Cool to let other owners know. Thumbs up bro!

I think what the setting does is abort any hammer lock if a different switch is hit after the captive ball. This might include the snake jaw. Disabling this possibly allows a rebound off the snake jaw to still lock then. There's another setting for how many switch hits can be allowed and the default is 1 - snake jaw anyone?

Rob

FWIW, I tried setting 89 to NO, and it didn't catch one ball in my test game. Probably too small of a sample size to be conclusive, but I don't have time to playtest it a bunch right now.

It seems like different magnet settings have been successful for different machines since day one. I'm glad this works for some, but it didn't seem to help mine. With the new lock options I don't really care about the magnet anyway.

What exactly does it improve? Mine is pretty good. No phantom hits anymore and catches it ok...

Can you elaborate on your improvements as it plays in your game.

Yea, but if you haven't done enough test and dev on multiple machines then you are doing just the opposite. My pin works totally fine with 1.6 update and has nothing to do with a certain setting.

Ditto ?????

Double ditto.

Triple ditto

Infinity dittos, mine still works half the time perfect and other times not at all. I don't think there is any one answer that makes it work all the time.

Quaditto.

Ah, gotcha. I don't have phantom hits to begin with (knock on wood).

I have very few phantom hits, but the magnet grabbing the ball could certainly be improved.

Ok
What problem I'm having since V1.6 came out is this.
The magnet will catch the ball and the hammer will smack the ball to the lower playfield (Coffin)
as the ball is lowered and starts to roll down the coffin the Hammer will slowly start a second strike down.

Anyone having this? or know how to fix this?
Tried adjustment 89 - same - did not help my problem

The is odd. It sounds like maybe the ball isn't rolling off the magnet fast enough and the magnet thinks the ball is still on it so it engages the sequence again. Perhaps try:

1) increase table pitch. This might help the balls roll off faster.
2) verify balls are not magnetized. Get new balls to test.

Hi markmon
Tried new balls, still the same.
I have it set at 6.5 and tried 6.8 - no change.

Reinstalled v1.6
and seems now that the Hammer will strike down and hold while ball starts to roll down coffin and then the hammer slowly lifts back up.
Is this how it is meant to be now?

Just that with mine when it was running 1.5,, the Hammer would strike firm and raise firm (fairly fast) and that was it.
Unless they changed something in t he software?

I don't think its software related. I would be looking at other causes. My guess is still that the ball is rolling off too slowly. The hammer probably stays down until the ball hits the first switch in the captive ball trough or until a timeout occurs. My guess is it use to roll off faster.

Your balls are magnetized. This exact thing happened to me and I changed balls. Yes there could be many ball jokes from my post I know. Lol

Ok, I'll get more balls on the weekend. and try again
Thanks

Drop each of your balls into a box of paper clips. If they stick to the you know. If not your balls aren't magnetized.

Yes, mine does this and I was going to look at it last night, but it was getting late.

Rob

I looked at the hammer tonight and the problem is not magnetized balls on my game. This behaviour never happened before 1.6, but now it happens all the time during play. The issue seems to be something with the coil hold power being too weak and the hammer bouncing up a bit from the vibration of the magnetic ball drop, then coming down again (weakly).

The easiest way to test would be to load a pre 1.6 rom and see if the behaviour changes. I'll report back when done in a few..

Rob

Just to bump and follow up. I loaded 1.51 and the problem persists. So it's not a 1.6 rom issue. If I find something I'll let everyone know.

Rob

Thanks Rob_G
I also tried some other balls today, and same as you, still having the same problem.
weird

I swapped the balls from my ACDC into MET and still no improvement here either. These are the pinball life high gloss balls.

Rob

Hmm I was told from Pat at Stern that it was the shaker moving the hammer back up and then a slow down again.
I don't know, Why would it raise again if the coil is holding the hammer down.
Installing 1.51 again now to see if it changes

Don't waste your time, 1.51 is no different as I already mentioned above.

The hammer behaviour could possibly be improved by having weaker spring tension on the hammer coil so it holds easier. I don't want to mess with the original spring so I'll try to find a spare first to test with.

Rob

I was having issues with the magnet catching the ball and letting it go pretty much straight away which would then cause a hammer strike. Changing this setting has all but stopped the problem so thanks very much to the OP. Much appreciated.

If it's the shaker I would unplug it from it's board on the lower left of cab and see if the hammer behaves correctly.

I tried a lighter spring, changing spring sensitivity a few times and the results were not much better. So for the 'issue' of the hammer lifting up and going down again is just nature of the beast. I've watched other youtube videos and see the same behaviour so I'm sure it affects most games - especially if you have a shaker motor. More reason for pro owners to gloat I guess...

Rob

...or LE owners who don't like shaker motors.

Well I'm not 100% sure it's the shaker because there's also a lot of vibration from the magnet drop and that's more local to the hammer mechanism.

Why don't you like a shaker? Other than the motors are grossly overpriced by about 400%...

Rob

You do realize that ACDC really rocks with a shaker.... MET not so much though...

Rob

I dunno, it just seems superfluous. I either don't notice them after two minutes, or they bug the crap out of me. I loved it on Earthshaker because it matched the theme perfectly. Also those old ones seemed to have more of a subtle, natural rumble. New shaker motors to me are just a hard rattle, BRRRRT.

All pinball machines shake, rattle & roll to some extent. That's good enough for me.

Well, I just bought a metallica Premium and played a couple of games without any noticeable problems except maybe the timing from the hammer being somewhat off but I did not care. Now I just loaded the new firmware and started having all kind off problems, the ball is not catched most of the times at the coffin magnet, and if it catches it at all, the ball just falls off again after a brief moment, and then the hammer comes down and the magnet drops after the ball already is gone. Strange is that after you hit it again it says 10 hits to next lock but after 3 hits it locks it as the first ball.
Other strange things are the hammer going down when hitting sparky, and it also looks like the magnet before sparky grabs the ball a lot less of the times now then before. So to me it looks like the magnet settings are a lot weaker. Also the hammer seems to fall a second time after going down and up like I read up here in some posts also. My first thought was that the game would have an old hammer board, but it already had the new one.
I'm not sure if these problems started with the new firmware but as said, I did not see any of them when playing before although I only played about 10 games with v1.51.
I can't download v1.51 anymore and unfortunately I did not make a backup so if anyone can provide me a bin file of the v1.51 premium firmware I can go back and try if that changes anything
Or maybe someone else can give me an idea?
Thanks

I just got my new Metallica Premium and will try this adjustment, is this still the best solution to improve the Hammer feature?

worked for me! Thanks!

fixed mine too !