. My neighbors complain when I play my single EM, at 3PM, on a Sunday afternoon!
6. Buy a pin to your technical strengths - if you are good with electronics / board work (I grew up working on electronic kits), get something with rock-solid mechanicals (like early Gottlieb SS machines. My research has shown they tend to be more reliable than Williams mechanical stuff, and I had very few issues with my System 1 mechanically wise. Many of the time when you hear about people upset with System 1s, its because they are scared of circuit boards and the connectors, and those just weren't a big deal for me. Getting flippers rebuilt though, at the time, was kinda spooky for me. To each his/her own.
7. Tangentially related - buying arcade or VG cabinets can actually be easier and more reliable than pins, I've had nothing but decent performance from my Battle Balls arcade game. It was cheaper too.
8. If you are in an area with route games, go play them instead. They are cheaper than owning, if you look at out-of-pocket sunk cost. Most owners only play a couple hundred games on their machines in the time they own them. If you do the math, 50 cents x 300, or even 1USD x 300 is significantly cheaper than owning the machine, and frees up your finances to do other things with. Yes, they may be unreliable, but making phone calls to the operator and spending quarters is still cheaper than ownership for out-of-pocket sunk cost.

Also, I'm going to say this in bold because not many people are saying it: <b>There is more to pinball hobby than ownership!</b> My first attraction to pinball was competition and skill-building. That, I absolutely love. Meeting cool designers, like George Gomez, Steve Richie, John Borg. Going to shows and seeing interesting people, playing interesting games. Playing in tournaments, honing your skills. Playing on route and figuring out what person put their initials on the machine. Those things were much more important when arcades and locations were around, and that was the original environment pinball was designed for.

Trust me, we've been all at this point

How much do you want for JP...I'm in Colorado Springs.

Its "daylight savings" time in NZ at the moment. It doesn't get dark till about 8pm.

Good times!

rd.

I'm Betting they came from Wolfman.... being hes from Colorado. We Even quit buying from him, High Prices for plain crap.

I'm close to you and might be interested in JP.

I stand corrected

Yeah, to the OP--as a new collector myself and someone that's just getting their feet wet when it comes to electronics and soldering, that's why I am preferring to invest in newer games for now. They are more expensive in some cases, yes, but they are less likely to break down as frequently, and thus will be less of a headache for the time being. I care more about playing and less about fixing anyway, so that helps there as well. Granted, things ARE going to break (as it's been said already), but I'd rather ease my way into the process with a newer game as opposed to an older one that can essentially be a ticking time bomb.

Yuriijos - hang in there. I just finished troubleshooting my JP trex (what a pain). I have two JP's now and time for one of them to leave the nest . Post your tech issues here on Pinside. Lots of folks will help you out.

I sold Yuriijos the Judge Dredd. Owned the game for some time with no major problems. Eventually I decided to sell the game and had a well known local tech (Tom Grobe) service the machine before selling it. No errors and played/looked great. Yuriijos came over and played the game for a good hour, was happy with it and took the game.

I cant stress enough, moving a game can cause issues but with so many parts, etc the game will have problems often whether you play it or not. I service my machines constantly. Pinball tech work is an art, but its tedious and it takes time to learn how to fix them.

I remember when I had 4 machines. Goodness, it was insane. JP was my rock, the other three would constantly break it seemed. I would fix something on JM, and then boom TFTC went down. Fix TFTC, XF would go down. XF would go down, both JM AND TFTC went down. It was very discouraging. Took me months to get it to where I could just play any of the 4 machines without something going bad. And it wasn't all just about electronics acting up. Like one issue was when the ball went to the "toilet bowl" for the TREX to eat in JP - sometimes it would swing in so hard that the ball popped out, and that came down to re-angling the machine or installing rubber stoppers on the metal posts in that area to soften the momentum the ball went into that area with.

Pinball machines have a underlying "high price, high stress" factor going in. You drop $5000+ on a machine and "buy someone else's problems" - that junk sucks. The real bummer is how just moving the machines seem to bring up problems that were nonexistent before they were moved. Then again, they have - what - over 2500 parts and literal miles of wiring, so it's unfortunately part of the territory.

OP and whoever else is in this boat - please don't be discouraged. Pins really are a true test of your patience and capabilities of being able to rise against some frustrating odds. I widdled my collection down to TFTC, and I have been happy for just about a year. Then again, I play TFTC maybe 1-2 times a month, plus however much my wife plays. Join a club, get together with some pinheads - describe the problems you're having. I was very fortunate to be part of the Cincinnati pinball group, and man, did that save my bacon and my sanity a couple times.

Classic cars and pinball machines: two very fun hobbies when things work, but two very dangerous hobbies when they don't.

I live not too far away. I wouldn't mind coming over to help you figure it out, for free even. I'm no super-tech but I've got a JD and I feel like we could get it going... Just takes some time and patience.

Boy! after reading some of these posts, I'm going to knock on wood all day today.
Couple of switch adjustments a flipper opto board,replace a speaker.. rebuild a couple flipper assemblies, tighten some screws, replace a bulb or 3 in the last 4 yrs since I got into this...so far my machines have been very very reliable. I don't fear a problem, because I'm willing to try to work on it myself. But, so far I guess I have been lucky, and as of now avoided frustration

Getaway He was able to fix on his own with some help of someone else who has one over the phone.

The JP I came over last night and we worked on it together. Someone had wired a Credit Button into the front of the cab, with a on off switch. The Credit button on the front had no Diode an was on the same line as the Trex outhole, Slam Tilt and so on.

We removed the Credit Button and it seams to have fixed the problem. Took about 40 Min of checking and re checking everything before we found it.

The look on his kids face when his favorite game was back up and running was totally worth it!

JJ

One more reason you are awesome JJ!!

Now relocate to northern California please!

Wish I were closer.

He is from my neck of the woods.

You should post a new thread in the tech help section and start with symptoms and photos and work from there.

You need a pro to come look at it.