I’ve seen a number of pictures of misaligned artwork, and while it should be better and *should* really only be sold as seconds at a reduced price, a certain amount of misalignment wouldn’t necessarily be a deal-breaker.
What really made me take notice was the massive topcoat failures and the even more shocking print layer failures.
I’m so happy that I passed on a Quicksilver project pin - I had intended to replace the playfield with a Mirco. The failures on those playfields are flat out catastrophic. $850-$1000 should absolutely buy you a product that will withstand normal use, not one that fails just from the ordinary use for which it is ostensibly intended, much less from the “stresses” of simply being assembled.
I’ve been lurking on this thread for a while but at this point I really want to amplify the message that there’s a problem here.
I installed a Mirco Whitewater playfield a while back and was super impressed by the finish, the accuracy of the dimpling, even the packaging for shipment. But now I am worried about the potential for failure. I don’t want to have to send an unhappy customer to a comment thread, essentially shrugging and saying “it’s a big club.”
I want Mirco to continue as a company because they are clearly capable of doing very good work. Assembling a new Whitewater with all new ramps is no easy task, and it all went incredibly smoothly.
If that playfield holds up, huge kudos to Mirco. On the other hand, whatever they were doing on Quicksilver and so, so many other titles we’ve seen brought up here is obviously deeply flawed, and I’m left to wonder if the WH20 owner will discover damage around the posts within the next year of home use play.
As a customer I have no way to know if there’s a manufacturing difference between Whitewater and Quicksilver. If there is one I have no way of knowing what changed, why, and whether the change was made to address previous defects.
I have no doubt that manufacturing playfields is incredibly difficult to do well and consistently. Manufacturers are using every sort of new material compared to the processes used 40 years ago, and there is lots of potential for unforeseen issues to arise. I think most reasonable people would accept that and be understanding *if* the manufacturer were making a good faith effort to address failed products. It is obviously a very complicated thing to make a customer whole once they have invested the labor involved in installing a new playfield, but by so many accounts, Mirco (and PPS) has clearly blown it on this front.
I like to tell people “there’s no such thing as a pinball emergency” - people get revved up over hobbies that they are passionate about. But in this case, I have purchased a playfield and done everything I know to do in order to install the components properly. For it to fail in the course of normal use in a customer’s house…that would be a really big problem for me. Mirco and PPS apparently do not stand behind their product. Shouldn’t a failed playfield (one with clearcoat or print separation) be replaced, if not for free then at the very least for a reduced price? It leaves people like me in a terrible position with customers whose trust we depend on.
Anyhow…I feel like I’m at risk of being repetitious. I just hope that all of this gets through to somebody. One more time: *I want to be a repeat customer, but cannot recommend these products at this time and will no longer purchase them without some accountability from the manufacturer or distributor.*