Don't use Novus 2 on a clear coated game? If you are applying it by hand and not scrubbing the hell out of it for hours at a time every day of the week for years, I think your clear coat will be safe. The one time I used a buffing wheel and ultimate compound on my Shadow, I was surprised how long it took to get anywhere on the clear coat. After that experience I wouldn't be afraid to use Novus 2 on a newborn. If not Novus 2 what about pre-wax polish a product designed to be used on clear?

I used Meguire's pre-wax polish on my TWD that had been used in some tournaments at Expo and in Houston. The audits said it had 300 plays but, the playfield already had that cloudy look in some places and was generally dirty otherwise. I went over it with the polish and it looks brand new. Finished it off with 1 coat of blitz wax and now it plays ruthlessly hard.

I wouldn't advise anyone to use Novus 2 or pre-wax polish every time they clean their game. I wouldn't expect someone to polish their car every time they wash it either. If your game is basically clean and taken care of there's probably no reason to use either. Unless you are a tard and rub these products on the PF as hard as humanly possible for hours or use a buffer, I find it hard to believe you could damage your PF. Like I said earlier, even with a buffing wheel and a cutting compound it took a long time to get rid of the cloudy stuff on my Shadow.

I used Novus 2 on my friends MET Premium and it looked amazing. It was basically clean and I wiped it down with a moist rag first. Then I said screw it and used the Novus 2 anyway. It went from looking really nice to wow perfect nice. Picked up some dirt and grime the rag alone wasn't picking up and left no swirl marks or imperfections behind.

I think the guy with the woz was probably really applying a lot of pressure trying to get the inlane area clean. I could see how doing that with Novus 3 could create some fine scratches and make the area look cloudy. Maybe even Novus 2 with enough elbow grease. My friend with the MET pre. has a bunch of games, new and old, and he uses Novus 2 on all of them. They all look great. To each his own! At some point in the distant future, if you want your pin to look NIB again you are going to have to use an abrasive and a buffer of some kind. Ball swirl, scratches and ball trail are going to happen and no amount of gentle scrubbing is going to change that