Ah... no... it’s speaker panel replacement kit that has back lighting.

Here it is:

https://lightedpinballmods.com/product/lighted-speaker-panels/jack-bot-ultimate-lighted-speaker-panel/

I thought he was talking about the decal below that which is around the five flashers on the otherwise black backboard. I wouldn't mind having that too. Heck I'd settle for just an outer space graphic with stars instead of the plain black.

LOL

*forehead smack*

You're right.

That actually looks great. Have never seen that before

Where did u find this pic? Can't find this decal anyplace. Maybe it's just a one-off thing.

From a previous sale in the archives

wow that 5 flashers decal is top notch! I really would like to get it too...!

That looks like the JB that MustangPaul tricked out. He did a lot of custom work to it, so those decals may have been his creation.

PM the seller!

Wow, that blue/red translucent ramp actually looks pretty good too!

I have one in my Pinbot and it is exceptional. Freeplay40 does an exceptional job. I liked it so much I didn't put decals on it.

Checking into the thread for the first time, love our Jack Bot, family favorite. Where are you guys downloading the sound roms for 1.0R? The only sound roms on ipdb have the MAME tag.

JB is the best of all the sys11 games. That's all.

what??

I believe you are talking about pinbot

https://pinside.com/pinball/machine/pinbot

Playfield between Jack*bot and pinbot are almost identical

Both are good games. However, between Jack*bot and Pinbot. I will pick Jack*bot every time.

Pretty sure he is trolling

Shopping her out

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Good God man. What a great call on the R&M artblades. I snap ordered these after seeing the pics...I think it's a great homage to Pinbot and the colors really blend. Thank you!

I'm obviously joking (trolling??)... sys11 was a special era of pinball and JB plays more like a perfected sys11 than WPC. There are a few other early WPC that have a sys11 feel (BR, HS2, BSD, and the alphanumerics), but none are as good as JB, at least of what I've played.

Let's talk strategy... do y'all go for the soft plunge or shoot the vortex? Personally, I almost always go for Vortex since I feel like that is a key element of the game. It bugs me that the soft plunge is so exploitable so I installed the red spring and set the 10 point switch by the bumpers on a hair trigger to try to make the soft plunge less of a sure thing. On a normally set up game I think soft plunge is the better points strategy, but, like many tourney strategies, is borrrring.

I always shoot the vortex. Might get the center hole (it is tough though!) and always get some pop action right off the bat with every ball unless once in a while I goof or slip and don't even shoot it hard enough to make it to the first hole. The soft plunge thing is indeed kind of boring and I'm just not into doing tricks and shortcuts at home even if I'd get more points, I've always been a very lazy, casual player.

Looks like you have one of the early sample games. Please update and let us know how "sticky" the eyes are as we are told the early sample games are prone to excessive rejects. My late normal production game with the scoop style eyes has been very sassy with the rejects as of late as if the game has become angry at my mediocre maintenance habits and is fighting back!

My shooter has been inconsistent. Some games it seems like I can hit the skill hole 50% of the time and others I am lucky to get it once per game.

Mine is very inconsistent too. I should do an overhaul on the sucker with whatever new parts it would take.

wow really? How can you tell? They seemed reasonable when I played it.

This is the way strictly for efficiency. I agree it is boring.

There are a couple of clues that your machine is of earlier production, mainly the color vs white keno arrows and the style of the ramp mode light board. However, these traits don't necessarily mean the game is a sample production. The big tell that it is a sample is the design of the three lock holes. The samples had saucer style locks with angles metal backing plates like it appears to me your game has. The regular production games have curved scoops feeding holes more similar to shallow vertical upkicks.

Some folks that have played the sample games claim that the locks tend to reject more often than the standard production games. If you find this to be the case with yours there are some tricks that others have reported improved the lock rate. You can search around the threads to find them.

Other folks report that their sample games have no issues with the locks whatsoever. However, who knows if they are just trying to pump and dump their own games in the marketplace...

I am curious how you make out with your machine. For what it's worth, my JB goes through phases where it seems to have a very high reject rate. I think level, flipper condition, rubber, and playfield cleanliness all play a role.

Interesting ... yeah they do appear to be angled plates . I’d be interested to get a better look at the curved ones .

Are these “sample” games more or less desired?

My impression is that sample production is less desired though not by much from a dollar standpoint.

Got it put back together, interestingly it rejected my first several shots but seems more receptive now.

I do notice two holes in the playfield but I dont think anything else was ever screwed into them near the eyes, if someone could give me a good shot under their visor I would appreciate it.

I will say this game is super clean, supposed to be HUO and after the shop job it looks and plays amazing!

Other tricks I've seen mentioned for the early production lock hole rejections are dropping the saucer mechs down a little with spacers, and 'dead drop' foam for the saucer backing plates (don't remember if was put on the face of the plate itself or maybe as a shock absorber between the plate and the playfield). And perhaps a little bit lower power flipper coils to dial them down closer to Pinbot where you could still make the ramp etc., just with a little less oomph. Same problem was on WMS Indiana Jones so you might find some tips poking around here regarding that game too.

I can't remember the redesigned locks on my later-version JB ever rejecting a shot.

The only consistent problem I have with the game is the vortex. It's not the shot I go for personally but it still bothers me that the ball doesn't easily make it to the top hole on a full plunge using the spec. spring.

A full pull on mine either slams it to the top hole too damn hard, or the ball will get really wonky and rattle going around and might not even get to the center hole. Maybe even a little bit lighter spring would work on mine where a full pull would more reliably get to the top hole but without slamming it up there, I dunno. If it worked you'd have more 'useable' range in the plunger pull too. Maybe it's just the design of the whole thing, I wonder how Pinbots compare as per the shooter spring, if it's the same one. Today I decided to put a new black rubber tip on mine, tweaked the shooter position to center it a tiny bit better, and tweaked the shooter gauge 'arms' so with the plunger pulled out the ball doesn't shift around when you press on the ball towards the shooter, where it's totally stable, seems to have helped.

More Vortex.....
I put in the three blue 'skinny' posts on the left side today and figured I'd check out the vortex ramp since I had to take the main ramp off anyway. The transition from the curved rail to the vortex entrance wall looked like it might need tweaking, and when the top rail screw was loosened there was a tiny bit of play in the position of the rail up/down. So I retightened the screw while holding the rail downward to its lowest position. Then did just a slight tweak more to the rail itself (pushing downward at top edge of rail) to make sure the ball would not hit the edge of the vortex entrance wall as it came off the rail. So the ball would ride over that edge. That has gotten rid of the bad rattle and hanging up of the ball I would get sometimes right after it passed that point, a definite improvement in play and when I tested it flicking balls thru there with my finger.
But it's still not some precision device where I can shoot any hole I want just by looking at the shooter gauge. Especially with slower balls being affected by the three drop holes making it inherently unpredictable.

Might be time to pull the plunger apart, clean, and install a new sleeve

Can't wait to try this tomorrow. Will report back, thank-you.

Done this to exhaustion, might still need a tweek but something else must be amiss, thank-you though.

Question - is there supposed to be only one hex standoff post between the main ramp and the shield on top of it, and on the left end? And what is the correct length? Mine had this one standoff but forgot where it was when I took it off. On the left it seems correct but with the shield mounted it looks like perhaps the post is too long, shield slants a little to the right. I've ordered a new set of plastics 'cause I've got a few cracked ones and the right end of my shield is broken off and has to have a washer on the screw to hold that end down. Lot of pics out there look like they have NO post on the left but they don't look right to me, the shield is bent way down on left side. Or they look higher in the center. One I saw was perfectly straight. I want to make sure I mount the new one correctly. Thanks!

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rteterterte (resized).jpg

So I have my locks working well on my “sample machine “ I had to lower the moving stand up target assembly a hair also put some sorbathane foam on the top part of the angled bracket . Clean shots seem to lock rattlers are 50/50.

Every Jackbot I've ever seen photos of, even an HEP restoration, had the visor shield lower on the left, mine included. I admit it does look odd but I left mine that way when restoring, especially since the plastic was already bent from being bolted to the ramp and the end would have stuck up even further had I used a spacer.

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I just figured this out a few minutes ago when my four-eyed eyeballs noticed a *second* hex spacer I had missed after removing, then figured out oh, these two are for the clear plastic above the ramp entrance, duh. So yeah when I put the shield on with no spacers it does conform to the existing plastic's warp. I did put a couple of thick washers under the left end though just to raise it up a little to make it look more level, not the whole half inch like the hex bolt was that I wrongly thought should go there. Thanks!

Awesome! Glad to hear you have the locks dialed in. Maybe I should try some of that sorbathane on my regular production JB as it was giving me some heartbreaking rejections tonight. The worst example was during a casino run when I only had 8 seconds left, but a bucket on hand so I decided to go for it. I shot the return directly in the blue side eye but rejected! The return just bounced around the slings until time expired and I lost out on 800M or so. The only consolation was that I scored a dirty pool later in the game. Unfortunately I choked on the Mega Jackpot ramp shot but still ended up with one of my best scores in months.

JB is such a fantastic game. It is a top tier WPC game and unbelievable that they sell for so cheap given the low production.

Lol yeah for some reason mine seems to reject more during casino run still needs a little tweaking left one slight less receptive .

I wonder if there is any wiggle room on the curved rail position of the lock holes on the later Jackbots, at the top screw. Maybe those could be dialed in better if that end were moved left or right a teeny bit. Could even lengthen the screw hole in the rail for more range in position but I'm not going to try it since I can't complain about the locks on mine. Those holes might even get play worn into them just from the ball hammering the rail. Rail could even get bent from something or somebody and be a little out of whack, you never know.

I noticed something...... Pinbot, Bride of Pinbot and Jackbot are all spelled with a "dot" before the "Bot" on every game and factory flyer. When you do a search on "Pinbot" you get all four Pinbot/Bride versions... but if you search on "Jackbot" you get nothing. Pinside's very own spelling is "Jack*Bot" but even if you search on THAT with the asterisk you get no results. You have to search for 'Jack bot' with a space or a period?? Jackbot is being silently 'cancelled' I tell you!

Installed the color-coordinated flasher domes mod. Whoever thought of this idea first is a genius even though when you see it, it is so obvious!

The blue and green domes looked washed out with my standard flasher lamps compared to the yellow/orange/red. The blue was so dull and sick it looked practically white. So I added some colored film that I had left over from another project inside those two domes to deepen the color for now. I prefer sticking with incandescents but I will order some colored LED flashers for all five, the blue and green especially need it.

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As per the tweaking of the vortex entrance I mentioned earlier, after playing a few dozen games I understated how much it improved the vortex. I'm getting center hole shots a TON now when I'm not even trying, before it was a rarity. Two shots in a row once, that was *impossible* for me before. Made my vortex operate as smoothly and consistently as this mech was probably designed to work. I should've checked back there years ago. So if you have that rattling/dying sometimes as it enters the vortex ramp, you might want to check out your rail/vortex entrance alignment and play around with the positioning via the mounting hole in the rail, see if it's worn and/or the mounting screw is loose and the rail has gotten pushed back too far.

Is there a 4 ball multiball in JackBot?
IIRC, the most I have seen is 3-ball

No 4 ball multiball. I think the game takes four balls in case one gets stuck on the playfield and the software can compensate.