Our menu buttons are not the best. I know of a couple of others that have this issue as well. Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.

It’s been that way for a while. Every batch has issues. It usually centers around when they change vendors.

Second in the menu buttons. Mine are shit for last 3 games. Resorted to swapping them to change settings.

I have the same issue with the menu buttons. Very annoying. Hopefully an easy fix in the future.

And to think... $9K!! LMAO

But is it really any different than buying a new $30k car and dealing with finicky electronics or design issues?

Dude you can’t start a cargument in post #7. Way too early.

The sticky flipper buttons are the button wearing will probably pop out soon put an e-clip on the end will be fine after that

Yup - menu buttons are crap. Either register multiple presses or nothing at all.

Same here on all counts. Glass is tight but nothing crazy, doesn’t really bother me. Kind of like it actually

Thought it was only me. Had no issues with my Rush Pro, but with GZ, I have to press extremely hard on them. Is there any way to replace them?

I’m too impatient.

Yes, because you can take your car to the dealership with a full 3/36 or better warranty. Tow it there even on their dime. Trying to get ANYONE to fix this $9k Machine where it sits besides me is impossible with very rare exception.

what did you change them to/with? my Mando buttons are completely unresponsive. if i can even get into settings, the back button has no effect at all, to the point where i have to power cycle the machine to get out of settings.

Menu buttons are shit, and the factory flipper coil stops break in a couple weeks out on location.

I’ve got 6 sterns on the floor. I swap the assembly, 2 screws and a connector. Whenever I need to change something I plug in the one good button assembly. PITA.

I concur on the shitty menu buttons! Our new Avengers Premium has them!

My Godzilla has a filthy shooter rod and it's sticky in the housing, doesn't pull back or release smoothly at all. It's not that it's tough to fix, but it's bewildering how dirty it is. It doesn't seem new.

Tight glass, subpar menu buttons, subpar flipper buttons.

+1 for shit service buttons on my Rush premium. You have to push them so hard to register. I requested a new one because my back button stopped working altogether. The new one is almost as bad. Hopefully it's a lousy batch of parts and not the new normal. The game itself plays great... after i dropped over $150 on Ninjacamp mods haha.

I've seen on multiple machines non responsive setting buttons, sticking flipper buttons needing sanding to fix, poor fitting lockdown bars that have damaged the cabinet, missing cash box clips, and light sockets that flicker like crazy under the flipper ball guides. These are the most common I've experienced.

Check your corner brackets inside the cabinet. I had to really tighten the 2 in the back under the head on Mando.

Sticky buttons here.

Same here

Just wait till you guys realize they're using second rate electronic components in their boards due to the supply shortages. Any games produced in the past 12 months could have some odd reliability issues.

In fairness we have had more problems with GNRLE

Tighter glass sounds helpful, as long as it’s not *too* tight. Spares shaker users from installing rattle-resist tape on the edges of the glass.

It probably has an oil coating to prevent rust and was never cleaned.

Rob

Super tight glass here

How has no one mentioned the biggest problem?
The damn high prices we pay to have these problems.

Played a few new Sterns recently and also noticed sticky flipper buttons - didn't get a chance to figure anything out, as weren't my games.

Guessing they are coming out of the moulds with edges or something.

Yup sticky flipper buttons on last two games, had to sand down edge from the mold.

One had decent menu buttons, the previous bad as well.

Tight glass which I like for the shaker as well. Not so tight that I can’t get the glass off by hand.

All of this talk about tight and sticky.

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Never will buy a nib Stern again here. Ghosted on a replacement playfield. 2 years.

The menu buttons on my new GZ are crap. Wrote to Stern, and they said to go through my dist. I pulled the buttons out of my Deadpool, and they worked perfectly. So just a bad set of buttons that need to be replaced.

My flipper buttons are a minor bit sticky, but I'll just sand them down to fix it. No big deal.

My shooter rod was also WAY out of alignment. So that took a few minutes to fix.

Overall, it was exactly the little issues I sort of expect out of a NIB game.

Noticed the sticky flipper buttons too on brand new out of the box Avengers IQ and Godzilla. Did not see this described on Pinside yet, so here are some more details and pictures.

*** Warning, OCD ahead ***

When you press the flipper button in, you can sometimes feel it binding or "scraping" against the button housing. Sometimes the flipper will stay in the up position for a second, then the button "pops" out. My first reaction was to switch the machine off and check the flipper mech. But the button housing is the problem here.

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You can easily tell if this is the issue by pressing the flipper button in and rotating it with your fingers. If you feel any "scraping", there's your problem.

This is not even a new thing. My Ghostbusters and Star Trek had the same issue, with a slight variation. And this time, it was after a couple of months of play and a lot of slap saves, I guess. The stamped "3" was what caused the binding.

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The solution is to simply take the button apart and file off the binding part (inside edge of the button housing or the stamped "3"). Don't take too much off, or the button will not stay in the housing anymore. Had to replace mine on ST.

That’s very interesting and sad at the same time.

For everyone with the bad service buttons: Once you're in the menu, the flipper buttons and Start also act as the arrow buttons and Enter. Much easier to work through the menus that way. (You still need to use the service Back button for that function.)

For everyone with bad service buttons:

Three screws (ground strap, and two tiny black metal screws).

Take the unit off, unplug. (Plug is on tighter than you think, but it pulls off).

Use two small flatblade screwdrivers on the clips of the back side, gently pry the green circuit board up a little without deforming the black plastic clips.

Lift the green circuit board up a tiny bit at the connector end by prying with one of your screwdrivers, then insert your screwdriver to the side of the wedge at the end furthest from the connector. Pry the whole circuit board forward until the end clears the black wedge ramp at the end of the circuit board.

Continue to gently work the circuit board upward over the various black plastic clips with the screwdrivers and you'll get the green circuit board out.

Then the four buttons (Green, Red, Red, Black) will fall onto the floor. Pick them up. Hehe.

The circuit board has a translucent button rubber on top of it, gently pull this off, pulling the tiny pegs of translucent rubber out of the circuit board.

Clean the circuit board metal contacts that were under the buttons with 99% alcohol. Don't leave any lint or residue on the circuit board when you are done wiping it off.

Place the translucent button rubber piece back on the board, aligning the tiny rubber pegs. One by one, gently pull the pegs through the board until it the translucent button rubber rests flat on the circuit board.

I plugged the board back into the game at this point, and was amazed at how well the translucent button and green circuit board worked. I didn't have to clean the black surface of the inside of the translucent button cover with alcohol, but if you didn't get good results, now is a good time to pull it apart and clean the circuit board and maybe the black pads again with 99% alcohol.

After verifying that the button circuit board was working perfectly, I unplugged it from the pinball, and it was just a matter of loading the colored plastic buttons (Green, Red, Red, Black) back in the holder and popping the circuit board into the holder.

Plug the button unit back in. Put the assembled button unit back on the front door with the screws.

You now have perfectly working buttons.

Thx, surprisingly that worked in about 10 minutes. I was skeptical since it was a problem since day 1. Must have had dust in the air at the factory that day.

No reason to take the ground strap off.

Godzilla premium and Led Zeppelin premium both had extreme warped playfields out of the box.
Stern approved populated playfields for both right away but after waiting a year for Zeppelin with no replacement, my distro just swapped both games for new ones. He still hasn't received either playfield.

Those are the only real issues I've ever had with NIB Stern games and I've bought plenty. Just weird they were back to back purchases with the same problem.

It is when it is a part that has been in every game for decades...

But it isn’t the same part, it’s a cheaper one. If you pop open the door of a SAM game (depending on when built), you see 4 switches on a metal plate with soldered wires. Do the same thing in a current game and you find a circuit board with membrane buttons snapped into a plastic bracket. Reduced cost and vastly reduced assembly time.

I haven’t looked through all my games to this detail, but I assume they changed fabrication houses and ended up with a bad batch that have some contamination on the boards.

This is the normal continuum where you cheapen a part until it cannot function at the base standard, and then you go up a tiny bit and start building right above the failure point.

I've also had several games with them. Even my AC/DC Vault has them, and I've never had a single issue with them until GZ. And then I looked around and lots of people are complaining about them in the latest runs. They simply have a bad batch of them, and come to find out Stern doesn't even test if a game can go into the menus when they finish assembling it... Because there is no way that isn't noticed if someone had gone into the menu.

It's a standard QC issue. Bad set of parts that were not checked before installation, and the final product was not checked before shipping them to customers.

Stern is just passing the buck onto their customers, who will end up doing the repairs for them.

Thanks a ton, this worked for mine. It's not quite 100% after reassembling (I think the membrane didn't go quite flat back in place for the right-arrow button), but much better than it was.

There was a noticeable film of dust on the circuit board before cleaning it - guess there must have been a dusty week at the factory in April.

Thanks for the tip, did this today to fix my GZ and AIQ.

Good news is my DP prem built a few weeks ago is money, pf glass, flipper and sevice buttons are all smooth.