Hi-

I installed the inner side art blades (decals) today on my Stern Star Wars Pro. They look great!!!

Prior to installation, I searched Pinside and the interweb and could not find a succinct description on how to install the inner side art for a Stern Pro that uses the Spike system. Here is a summary of what I did. This is remedial work for many of you more experienced than me, but I thought it might help someone, someday. Sorry, no video of the whole process, so it's a bit wordy but hopefully complete.

I watched & fast-forwarded through about two thirds of "John's Arcade" 1-hour video showing him struggle to put inner side art on his Ghostbusters Pro:

His video was helpful, because it made me decide that it would be much easier to do this job with the playfield removed. My Star Wars is also a pro, and just has the cheap service pegs with rubber tips - not the nice slide brackets that come on the Premium and LE versions of modern Stern machines. That makes it REALLY hard to install the side art without removing the playfield, since it's not good to rest the playfield on any of the components. Someday I might pony up the $55 to add brackets (https://www.pinballlife.com/stern-pinball-support-slide-bracket-kit-for-spike-spike-2-machines.html).

One challenge with removing the playfield is that Stern did not provide a connector in bottom of the cabinet for the ethernet cable that runs from the backbox to the playfield. Instead, it is one cable that runs from the backbox all the way up to a connector on a node board near the bottom (ie, front) of the playfield. It was cable-tied in 5 places, so I documented locations, removed all cable ties, and then fished out the ethernet cable and let it set in the bottom of the cabinet.

After unhooking the 2 Molex and 1 HDMI connectors, it was straightforward for two people to lift out the playfield and carefully set it on it's side. I STRONGLY recommend that you lift out the playfield with two people, or however many you need to do this safely.

It was fairly easy to put on the side art after that. The goal was to put the top of each decal near the top of the box, but comfortably (ie, enough but not too much) under the lip where the glass slides in. I lined up and held the inner art blade in place with two appropriately sized spring clamps, using a cloth to protect the inner and outer art at the clamp locations (https://www.amazon.com/spring-clamps/b - I like the kind with the pivotable plastic ends). I started at the wide end at the back of the box since it was easier to line up the hole for the nut holding the backbox hinge. I peeled off about a 12"-15" length of the decal backing and set the decal, then removed the clamps, checked alignment, peeled the remaining backing off, and affixed the rest of the decal. I smoothed it out with a cloth.

After getting the playfield back in "up" position in the cabinet, I fished the ethernet cable from the back to the front of the playfield. I plugged it in on the node board at the front, and attached it with cable ties in the same locations, starting from the front (apron) side and ending at the bottom (back) side of the playfield. My cable ties were slightly thinner, so I made sure not to close them with too much pressure, so that I didn't pinch any wires too much.

And finally, I attach the before and after pictures.

SWPro_basement2 (resized).JPGSW_SideArt_Han_NoGlass_PowerOff (resized).jpgSW_SideArt_Leia_NoGlass_PowerOff (resized).jpg

That video is helpful for all machines with brackets. Unfortunately the pegs on some Stern Pro models just make it really hard to even use the method where you spray some water on the sticky side of the art blades. You cannot get the playfield out high enough or far enough forward. Hopefully they have now stopped shipping them with pegs.