Quoted from jeffsarcade:Has anyone who bought a MET new in box over the past six months had any issues with it? Build quality, inserts, etc.?
I'm thinking of selling my AS Prem and rejoining this club.
About the same as any NIB Stern, seems like all machines have their issues but the support from Stern and/or my distributor have been outstanding.
The good:
This is my favorite Stern release since LOTR! (subjective)
Near perfect registration on the playfield and no defects that I've seen (crossing fingers on this one)
The Bad:
Right head decal was peeling out of the box - replaced by Stern
The heatsink, screws, and washers (for the additional bridge rectifier installed in Premiums and LE's ) were floating around in the shipping container. This was corrected before powering on the machine.
The UGLY:
It appears there is a design problem with the coffin magnet controller board (LE/Premium only) that makes this a high failure item. All non-Stern suppliers of this board are out of stock as of today and mine failed in the first couple months; I've only had this machine since late November. I have my replacement board from Stern, which I promptly received by contacting my distributor after Stern failed to ship it in a reasonable time (3 weeks). The only other MET I play is on location at the Operating Room in West Des Moines, IA.; the owner there has replaced this board twice and 2 weeks ago I set the coffin magnet to disabled since he keeps blowing the magnet fuse, presumably due to a failure or the 3rd magnet board.
With that being said, I have no intention of selling my MET as its such a great game to play...even though it tends to frustrate the hell out of me quite often!
Other thoughts:
I also have an AS Premium that I would not part with, its an absolutely gorgeous game and a lot of fun to play; while I currently play MET more than AS, there are still code updates on the horizon for AS which will likely put it on par with MET if not better; IMO you should keep em both if you are able to; if not, it's a hard decision you are faced with and hopefully I was able to provide you with some useful information to help with this decision.