I've lurked around this site for a long time but never bothered making an account because I had nothing to talk about. Those days are over now, its time to join the club! Just got my first pin yesterday. Picked up a HUO Metallica Monsters Premium from Kurt at hemispheres amusements. I've played plenty of pros out on location but never a premium. For the price I couldn't pass it up. Ordered some leg protectors, a pin gulp, some super bands , and a full set of plastic protectors from pinbits. Really looking forward to diving into this game over the weekend without my job getting in the way!

Thanks for the info. There are plastic ones on there now, just figured the metal ones would be better. Guess they'll just get shelved.

Ive had my Monsters Premium for about a week now and have indeed been playing the hell out of it and loving every second.

Seeing a problem developing with the sheet metal guard below the snakes mouth. It's starting to buckle. Anyone know where I could find a new piece for this and / or a walk through of how to change it out?

I've been working my way through the hundreds of pages of this thread and haven't found any talk of this yet.

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I'll do that. Thanks! I ordered the newton ball assembly to replace that block so I'll have to take that stuff out anyway to change it. What a dumb design choice that block was. It's guaranteed to do nothing but get blown apart and disperse shrapnel into the game. I'm a machinist and could probably easily make a replacement block but I'm not interested in all those metal fragments in my new machine.

I've owned my met premium for about a month now and pretty much everything has been smooth sailing but I am however a first time pin owner and I'm now having an issue with my GI lighting.

It was starting to flicker/ strobe a bit here and there at random times, usually right after a ball launch. After clocking around 500 plays so far I knew it wasn't normal. Yesterday when I fired up my game I had absolutely zero GI lights. All my insert lighting is functional but all of my white lights are out. Anyone able to point me in the direction of where to trouble shoot this issue?

Thanks! I did go through and double check all the connections but maybe I missed something. I'll start there and hopefully get it sorted. I was just trying to get a more focused area to check.

I'm a noob in this hobby but totally interested in learning all the things involved.

You're right. Not only the whites. My intent was to say that all the under playfield insert lighting was functional.

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Thanks. I did unplug and replug both ends of that data cable, even slacked it out some in the harness. I'll give it a better look today after work. Is it a regular phone cord or is it special? Just curious for if I do indeed replace it.

Thank you for the info guys

After a trip to Home Depot and purchase of a pack of RJ11 contacts, a 100 ft length of cat5 cable , and a RJ11 crimper for $50 I made myself a new data cable and I still don't have my GI. Probably could have ordered one somewhere for cheaper but I want to get my game going asap and don't want to wait for shipping. This is a bummer. I'm going to call my distributor tomorrow hopefully and reach out for some of his tech support otherwise I'll have to give 1 800 kickers a go and try to make some headway.

All of my fuses are good as well. Im still totally open for other suggestions from some of you OG pinheads if you have any other recommendations of where else to start looking.

When I hand made the new cable I made sure I had all the appropriate colors in the right spots on the terminal ends. A little time consuming but weekends are my pin time and I didn't want to track one down online and wait to get it shipped.

Update on my GI issue:

After reseating everything , my GI lights are back. I am still getting some flicker at random times that aren't part of the normal light show. I'm currently corresponding with pat at stern via email to get everything figured out and back to 100%

I'll add this to my list of today's checks when I get off work and get some time to go tinker around in there.

Thanks.

Hey guys, I've been having an occasional issue with the coffin lock magnet on my premium. Every once and a while the magnet will just let go of the ball while the drop and lock sequence is going. It's not the end of the world for me but it did cost me a personal best score yesterday when it dropped the ball sdtm on me.

I see in there are feature adjustments for the coffin #91-#93 but I don't really understand what they mean. My manual doesn't cover the feature adjustment definitions, only the standard ones. Anyone able to direct me to somewhere that I could maybe get a printable set of feature adjustment definitions to add to my owner manual?

Or if someone just happens to know what those 3 adjustments mean that would work too.

Thanks.

I did get my lighting fixed. It wasn't the data cable at all. A 3 pin connector (on the top right corner of the board) on my GI driver board wasn't staying tight. Stern sent me a new Driver pcb and wire harness and now everything is perfect again.

I just bought a low play (130) premium about 2 months ago for $6100 shipped. It's my first pin but I thought the price was fair and it was worth every penny to me. I was originally in the market for a NIB pro but was having trouble finding one so I went up a peg and got a nice pre. From what I've heard there will be no more premiums made from here on out, only pros.

When I was talking on the phone with my distributor 2 weeks ago about troubleshooting a lighting issue I had he was saying he was just over at stern and the word he had gotten was that they would continue to make pros but had no timeframe of when the next production run was. Of course this was second hand info to me and third hand to you so take it for what it's worth I guess. My premium will never leave my gameroom so at least I got that covered

I had my eye on these when they announced them.l and was planning on doing the same. They look good! I should probably just order the set now.

You could try lowering the scoop eject power in the game settings. That may get your ball to a more favorable spot on kick out.

Try reseating all connections on the GI driver board. It’s the same board that data cable connects to dead center under the playfield. I had a 3pin connector go bad in mine that caused a crazy strobe.

Has anyone here with a Premium ever tried switching all the red & blue GI lights to two different colors? Kinda curious what some other color combos might look like.

When my 3pin went bad I bush fixed it while waiting on a new board and harness from stern. I took a small flathead optical style screwdriver and stuck it in the end of the connector to bend the metal tabs to a harder angle so they sat more secure on the posts when connected. It worked so well I never bothered to install the new board and harness yet. Figured I’d wait till my fix failed and 4 months later the issue has never popped back up for me.

I’ve been having some issues with my trough kicker on my monsters Premium. For a while now it’s been kicking balls out kinda hard where sometimes it bounces right back into the trough which at times leads to getting 2 balls kicked out on the second attempt. Now as of this weekend it’s kicking so hard that I’ve had a couple land up on the rail and hang up by the bubble level.

Is there a setting where I can adjust the power of just that coil that I’m not seeing or anyone have some advice on how to get this dialed back in?

Everything looked good as far as I could tell. I had everything apart last week for a full set cliffy install. I was however having this problem well before all of that.

When I get home from work today maybe I’ll pull it all apart again and take a second look just to make sure.

I’ve only been able to get to end of the line once in the 8 months I’ve had my game. It happened for me after watching one of McSirTuna’s tutorials on YouTube where his strategy on each crank it up was to “get in and get out” by hitting the cemetery, chair, snake, and coffin once and then cashing out immediately at the scoop to reduce the ball time of playing the CIUs to completion.

I pretty much go into any new game now with the mindset of either playing for points or playing for the objective of hitting end of the line. At my house score seems to be king so after finally getting there once I don’t even sweat it anymore.

I bought a spare set of magnet cores. I work in a machine shop so I swapped the new ones in and just turned down the ends of the originals a bit in a lathe so next time they’re all pitted and whatnot I can just rotate the spares in and not have any downtime. There is more than enough thread on the ends of them where you could easily knock a quarter inch off of them over time and not have any assembly problems.

I replaced the originals at around 1300 plays when I finally got my act together and did a full cliffy set install. With the addition of the core cliffys 500 games later I’m hardly seeing any pitting in my new cores either. I only own one pin and having any downtime sucks so I figured that this was a cheap investment of $16 from Marco to keep me going if the situation ever arises again.

I had a bad strobing issue on my premium too. After some back and forth via email with stern support we tracked it to the 3 pin connector on the upper right corner of the GI driver board (dead center of under playfield), not the actual data cable that seems to get brought up a lot with this problem. Wiggle that connector while the game is powered up and see if it triggers your strobe effect. Stern sent me a new GI board and harness. I never installed the board but the new harness did the trick.

This morning my wife totally surprised me for my birthday and gave me the color dmd for my MET premium that I’ve been wanting forever. The fact that she was able to find where to get it and get the right one without really knowing much about my hobby just blew me away. I guess she does listen when I ramble on about this stuff. I don’t get surprised very often but this was one of those times!

Can’t wait for the work day to be over so I can get it installed. This is the last add on I wanted before considering my game complete.

Any pro tips for the install as far as stuff I should watch out for??

I have the older style wooden box. I saw she ordered the extra kit for the metal box cause she was unsure about what I had. I’m sure sooner or later that kit will get used when I eventually get my next game which will more than likely be whatever newer stern game catches my eye by the time I get the money together

I’m just going to hang on to it. I’m an inventory type guy by nature anyway. I’ll just spec out the pieces when I’m bored and learn to make them at work (plus side of being a CNC machinist)

This. Always this!

She’s the only person I go out of my way to please. Everyone else can kick rocks.

I have made EOTL once in the year I’ve owned my game. Was also one scoop shot away from a second time but I broke stride, cradled, and called my wife in to see it and bricked the shot with the reject going right between the flippers. That “almost” game still left me at my personal best of 814,000,000.

When I finally got the perfect game going to reach EOTL I had just watched a tutorial where the guy “got in and got out” of CIUs quickly by just hitting each of the 4 shots to allow a quick cash out. It’s not the greatest for score but you’re spending less time potentially draining and moving on the the next CIU progression.

I hit a new personal best with the new code. Previous best was around 960,000,000. Factory everything except mb stacking was enabled and I set the sparky magnet to low. Game lasted about 45 minutes, made it through end of the line (only 2nd time I’ve got there) , then one more ciu after that.

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Get a couple in lane protectors from cliffy. Install is as easy as it gets and they work great.