I can’t recommend the Hardtop enough. But from your description of the playfield, I’m not sure I’d go for it. The sanding makes a huge mess and it’s very easy to misalign if you are not super careful. The product is meant for playfields that are trashed. How bad is this playfield? I didFE0954A9-E1BC-4063-8B45-877FB007187D (resized).jpeg mine on Taxi because the area where the pop bumpers were looked terrible. Here’s what I was working with. Note gameplay with a hardtop is much faster than a normal playfield.

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There are a couple horror stories in the hardtops thread from guys who have had them lift and bubble, but the vast majority of guys loved them and had no problems besides a hole or 2 misaligned, little stuff.

I bought one for my Evel Knievel but ended up selling it and spent the extra $$ on a CPR playfield - to me the hardtops just look "plasticky" - but for games that don't have repro playfields, it's your only option aside from touching it up yourself.

As for how they've held up, I don't have them on any of my games but you will never wear one out in a home environment. You should check out the hardtops thread - lots of info in there.

Bospins it seems like you haven't done a hardtop before. I wouldn't recommend having SoF being your first. Its the hard mode of hardtops. I did mine and it was a royal PITA, the holes/inserts weren't right at all (I think because mine was an early run game) ... Luckily I had a restoration friend helping.me.and we eventually got it all right, but there was still some bubbling on the left side (luckily all under.plastics/upper playfield) but yeah.... Not the most fun experience. I did a High Speed and a Grand Lizard and they were MUCH easier.

This happened to me but it was all related to the printer changing their inks without informing Outside Edge. Bruce took care of me in the end. It was a huge PITA to remove and replace the hardtop but I feel confident that the adhesive issues have been resolved.

I didn’t have any lifting on mine, it went down and stayed down, even just touching it to the playfield it had a strong grip. On the hardtop, the art is printed on the backside and then the rest of the clear surface is on top of that. So it would take a very very long time if it was even possible to wear it down that much.

If you decide to do it LMK. I have an unused SOF hard top I'd sell for $50 off retail.

That said I wouldn't hard top a 7/10 without first exploring my restore options.

Here is a video by Cary Hardy on installing a hardtop on a Sword of Fury.