Hello.

Just updated our Premium to 1.04, and we are having the same crazy issue with the left sling rapid fire. I'll send an email to Stern.

Thanks for the heads up hoby!

Dude...... adjust your frgn sling switch's already

ok on my LE - is it pro?

Or dial back the coil power.

Did you mean the following?

Dialing the coil back actually keeps the coil action MORE sensitive, not less, compared to adjusting the switch.

Adjustment #62 on machine specific adjustments. Turn it down to 20 or so. Problem solved. They made the coil action harder and it makes more vibration, triggering sensitive switches.

Your words, not mine. don't know about you but when I think back and forth I think ping pong or tennis. You said it first, just in a different way.

And no, it will not cause greater wear on anything other than maybe the coil stop. The sleeves, bushings, etc will still experience the same amount of frictional material but all of those parts are wear items as well anyways. But, by turning down your slings so that they don't rapid fire (instead of fixing correctly) you now create more back and forth between the slings (again, your words this time) which then causing those slings to fire more often which then creates additional wear because now a coil that would have fired 10,000 times has now fired at least 15,000 times. But you knew that right?

My only argument here is that you don't fix a mechanical problem by reducing power to a coil. You fix the mechanical problem and then adjust the power to suit your desires and needs. Those SHOULD be two separate functions.

I said, "There's PLENTY of action at 20 to have the ball go back and forth between the slings." which was a response to what I thought was your implication that turning down the coil power somehow gimped the slings so there wasn't enough sling action. I was NOT saying you would get a magical tennis match by turning down the power.

Coil stop wear (especially on Stern with the crappy rivets) is a real issue, so dismissing that REALITY from too-strong coil pulls with 1.03 is stupid for the real world. Period.

There is no mechanical problem. Nothing changed mechanically. There is a VIBRATION PROBLEM, and it was CREATED in 1.03. Stern GIVES you the power to FIX these issues (because all pins are like cabbage patch dolls, a little different) with an adjustment. So you don't make your switches LESS sensitive to fix an overpowered coil pull that was JUST INTRODUCED. You dial back the coil to match what it was at in 1.02 when there wasn't an issue. And I'm not dismissing the idea that Stern changed some internal debounce settings for the switches, too.

I always use tight tolerances on my slings and Superbands. They are a lot firmer than regular rubber

Yes, but you aren't complaining about a coil rapid fire condition. Once that happens you've gone to far. Any pinhead that does any work on their machines that has a basic understanding of how a pinball machine works knows that.

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I give up. For anyone that wants to fix your machine PROPERLY this is the WRONG way to do it. Vibrations causing a fire of a coil is damn near the definition of a mechanical problem in a pinball machine. Their is a reason why experienced techs will put a game in switch test mode and lightly tap on the PF when they get a complaint about a flaky switch.

Uuuuuuuum. I kinda do this sort of work for a living.

That and i've told the dude adjust the switch already.

Are you saying the proper fix for a rapid fire coil is to decrease coil strength?

In my experience in doing some top end restorations and setting up games/being the tech for some very high profile tournaments. This is not how I would go about fixing this issue, nor would any tech I have ever worked with. If we adjust the slings to the point it rapid fires, we increase the gap slightly to maintain a tight sling but not rapid fire.

Thank you. About time.

Normally I would give the same advice (and I did when people initially started reporting issues with 1.03), but once I installed it and changed NOTHING ELSE. It was clear that the sling coil strength CHANGE IN 1.03 was likely the problem. So for THIS ONE SPECIFIC CIRCUMSTANCE I am saying adjusting option #62 in the settings is the correct fix. FOR THIS ONE SPECIFIC CONDITION because of changes in 1.03 (and 1.04) only.

FOR THIS ONE SPECIFIC INSTANCE. Not in general. Generally speaking I agree with you (and that's the advice I initially gave here until I saw what happened in 1.03 myself), but this vibration-increasing change happened in SOFTWARE from 1.02 to 1.03/4. So for THIS case ONLY, turning down the sling strength is what I'd recommend (and did).

This is true, but the games were fine before the software update. The software update couldn't have introduced a mechanical problem unless they messed with the debounce or increased the power.

Widening the switch gap will reduce the sensitivity of the slings.

If the problem is the power was increased, returning it to where it was is the correct solution for original operation.

If the problem is the debounce was changed, I'd probably go with the mechanical solution, adjust the switch and live with less sensitive slings.

Edit: vireland basically said the same thing I was writing.

Vireland i think you meant #69 instead of #62 right? #69 is for the slongshot power. #62 is for the Clairvoyant orb start level

Thanks for the advice! I'm new, so I will take all of the help I can get. I appreciate you taking the time to reply to my post on the problem.

I adjusted the 4 sling switches (opened them up more) and it solved the issue.

Dialing the sling power back in the adjustments menu did not fix the problem on my machine.

The nice people at Stern were also quick to reply, and verified that the sling switches needed to be adjusted to avoid the machine gun problem. This was due to a debounce change in the system.

See post 953. If the guy is not comfortable doing this there is nothing wrong with lowering the coil power.

I just don't think your seeing the whole picture.

Nope. #62 is slingshot power on a Pro. Maybe it's #69 on the Prem/LE.

Interesting that Trough Eject power default was reduced from 1.03 to 1.04.

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It's not rocket science. If someone isn't comfortable adjusting a leaf switch then they need to get over their fear and do it or call a tech. The problem with the game is a leaf switch that is too tight. The change in the code exploited that problem. Lowering the coil strength will fix it but that is putting a band-aide over the real problem. So, what is that same person (that is afraid to adjust a leaf switch) going to do when that sling rubber starts to stretch and loses some of it's elasticity. That will now cause another rapid fire sling coil issue. Are they expected to turn the coil down again?

I would have had zero issue with anyone stating, "Sounds like your leaf switch is a bit tight. It needs to be re-adjusted. Or if you prefer you can just turn the coil strength back down as a temporary fix." Where I have an issue is when it's being stated as basically "the fix" or it's a problem with the code (bug). NIB games really need all their switches adjusted/looked at when you open the game. The factory workers often don't get several of them correct.

Hmmm... Guess I'm not an idiot after all.... Imagine that, adjusting leaf switches resolves an issue with a rapid fire sling coil.

And now those slings are less sensitive to the ball and will take more to trigger. It's not rocket science. For THIS SPECIFIC SOFTWARE-CAUSED CASE of increased vibration, widening the gap is the wrong fix.

Apparently not. Someone can't quit this.

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Got it. You know more than the people that built the game.

I got an IMDN premium this week and I seem to have most of the problems in this thread.

My sarcophagus captive ball does not register hits, unless the ball is pulled forwards, towards the front of cabinet. Sometimes side-hits will trigger it, but for the most part, it just bounces balls off to no affect, which makes one of the main parts of the game unobtainable. I've seen some posts about people reversing the switch and messing with the ball, but I wanted to check if anybody has put together a guide for fixing this sort of issue, before I just try all the things people have suggested.

The orb captive ball is also very hard to trigger, but it's way easier to trigger in the switch test mode than the sarcophagus one.

First thing to try is to make sure the leaf switch point gap is not too big, too small, or closed. It is such a fine line between being right and being wrong it isn't funny. The actuating arm has to be centered in the plastic cup. If you don't have the newer pointed actuating arms, call Stern and get two. If you don't have a leaf switch adjusting tool, buy one--"your gonna need it!"

I had this problem with mine, and found that the post underneath the captive ball was loose. It looks like a spike that goes straight down to a plastic dish that activates the switch when the captive ball post touches it. I twisted it by hand to screw it back in, and it has worked fine ever since. I'm a complete pinball noob, but that worked for me.

I am a total noob to pinball, and it was a piece of cake to adjust the switches. Anybody can do it. I used the switch test and bounced a pinball off of the slings by hand to test it out afterwards, and haven't had any issues.

Before adjusting the switches, I tried the other method of dialing down sling strength in increments and testing it out. I only got consistent results with the sling strength down to the lowest setting (8), which made the slings non-responsive.

Again, Stern tech support also instructed me to adjust the sling switches to be farther apart and did not tell me to make any adjustments to sling strength settings to solve this issue.

Thanks to everybody for all of the replies with these issues. It's my first pin and I am having a lot of fun playing it, but also having a lot of fun learning the technical aspects from the good people on this forum.

my 'ball lock' loop post has a rubber sleeve on it that slowly rides up over time (predictably)... which gets the ball stuck sometimes until the search happens. I'm assuming replacing the rubber with a 'superbands' style sleeve will solve the problem because they fit tighter than normal rubbers. Anyone else done this and can confirm if its a good fix?

Thanks.

other than That my machine does not seem to have any physical issues.... Although I have noticed that the flipper coils on this machine are at least 2X louder than my Ghostbusters... Have not even lifted the playfield to see if there's a reason for it. anyone else experiencing this?

You have 2X the amount of flippers on this game, maybe that's why it seems louder. Mine doesn't seem too bad though really. Maybe you just need to crank the music up a little louder.

Mine keeps coming loose as well, drives me nuts. Anyone else having this issue? What did you do to fix it if so? Locktite, super glue?

good point

One huge improvement I did do with my game was to adjust the flipper switch's so the both activate at the exact same time ( this was not easy ).

Huge difference in me being able to consistently hit the orbits. Those milliseconds between lower in upper really threw me off .

Locktite. Works perfectly.

This is exactly why coils shouldn't be adjustable. The manufacturer should use the appropriate coil and mechanical setup to make it behave how they to the design intentions. Having the coils user adjustable is a crutch for weak manufacturing design. That's not to say manufacturers shouldn't use variable power for things in game, dependent on situation, just that it shouldn't be changeable on the user level.

software is not causing vibration.

they aren't supposed to fire at the same time. they are designed to be staged. you can flip the lowers w/o firing the uppers on purpose.

Thats great.... You make your game play the way YOU want and Ill keep mine the way I have it.

I'm not telling you how I want it, I'm literally telling you how they designed the flippers. its done for a reason. You can flip the lowers w/o the uppers getting set off so they are not in the way potentially of a ball getting into or out of an shot, it also has other uses. Do whatever the f*ck you want, but you're making your game play and your skills, worse.

Come on. You're not this dumb. Software is causing a harder coil pull than 1.02, which is causing enough additional vibration to trigger the slings that worked fine in 1.02.

That's a hardware issue, the software is not vibrating. the rings (hardware) are rebounding.

folks,
any of you guys in the US that can get the new captive ball post 530-1037-00 x2? They are apparently on the way to our disty but I'm fed up waiting and fed up adjusting them.

Neil,

Order them straight from stern. I never bother going through a dist. Why add a middle man?

they wont send to the UK... they used to do that but not any more.

Neil.

Unfortunately, in this instance the hardware issue and software settings are interactive, so you could say it is both a hardware issue and a software issue.

Since Bananajet said Stern told him they changed the debounce in software, which isn't user adjustable, it looks like you can't get back to 1.02 sling sensitivity, as confirmed by Bananajet reducing the power until the slings didn't fire.

Oh well, not a huge deal. Maybe in the next software revision they will put the debounce back to where it was and the switches can be adjusted to make the slings more sensitive again. Likely no one will know the difference though.

Didn’t you know that when you change the version it also changes the hardware..... come on man.

Bummer, dude. That's just bad support. Another reason to reconsider dealing with Stern.

Ok two simple playfield questions:

1.) mine has the woodgrain effect all over it, I know this is a historic problem with Stern. Is there a point where it’s worth asking for a replacement?

2.) Not sure if my pitch is off but I have very low plays and lots of dimpling already, is it just the pin in general or my setup?

Thanks!

Play on.

The wood grain (ribbing) does kind of suck but im sure that only you know that it is there. Mt MET has it also, i wish it wasnt there but i can live with it. As far as dimpling goes, thats going to happen. The more you play it the better it will look.

Had the same problem with 1.04 install. Slings overly active. Firing multiple times on one sling switch hit. Never did it on 1.02.

Was a simple fix. Definitely Mechanical. Just widen the gap a little on the 4 sling leaf switches. Problem went away instantly after adjusting sling switches.

I like to keep them tight to make the game as mean as possible, but that left them vulnerable to this code change.