Got my Premium last night. Worked great for an hour. Then this started happening:

I hit start. It INSTANTLY selects a song and AUTO-PLUNGES the ball. This repeats ad nauseam until it goes through all three balls. The normal game noise plays but there's also this constant low-pitched sound effect that is also repeating and the score seems to be going up from it. I haven't played the game enough to know what switch is connected to that sound effect.

My distributer told me to go through the diagnostics and check active switches. I did that, it cycles a bunch of numbers and switches and I don't know what they mean (i'm pretty new to the hobby). Then I turn the machine off and on. Reboot - and it works again.

Turn it on this morning to see if it's still fixed. Nope. Exact same problem starts again. For all I know this is the simplest problem ever, but I'm new so I have no idea what to do. Put a call in to Stern Technical support and waiting to hear back.

Any ideas? Thanks

Solved it! Stern tech support FTW. Clairvoyant switch was registering ever time i hit a flipper. Just bent the switch back a smidge and all solved. Easy peasy.

Can someone explain how to center your plunger (horizontally and vertically)? Read this thread and I'm having the auto-plunge into the post issue and have never centered a plunger before. Thanks!

All right, so I got my manual plunger working PERFECTLY. Silky smooth. But now my auto-plunger is hitting the upper left flipper 100 percent of the time.

I fixed my manual plunger by removing the right plastic and wireform and then moving the guide wall just a smudge IN towards the shooting lane (not out!).

But now I'm hitting the upper right flipper on an auto-plunge every time. I would reaaaaaaally like to not have to take all the plastic and wireform out again, is there anything I can do to the auto-plunger to fix this?

I'm 100 percent sure my playfield is level, and pitch is 7.0. I tweaked with auto plunger power but the default is max and lowering it only made it worse.

Any ideas?

I’m chill man! I’m actually enjoying tinkering with it and know none of these issues are serious, just new to the hobby so coming here for more experienced opinions

okay I solved my auto-plunger issue by taking my pitch back down to 6.5 (I had it at 7.0). Back at 6.5 it works perfectly.

So to re-cap for anyone with a Premium/LE and some issues, all 3 of my issues were small and simple to fix, just a little time intensive to figure out what exactly as wrong (and stern support was able to help me with all of them on the phone - shout out to Chas and Patrick)

- Orb shot was registering on every flipper press. Just slightly bent out the sensor so it wouldn't be so sensitive
- Manual plunger was hitting the post - took out the right plastic and wireframe and moved in the metal guide just a hair
- Auto-plunger was hitting the upper flipper after I fixed the manual, when I lowered pitch to 6.5 it started working again

As I've seen these issues brought up a few times here just wanted to let new owners know what happened to me and how I fixed it. I'm brand new to this hobby and I didn't find any of these fixes particularly difficult so don't be discouraged with your new IMDN.

Blarg. Well my auto-plunger is back to hitting the upper left flipper almost every time. Tried to readjust the right metal guide but doesn’t seem to matter where I put it. Not sure what else to try.

How do you do this? Is this a software or hardware change?

Auto-plunge working most of the time now, but of course as I expected, the manual plunger is off. A full manual plunge will always hit the post.

Couldn't tell you if this Iron Maiden Pinball game is any good, but this Finicky Shooter Lane game succccks

(I kid I kid, but yeah...)

Isn't it designed for a full plunge to go all the way around outer loop? Or am I wrong? If I'm wrong and a full plunge is supposed to hit the post, then you've saved me a ton of time

Thanks for the help, just curious is your auto-plunge going around the loop 100 percent of the time? Mine is still inconsistent.

Yes just tweaking. It's annoying but it's all do-able. I've had to tweak my orb sensor and manual/auto-plunge a ton over the past four days. Got it dialed in last night for the entire night. Was playing perfectly. Fully expect something to not be right again today... but who knows? Good news is it's all do-able and most of the stuff you could honestly ignore if you're not a perfectionist.

Spell mummy to open the tomb. Shoot the left ramp to lock a ball in the sarcophagus. Then spell mummy again. Then hit the sarcophagus to free the ball and starts mummy mulitball.

You literally knock the ball out of the sarcophagus from the captive ball hit. It's very cool.

Last night was playing a two player game and my buddy and i were pausing between balls (giggity) and after about 1 minute the game auto-plunged his ball. No one touched a button on the game during this time. Is this a setting to force you to start a ball after a certain amount of time or am i having another opto issue?

Okay, so I've had my machine for 7 days now and have had way too many troubles and am turning here to see if anyone has any ideas, as I'm completely out of ideas.

- Right out of the box I had opto issues with the Orb shot. No problem, tweaked the mechanism, got better. Have had to fix it twice more, but okay. No biggee.
- Manual plunger hits left post most of the time. Okay. Tried a bunch of things. Different pitches. Loosened the plunger housing, adjusted so plunger hits the direct center of the ball. Took the plastic and wireframe off the right side of the machine so I could tweak the metal guide lane by loosening that screw and slightly moving it. Eventually I got the manual plunge dialed in. Has been consistent for 5 days.
- Auto-plunge hits the upper left flipper. And now we get to the as-of-yet unsolvable problem. For 7 days I have tweaked this bastard. I'll get it dialed in for a few hours and then it craps out on me and starts hitting the upper left flipper again - after working fine for hours and nothing discernible changing in the game.

I got sick of it over the weekend and had my distributer come by yesterday to fix it. He's a lovely guy and I was very appreciative he was trying to help me out. He tweaked it for about two hours. We did EVERYTHING we could think of. Tweaked the angle of the auto-plunge prongs, changed the pitch from everything between 7.3 and 6.5, straightened the auto-plunge housing. Finally we got it working. Was getting about 9/10 successful auto-plunges for 30 auto-plunges in a row. I told him to take off. Seems about as good as it's going to get. Quite happy with 27/30. Played for a few hours last night.

Then I turn the machine on again this morning and check the auto-plunge. 0/10 successful auto-plunges. Total fail. I did NOTHING to the machine other than play for about 90 minutes on it last night (when it was consistently giving me 9/10 successes). This morning, for no reason I can understand, I'm getting 0/10.

So... anyone got any ideas? My distributer is going to try and replace the kicker assembly, but I'm just not 100% confident that's going to do it. We've also sent a video to Stern of it hitting upper left flipper, waiting to hear if they have any ideas, but figured I'd post here too in case others get into the same issue.

You can see a video of it linked below. Also, in my other videos you'll see it working about 7/10 times for an hour straight over the weekend in a stream I did with my buddy.

I love the game and have enjoyed it IMMENSELY when it's working, but so frustrating when it just seems to stop auto-plunging correctly for no reason over and over again every time I think I have it sorted. If you know the game at all you know how frustrating that can be in a multi-ball, especially Trooper as it cannot stage the balls at all.

Lemme know how to do that when cradling a ball on the left flipper or in the midst of a multi-ball on a ball return.

Maybe you’re cool with paying $7.5k to not have your machines working right, but I’m not.

Yeah tried that setting a bunch, doesn’t seem to effect the angle at all, which surprised me.

Here are pics taken today. I feel like re-adjusting this is the last thing left other than replacing hardware, but I’m a bit worried to do it as I feel there’s a good shot I just throw off my manual plunge and make things worse. But I am tempted.

0E396B16-2C4D-44A7-8ABF-0469E19AD50D (resized).jpeg

CB4BC480-39D9-4E2F-9496-99D7F1606E16 (resized).jpeg

Coils set to normal, whatever the default is. Auto-plunge is set at default max of 255. But I have tried it down 25 all the way to it's minimum at 155. Doesn't seem to have any effect on angle at all, just slower auto-plunge. Willing to try any combination of settings if you have a suggestion.

I only added the Pinstadiums three days ago, haven't noticed a difference in inconsistency, was doing the same thing prior to them, but I'll def try it again with them unplugged.

No but I can do. The more this feels like a science experiment or a mystery to be solved the less I'll be annoyed by it

When this happened to me it was because my left flipper was triggering the orb shot sensor.

A medium to hard hit off the left flipper button (during song selection for example) was enough vibration/movement on the table for it to trigger the sensor on the orb and make it think a ball was in play, and thus fire the auto-plunge.

I’m having the exact same issues. Stern is sending me out a replacement kicker unit, will let you know if it helps (I’m not confident but it’s worth a shot!)

Got my replacement auto-plunge from stern today. My distributor came and soldered it on for me and.... it seems to be a LOT better. Now, only time will tell - and we did have to readjust the manual plunger and slightly bend the guide rail - but neither of those things used to do anything before to help my auto-plunge issue, and I am now getting 9/10 or 10/10 clear auto-plunges. Will report back in a few days, but if you were having the auto-plunger/manual plunger issues, a free replacement kicker from stern might be your answer.

No clue. My guess is less wobble/give to the left and right. I think the problem was that the kicker would slightly readjust itself over time and get out of position. Perhaps this one is "tighter". Man it's all a guessing game to be honest.

My Eddie piece of mind figure has slowly over time drooped over and now the left ramp balls get stuck on his head. Wondering what the best fix for this would be. I can’t seem to “bend” him back into shape as he just eventually droops back over. I stuck some tissue paper under his left foot and that is a temporary fix but it looks like he went insane after stepping in toilet tissue.

Also don’t want to super glue his butt to the wall as that will mess up my resale value. Any ideas?

60A00414-893A-4129-93F7-8239E3436416 (resized).jpeg

It’s possible it got warm in my garage but really doubt hot enough to cause this - but you never know. I move the pins into the air conditioned house when it gets above 90 degrees. Funny enough I was thinking of fixing it with a hair dryer, something I used to do when miniature gaming.

::kisses fingers:: now that’s some good pinside!

Never had this issue. I had auto-plunge issues but I got them sorted out.