Im glad he posted this because we needed another dimple thread bad! Thank you Vdrums!

Guess I'll throw this out one more time.
Thousands of plays. Yes
Planking. Yes
Missing paint. Yes
Dimples. No

It will eventually even out just like the picture below. Beatles needs to have the flipper strength turned way down. The game has more air balls than most or all of their other recent titles.

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One time I dropped a ball on my hardwood floors and it created a dimple.

Dimples on the magnet? Never seen that.

Lots of air balls and powerful flippers. I wish they where not there but I am going to keep playing it. Maybe it will level out.

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Stainless steel is softer than hardened steel ball bearing
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BM66 is awful with that, probably b/c the magnet is so large.

It’s 2019; pf dimples are to be valued as fun, not wear. The more dimples there are, the more fun the game has proven to be.

Here’s mine after a few weeks...haters will say it’s photoshopped.

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The CDC has issued a statement that planking prevents dimples.

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Damn dude,I guess I'm lucky my Dialed In looks a hell of lot better then yours does!

Meh. Yes, some games have softer playfields which lead to larger and deeper dimples. Ok. I’ll still play them and enjoy them.

Your first step should be to call Stern.
They know where all the shittiest and cheapest materials can be found.

And I just ordered 2 Munsters.

Depends on the angle you’re viewing it from. Dimples seem to be more pronounced on newer games.

Don’t freak out guys, dimples are going to happen.

Not a hater just a realist. Looks like a big dimple near the right sling.

Oh dear! A dimple?! *GASP*

Beatle's is not "slow" by any stretch! It's rather fast and the balls fly all over the place.

My PF still looks excellent i think, but i really haven't looked and don't give a F.

If you don't like it, put a STUPID PF protector on it.

Better yet, why not just play your HUO pin until it wears out and then get it recleared OR replace it with a brand new Micro.

The minor BS that some of you worry about BLOWS MY MIND!

Everyone whines about insert ghosting & slight insert lifting on older games but craters in brand games is no problem. LOL

Can I add that Day 1 Factory Mylar Protectors were developed for a reason. Diamond Plate was developed for a reason. It wasn’t just cosmetics as much as just keeping the paint readable for longer and keeping down the grooves that wear in the wood after the paint goes away. I guess I would call cratering any depression that can deflect a ball’s natural travel when a slow rolling ball rolls over it. This only should concern the player from a “it hit THAT crater right there and took a turn SDTM” viewpoint though. Casual players tend to take things in stride but competitive players take a frowning look a machine if they loose a ball due to some carny groove worn in the playfield, or some crater that sends the ball down an outlane unexpectedly. My FGy had dimples from only 250 plays due to a lot of “stuck ball on top of drop target bank - glass smacked by ball search” resets when I took it home from Expo. It was NIB and used for the Flip out tournament and so when a player got a ball hung on the drop bank, instead of tilting out a ball and knocking it loose, they just waited for the ball search to reset the bank, slam the glass and richochett back on the playfield. On site, I would expect paying players to do the same. Now, at home, I only let it happen if I am having a GC beating run and got a shot at bumping myself off the high score table, otherwise I shake it loose and live with the warnings and tilts. The dimpling on my FGy has not gotten worse since, so maybe a little tlc goes a long way.

to fix a continued problem, that in my mind threatens the hobby.

Dimples threaten the hobby?

What is it with newbs these days?

Did you really think I was serious? I like to joke around and I am never serious-but I do appreciate the thumbs down?

Can I use dimples to explain why I suck? It’s not me, it’s the damn dimples redirecting the ball!

My observation on dimples on newer games is the substrate material being used is much softer and less dense. Sometimes using 5-7 layer playfields instead of 10-12 like previous decades. Also the type of wood types they have chosen are less dense than earlier decades. I know from a construction aspect that good hardwood species are not nearly the same level of quality that they were decades ago. Trying to find good wood nowadays is not an easy task. Less dense wood, less layers-and thus you get significantly bigger dimples that are visually un-appealing. Will they eventually even out? Well if you are an op that has thousands and thousands of plays on route-then maybe? If you are a home-owner and a casual player-the dimples will never even out and will be an eye sore. It sucks but unfortunately companies want to try and cut manufacturing cost anyway they can, and usually that means cheaper materials(ie. 5-7 layer PF's with softer woods). I was upset watching the huge craters start to develop on my Star Trek LE-then as more and more games had issues-it now has become the norm. Some of the Bally/Williams titles from the 90's have playfields that are really dense and the quality is night and day compared to today's playfields.

Nope. Not falling for it. If your intention was to post clear, well lit shots of PF dimples on Beatles, then you failed miserably. See Vid's pics in the thread? See how they don't look like garbage and are not dark?

If you don't want a dimpled PF, then just buy a PF protector for your "investment" and stop trolling Pinside. Everything abut your post is trolling, "Upstairs, in the corner and hasn't been played much." Yeah, ok...

If that's not water, you were able to fool quite a few people. I was not the first to suggest it.

You may as well just post that it came out of the box this way from Stern. Are you trying to say that this Stern product has an unusual amount of dimples because this game is only a couple months old? Are you just pointing out that there are more dimples than there should be on the game?

There's no "new problem" or "threat to the hobby" here. There have literally been hundreds of posts about dimpled PFs on RGP and Pinside for decades.

Manufactures correct the problem? Yeah that's actually quite funny but then I realized that you were being serious. Maybe they should hire you to point out all these "new" quality control issues?

As an afterthought, you have to consider that when you make a post like this, it could possibly have the exact opposite result of your intentions.

They know where all the soft wood is and they aren't just gonna hand out trade secrets like that.

The search for flaccid trees continues!

THEY ARE ALL CRAZY

Same shit different dumbass

Ochroma pyramidale

I have always felt the whiny little bitch's that go on about dimples are what threaten the hobby

You can't really be much of a plywood authority if you think that ANY plywood on the entire face of the planet has ever been made with 10 or 12 layers.

You have tipped your cards and shown you are both a pinball and plywood nubie.....

Haha, good point. If you have ever been to this location you know such a thing doesn't exist. That is especially true for new games. The games there get the living shit played out of them day and night.

I don't see what the problem is. If wood is softer these days then what are you gonna do? Only buy old machines? Never buy any new ones? Seems like it's a fact you need to accept; manufacturers aren't going to spend top dollar on just "hard" wood, rejecting thousands of board feet of "soft" wood, and wasting money to get the most perfect hardened plywood that only the purest pinball connoisseur would play on.

My AFMr has a ton of dimples, but they are starting to even out a bit. Do I care? No. Does it affect gameplay? No? Then I really don't care. The flippers are strong and it's a fast game - metal will dent wood ten times out of ten. My Black Knight 2000 has visible dimples as well, but only under the right light.

A combination of LEDs and shiny new playfields on these new games make dimples incredibly obvious.

Exactly. They themselves are the threat. They hyperventilate over every little thing and get all the lemmings in a tissy with their pitchforks out.

MB remake is a perfect example. Finally a TOP pin with a quality build and a great price. It's the trifecta! And people are still unhappy, losing their minds over a tiny percentage of them arriving with a tiny split in the decal. One guy was even bitching about CGC taking too long to respond to his support ticket rrgarding a scratch in the powder coat on one leg and some scratches on the mirror blades.

With all due respect-not sure what you are talking about. I have numerous games all made with a 10 layer playfield? I also thought JJP uses a 10 layer PF? I simply am making a correlation with density and amount of layers-but what do I know

Like all those 90s playfields that were made with 5 layer plywood?

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Nubes have to stop romanticizing the **quality** of 90s games.

95% of 90s games need their playfields restored.

Every time someone finds an unmolested TAF or MM, the first thing they do is buy a replacement playfield, or send the original out for restoration.

Let's not kid ourselves that they were made of some kind of magic wood...

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Before that, everyone was sharpening their pitchforks when LE orders were experiencing some manufacturing delays, with some people going so far as to cancel their order.

I think on the plus side, this proliferation of dimples in pinball may attract a new demographic that cannot resist them:

grandmothers!

ALL quality plywood is made with an odd number of plys

Otherwise it warps.

You aren't looking hard enough.

Each of those layers is actually two layers.

Nice way to be a D*@! Vid-keep it classy my friend

How else is he supposed to act to ridiculous, made-up claims being used to support an annoying argument that drives all sane people here crazy - that somehow Stern has introduced dimples into our hobby to enrich themselves and screw all of the good people in pinball?

Where did you get the ridiculous idea that pinball "used to be made of 12-layer plywood?"

I mean...it's just completely made up, or, best case, you are just repeating some nonsense you heard without even considering researching it!

STOP DOING THAT

There's nothing "classy" about repeating bullshit my friend

Ok what I should have said is today's wood is crap compared to some of the previous species they had access to back in the day. Looking at my William's games-yes they are 5 layer-but take a look at the difference in density-you can see it with the naked eye. Now take X-MEN, Avengers, Etc. all have 10+layer playfields and all are holding up way better then my Star Trek LE is with fewer layers. I appreciate the correction-but try and be cool about it-no need to pull out the D*%@ stick.

I'm the king dick.

But because of my purple proudness, I'm not afraid to just come right out and say it; CCC makes better playfields now, that they ever did in the 90s.

The clearcoat is 20x clearer, and the plywood is much more uniform (as seen in the shooter lane).

I hope someone at Stern is paying attention.

There's money to be made here in offering factory-installed plastic playfield protectors.

Make them dumb and expensive enough and there will be a large percentage of takers.

Other than the few Baltic Birch playfields out there, all playfields are still made from the same wood species Acer Saccharum (Rock Maple) that comes from the same source (maple syrup farms).

It's been the same since the 1940.

Rock Maple is not an old growth wood. It only lives to be 70-110 or so years old, then is cut down to plant new saplings.

Again, quit romanticizing old plywood like it was cut from some 1,000 year old magic trees from when Arthur was king.

I believe the legendary King Arthur is from 5th-6th century time period give or take therefore the 1000 year old magic trees would have to have been around during the reign of King Offa of Mercia, son of Thingfrith and descendant of Eowa. Pinside is so weak.

The obvious solution is to treat these like all other collector toys and keep them in their original boxing as long as possible. Maybe some folks can test this and season their NIB games for a few years in the attic and let us know if they wear any differently.

Alternatively in the same way a new car is protected from bugs and sand debris from driving, maybe just dip the thing in plastic to protect it. Seems like a market opportunity for a savvy aftermarket specialist.

Now back to yelling at kids to get off my lawn and shaking my fist at the sun for being so damn bright.

Joking aside. I can't think of a single thing that is as good today as it was years ago, and all of them are more expensive. IMO play it, enjoy it, and do your best to make it last as long as possible, but its just not worth it to expect it at any price in today's world. Consider too that even if its not 'seasoning' the wood, it could be that the new growth trees available today, simply didn't grow as slowly and won't ever be as dense.

IMO I'd rather try to spend time on what I can enjoy and appreciate. Sure it sucks, but not worth more than a passing notice.