Have my Metallica LE for about two weeks now. Right out of the box, broken DMD, (Replaced). Hammer board needed repairing (Replaced) Today broken drop target. Has anyone contacted Stern for new drop targets? I read on earlier posts that Stern has made the drop targets stronger? Has anyone seen the new drop targets and is that true? I am quite frustrated that after two weeks I am already having to repair and replace parts on a new NIB pinball machine. I have 20 year old machines that don't need as much maintenance. I don't mind repairing pinball machines, but parts breaking after 50 plays, its a bit ridiculous.

Stern is good about sending out new parts in my experience. They might just ask for a pic of the broken one. Welcome to "dialing it in".

Visited my friend yesterday and he also did some stuff to his MeT pro

The fangs you see in below picture are made from Lego horns. Gave him already a couple of Tezmel fangs, to be installed ASAP

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How about a double el wire sparky helmet.

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Love the double el wire.. Make it happen and I'll buy some

The colors I have are purple, red, blue and orange. I will finalize and announce in a day or two with pics of all the pretty colors.

Damnt it tmezel, i need to get a payraise

These are available now.

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Pinball Refinery upgrades complete. Now to finish the LEDs in the GI...

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I replaced the plastic diverter post with a metal one like someone else recommended. I gotta say, it now functions correctly almost all of the time (90%+). No more balls getting rejected back down the orbits when it hits the post, now it functions as it was supposed to. I highly recommend this if you don't just want to turn off the post completely.

Did any of you Met Pro owners have a bunch of dead bulbs on your machine from the factory? I swapped all the playfield GI out for LEDs yesterday and had at least 8 incandesant bulbs out. Pretty weird for a 3 week old game.

Yep.

Had a #89 flasher under the pops that was dead. About 3 or 4 #555 lamps that were dead and about 3 others that would burn out quickly (under flippers). After replacing the lamps that kept burning out several times, it seems to be fine now. Probably just cheap lamps.

Most of my LED flashers didn't work or worked sporadically. Had to remove from the socket and bend the wires on the base of the bulbs to make good contact.

Does anybody have the product id number or a link to some site selling the metal post? Does the post work for iron man aswell?

The two bulbs near the flippers were sporadically coming on on my machine. It freaked me out several times during a game. I had one bad 89 but changed them all out with LEDs. Hitting the Metallica ramps now nearly blind me with the red flashers underneath...

Here you go:
http://marcospecialties.com/control/keywordsearch?SEARCH_STRING=a-17986

Not sure if it will also work for Iron Man. I've played about 10 games on Metallica since putting in this armature, and only once on each side has the ball been rejected. Before it was almost 95% of the time.

I have a Pro. Anybody have an issue with the Mystery scoop not awarding? One in about every 20 shots to the lit scoop will result in the ball being ejected but the award not given. No big deal, just was confused that the ball gets ejected, so the game knows the ball is in there. Just doesn't always give the reward.

This might be a dumb question, but you're talking about not awarding when it's lit, right? If so, are you sure it's lit on those occasions?

It always awards when its lit for me. You can bypass the animation by hitting both flippers...maybe you are doing that?

Positive. It's flashing. Ball goes in, ball gets shot out. Mystery is still flashing after the ball is ejected. Like I said, happens once in about 20 times.

If you bypass the animation it should still award the award. Right?

It does.

That happened to me a couple times on a friend's Pro recently. It used to happen on my LE, but one of the updates appears to have eliminated it entirely. Maybe the LE fix didn't find its way into the Pro code.

Yes, I had this same issue. You need to go in and adjust the switch that is in the scoop. It isn't registering properly. Bend it a bit to make sure that the ball will trigger the switch when it falls in the scoop.

I didn't think this was the issue originally due to the fact that the ball is being ejected, which led me to think that the switch had to be working. How else would it know to eject the ball? Still don't have the answer to that, but once I adjusted the switch, it has worked perfect ever since.

I keep having the leds fall out of the spotlights attached to the slingshots, anyone have an easy fix for this?

Remove the spotlights. Run the harnesses under the playfield and put in red leds and use them to light the Mystery scoop and Fuel bar. That's what I did. I posted pics in either this thread or the MET mod thread.

Take out the leds. Pull the wires on the leds away from the base and wrap a tiny piece of tape (you can even use double-sided tape for extra grab) around the base. Curl the wires back into position around the taped base and jam 'em back in... this will give the base more bulk to fit in tighter.

Why not simply put together a couple spots (from Marco or wherever) for under the PF and leave the upper spots working? Just solder them to any close GI connection.

Couple drops of super glue. Problem solved.

I have ledded most of my MET PRO but still prefer the incandescent bulbs for the slingshots spots. However, these bulbs here break a lot, have to replace them I think monthly. Apparently a lot of vibration going on there

The famous overpowered slingshots I guess (a 5 Ohm resistor cured that problem bu the way)

I like the way the sling plastics and inlanes look without the spots, so instead of wasting two good spots with long leads, I used them under the FUEL bar and Mystery scoop.

BTW, since this pic was taken, I've switched to the SS boney flipper bats with orange rubber.

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Like these:

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I copied you and removed the spots as well. I used them on the underside of the PF for the fuel stand ups (blue flex LED) and snake (green with cone). Makes for a much cleaner look. The sling spots are unnecessary. METLE already has spots in the apron.

...and I copied you with the boney flipper bats! That's actually your picture because I never took one of my own

I used of bunch of gels from the stock I have for the windows in Donut Heaven for my Premium. I just ordered more. How about I put some kits together for a reasonable price? I am gonna redo mine, so I might as well cut a bunch.

Sorry for the dumb question but what does is matter if post is plastic or metal. How does it improve the problem? I disabled mine because I gotso sick of it. Thanks

No idea why it works, but it does.

Quite simply because metal absorbs more of the impact where with plastic it bounces way more. It improves the problem by eliminating the problem, which is the best kind of improvement you could ask for.

After adding the 4ohm/10watt resistor for the slingshot coils, I still would get air balls but not as often. Finally I added a couple of washers underneath the slingshot posts to raise the center line of the sling rubber and after about a week of playing I have not had anymore air balls.

Next modification I did was to upgrade many of the lights to LEDs, changing up the colors in a few places, and using color changing LEDs for the Mystery lights. (Note, my machine was not NIB, and the original owner had changed a few lights, so I do not know what some of the factory setup was.)
I also added spinner targets to the two outer lanes. These are wired up for scoring and sound effects. (Thanks to pinside member "Hooked".)

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I bought a bunch of colored gels and this what I got on my Premium. Give me some more suggestions and I will make these available. Fuel light, Sparky, etc...

Red, orange, yellow, light yellow and green.
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And this.

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Crap. I like yours Sparky. That is more of a tricky place to install instead of my one sheet.

It was tricky, but mostly because I kept dropping and losing hex screws! If you can tape the gels together, it would probably be easier.

Metallica can still be fun even without an update. Tigerlaw and Pinball-is-great enjoying some playtime in my game room...

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Disabled the up post - YEE HAW!

Wow, I have never seen a ball go that fast around orbits on 2nd or 3rd revolution. Totally changes the game, for the better. It actually increases the draw of the skill shot by making you ease up on the plunger if you want to leave it in the pops.

Don't we all just want to pull back that plunger full way and let her rip, anyway?!? Now you can, plus the pin makes the "whoosh" sound when it hits the orbit. Advice to all: disable the up post. Happy holidays.

Why would anyone even do the normal skill shot? The super skill shot is pretty damn easy. For people who don't know about it, just hold the left flipper when plunging.

I was adamant about disabling the post diverter, but since replacing it with a metal one, I'll never disable it again. It works exactly as it should finally. There are a lot of subtle differences when playing with the post disabled that just don't play/feel right with it off.

I replaced the balls in my Pro with high-gloss carbon core pinballs. It plays way different now. The super skill shot trick to the mystery hole doesn't work anymore. Haven't had an airball off the slings yet, and I would get at least one a game with the old set of balls. It plays a lot faster but I haven't had a "good" game yet with these balls.

Anyone else try high-gloss carbon core balls and way in with their thoughts on them?

I also put them into my BSD and they don't seem to affect game play in the same way as with the Met Pro.

These are the ones I put in - http://www.canadapinballparts.com/storefront/index.php?p=product&id=251&parent=0

Everyone should be using carbon core balls. Even the crappy stock ones are. You don't want to be using steel core balls in games with magnets.

I read a lot about plastic to metal post changing but what is the difference eg what is going wrong with the plastic post? Is it not returning the ball back or ???? If I compare my met pro with a friend of mine both have same behavior. Doesn't appear to be wrong so what am I missing ??

Sorry, I guess I didn't focus on the right thing. It's the Premium Ultra-Gloss carbon core pinballs that are available at Pinball Life as well. Switching to those have had a big effect on game play.