CPR had the playfield listed as printing about a month ago and now has removed it from their website. I placed a pre-order but have not heard anything. Emailed them as well but have not heard back.

Anyone have an update on this playfield?

CPR now stating the Meteor pfs are shipping - which I am guessing back to them since none are currently listed for sale.

They are shipping, I received mine. Others that have as well, question: did yours have the gray paint on the back and how was the clear?

i placed a preorder but have not been contacted - ugh.

Received mine last week, no grey on the back, but clear looks pretty good.

Received three days ago... No gray on the back. Decent clear, but not perfect. I'm happy.

I received mine last week. Clearcoat looks good at the moment. A tiny bit of shrinkage around a couple of the lower rocket inserts but nothing you'd notice unless you had your nose on the playfield.

The back of the playfield is painted gray and undimpled. There are small spot marks (silkscreened?) to indicate where the dimples should be.

I've been playing Meteor a lot in the past few days...what a great game, I'd forgotten how good it is! One of the ultimate drop target games. Shame about the sound though as it does get a bit grating after a while, especially when you're having a really good game.

So can any answer why are some painted on the back and some are not.....I am very happy with my playfield, but just curious as to why some are and some are not painted.

My inquiry at CPR was that none of them are painted because they get dirty in production. But, since some people got gray painted backs and some didn't, and a recent direct ink PF I got a couple months was also painted, I'm not sure how much of this answer I believe in.

I asked as well how to tell if I actually received a Gold or not, so I'm wondering if the gray painted backs are the golds and the raw wood ones are not. They ignored my question as to how to tell a gold from not (I thought they labeled them but apparently not). The message claimed the back was sealed but it's clearly not.

Huh. Every PF I'd gotten from CPR was stamped with a rubber stap the condition. My Gold Earthshaker (which OEm had painted backs) did not come with a painted back. Interesting.

That's what I thought too I just looked all over for the rubber stamp, nope, none.

No stamp on one I just got. Is this because of the new digital printing maybe?

Could be! I thought Meteor PFs were the last batch NOT digitally printed though. But maybe I read that email wrong. Or all they're selling now is the digital ones..

Meteor was purported to be the last traditionally silkscreened.

The mystic playfield I got was a digitally printed one and while the colors look off vs. the original PF, I'd fully expect them to.... since it's not 40 old!

I guess with the digital print process the gold/silver/bronze/firewood designation will go away since they can just sand it and reprint it (although how much can they really sand off??)

My CPR Meteor was stamped "Gold" and painted gray. I'll post a pic later.

My gold is stamped gold and the back is not painted.

Stamped gold on the back, no gray paint.

I will check mine for grading stamp tomorrow but there is no gray paint.

Where would the grading stamp be? I just looked again at the back of mine, none, and I also noticed that they used Red starburst inserts for the specials instead of smooth?

Mine has red starburst inserts as well.

*facepalms* Holy hell.

In the past ones I've gotten, I've seen them on the back near the front, or on the front under the arch area.

TBH it's hard to tell that the red Special inserts are jeweled when lit from behind. Not really a big deal and at least they won't cup/dish in the future

Here's some pics of my CPR playfield. It's not dimpled on the back but has marks to show where dimples would have been. I'm not sure if they are silkscreened, direct printed, lasered or....

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Interesting, thanks. Can you get a close-up pic of a pick of artwork o the topside? (Mine's on order, should be here next week, I hope!!)

Pics as requested...

The Special insert was illuminated from behind with a white LED headlamp...really hard to see that it is a jewelled insert (and that's a good thing!)

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To quote the first image, "WOW".
And in regards to the last one, I'm not sure why I'm being judged!

My Catacomb has no stamp and red starbursts

Interesting -
Mine finally made it out of Ohio and UPS hell, and was delivered today. Gold, and is stamped on the back. NO grey paint on the back.

Is mine the only one that has been reported as being painted grey?

I noticed last night that the shooter lane groove is not as long as in the original.

Good, less chance of blowing out

So, I'm looking at my playfield, and while it's better than my existing one - and I'm sure it's better than 99% of the ones out there, I hate to say it, but the artwork leaves a * AWFUL LOT* to be desired. They want to run someone's custom stuff? How would I be able to trust them to get anything right? - Oh, wait. If we send THEM the artwork, they don't have to worry about it.

Other than the apparently random back being painted or not, I found some other discrepancies, including one that I'm surprised I didn't even notice until now.

Warning: Stop reading now if you're afraid this will give you buyer's regret!

First, you can see in the following image pairs that there seems to be a difference in 'resolution'. Almost like the details in their current printing equipment just couldn't handle small lines. It's really noticeable in smaller artwork areas, like the small starburst next to the "Spot Meteor" target, the small white star between two of the METEOR drop target inserts, and the comet trail from the shooter lane. (Specifically, notice the lack of yellow in some of the white areas.). The last pair is MOST important, the rocket explosion up at the spinner. Notice ALL the missing yellow tendons in the orange part.
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Second, just general missing SMALL artwork - a few areas are just missing stars. I mean, a LOT of stars are missing in generl, but these two areas I think are bigger and noticeable. Specifically, apparently a black hole moved into the area under the 1X insert, and another starburst (between "1" and "2" drop targets) must have collapsed.
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Third, missing BIG artwork. I'll see if anyone can notice the difference:
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My field, personally, has a slight registration issue. To me, this is nothing compared to the other art issues:
18 - DSpDtZ6 (resized).jpg

Wow...missing point values ouch

They don't seem to have a continuity person down there that's for sure. Don't know if you were in the catacomb discussion, but they made a batch and had 2 incorrect insert colors.
Again, like you. It's hard to notice it at first, and then you can't believe you didn't notice it!
Spinner values are pretty much the #1 part of the game!! I guess its not the spinner area at least but yeah, that's really big.

I debated getting one or rehabbing mine. Makes me glad I opted to restore. Looks like they just hit it with an auto vector program and didn't pay attention to any missing detail.

Worse than the missing detail is the careless choice of fonts. 5 minutes of research could find better matches than that. Ick.

They scan these things at very high resolution in order to work on them. A real shame they don't work hard to retain the detail, fonts and linework. To me that is the charm of pinball artwork.

Having worked with printing and graphic artists, this is the immediate thought I had - it was scanned and then vectored, and only major things touched up. That missing star between the the two Rocket targets likely is because the vectoring had overlapping paths which, when flattened, made them vanish.

I've always been bad with fonts, which ones did you notice?

The Advance & Score Rocket Value isn't a great match but decent. The problematic match could have been hidden by at least matching the density. It's too thin.

The one that absolutely grinds my gears is the SPOT METEOR lettering. Those chunky "S"s practically define classic Stern lettering to me.

Design is my field so I know I'm biased toward the details, but any half skilled Illustrator hack could have built that font for them if they couldn't match it.

Coyote I should have heeded your warning and not looked at your pics! I'm not too bothered about the tiny details as you can't really see them when playing. Missing the METEOR target point values is disappointing but I'm sure I'll get over it as I hadn't noticed before. I wonder if CPR will send out decals?

One of the advantages of digital printing going forward will be that these errors can be fixed in subsequent runs with minimal cost/effort.

If it were minimal cost and effort they would get this stuff right before they printed them.

The Meteor playfields were silkscreened.

With today's technology's, they should have taken the time
to go over the playfield art work "inch by inch", screen by screen, etc,etc,etc.
It involves a lot of labor and very time consuming...
They should of had a "third eye" high quality art person
go over the art work and critique it.

Very disappointing. Sure the next run will be corrected, or should be. But what about those of us that have paid full price for something that's clearly not what it should be. CPR dropped the ball yet again. There's no excuse and there will most likely be no apology, compensation.or fix provided.

R r ah, I agree. The more I see it, the more disappointed I am.

With help, I'm going to have some white decals made. I'll get some extras made in case anyone here wants some.

count me in for a set. I probably have to have my PF recoated anyway because I can see a crinkly vertical cracking in the clear which I think will get worse. I felt it the first day but it's smoothed out since I brought it inside (was delivered when it was very cold).

Was thinking of this while driving down the road.

Likely they WILL say that their 'donor' playfield was like this (including the starred Specials), and not to blame them - save exact thing that happened with the backglasses. (ANd when people told them to always get MORE THAN ONE SAMPLE. Or, y'know, look online at the millions of pics.)

You could be right, but every single playfield picture that shows the arrows at the drops on IPDB has the 2000 scoring numbers printed. For me this is the omission that bothers me the most, the other missing or not as finallly detailed artwork I can live with.

Me too, which is why I'm contemplating adding it and reclearing. I'll probably also paint the back grey as well. I have an NOS PF in my meteor currently but it's certainly not without its issues (it was so yellowed that there's basically no white in the rocket flames) - my plan is to pick up a meteor beater and put the CPR field into it. (I know who needs 2 of the same machine.... but Meteor is my favorite game of all time..... so I'll have one, NOS original type that I'll keep the stock software and 6 digit displays in, next to a 7 digit, CPR repro that has the new software.....)

Would love a set as well, Let me know the cost if its ok including shipping, I am in Australia if you would consider shipping international.

Me too, perhaps a combined order for those of us here in Australia?

Once I get the 'art' done, I don't see them being super expensive. Not sure how much shipping to Austraila would be. Hell, may be able to fit them all in an envelope! But, yeah, I won't have an issue shipping anywhere.

No worries thank you, as Pinballer73 said we can work it when it comes to it.

Much appreciated.