Quoted from zacaj:Got mine set up yesterday. Arrived with no issues from shipping.
After opening it I found that the legs were just sorta lying on top of the front of the cabinet in the box, not secured to anything, which doesn't seem like a good idea. The legs were individually wrapped, but after taking them out of the wrap, they all had major gashes in them. They don't even seem to have a finish or anything either, just raw metal. Probably the worst looking legs I've ever seen on a pinball machine.
Rest of the game looked good, got it set up.
There's no holes for head bolts of any type, just a WPC style latch on the back, which is concerning.
Left speaker makes a buzzing sound at certain frequencies, other two speakers sound great.
The back box lock location is really ugly, not sure why they couldn't just put it on top like a normal machine. Translite doesn't have lift trim, and is really hard to get out.
Lockdown bar uses clasps like Sterns, which is nice, however these aren't designed well. They hit the playfield support rests when the playfield is down, so you can't easily lock the lockdown bar down without forcibly bending them past and lifting the playfield up slightly. The lockdown bar also doesn't actually seem to hold the playfield down (sort of its main job!). Instead, there's two little thumb screws to anchor the playfield into the cabinet. Seems fine to keep those out besides when moving the game, but I'm sure I'll forget them or lose them at some point.
The flipper cap switches were really sensitive at first. I looked at them and found that the blade wasn't touching the tensioner, just floating there. Once I adjusted it to have some pressure they worked good. But they're not dual stacked! No way to stage the upper flippers, which is a major downer. My Alice Cooper was the same way. I don't understand how manufacturers think this is acceptable.
Tilt bob had fallen off during shipment and was rolling around the back of the cab. It's not a standard tilt bob. It's only about half the diameter, and is threaded so you adjust the height by spinning the whole bob. No set screw or anything that I could find so I'm sure it'll vibrate back off again. Why did they reinvent the tilt bob??
On first boot, the main screen went black once it got to attract mode. Rebooting fixed the issue. Seems to happen maybe 1/5 times I turn the game on. Other than that, I was able to start and play a game fine.
Also, on every boot, the xeno does a calibration test, but the tongue goes super slow, while making a loud grinding sound. Seems to work fine in game though, not sure what the issue is.
My left spinner got stuck the first time I hit it. Turns out it was misadjusted from the factory, microswitch needed to be tilted down more as the leaf was hitting it and preventing the spinner from making a full rotation. Not hard to fix, except: all the screws are gd torx bits! Not only that, they're not magnetic! I don't even know how you manage to find non-magnetic screws.... What should have been a 10 second job instead involved multiple rounds of dropping screws into the machine, fishing them back out again, etc.
While playing I noticed that the flippers were occasionally sticking. After investigating, I found that the flipper cranks were installed too low on the flipper bat shafts, so they were dragging slightly on the coil sleeves when the playfield was down. I needed to move them all up a bit to fix it. However, now the cranks are almost dragging on the bushings instead. There's just a hair's width clearance where it still works. I assume some tolerances are off on their flipper mechs, since they decided to for some reason manually redesign the williams flipper mechs rather than just use regular ones. Stupid.
I also found out that pop bumpers have the same problem as the cab switches with the tensioners. I adjusted the switch so the lower blade presses against the spoon, and then pushed the upper blade down close to it with the tensioner, and now the pops have much better action.
Left eject hole is super messy. The ball goes all over the place once it's kicked out. Someone posted a fix in a thread earlier, will have to track it down. Again, the mech is not well designed. Not sure why they couldn't just use a standard eject mechanism.
After that, was able to get some games in fine. Playfield looks amazing, although it's already showing a few dimples. No pooling or planking like my sterns have had. Standup switches have all been working ok so far, although I wish I could up the sensitivity of the one at the back of the lane going into the pops, since that's such a hard shot to hit to begin with. Wish there was a one way gate there or something so balls couldn't miss the target and go into the pops when you make the shot. I may try to mod one in, or replace that standup with a normal once since it's not lit.
Flippers feel a bit weak, even at max strength. Seems to be a common issue with smaller manufacturers besides Stern/CCG.
I also found that the trough eject coil was coming loose. One of the two screws was missing completely, and the other was loose+stripped. They seem to also be metric. I'll have to stock up on metric screws next time I'm at the hardware store.
Ran into a few software issues. One time I got a tilt warning right as I activated the revive in the outlane, and then the game seemed to get confused, and didn't give me my ball back or end the ball. A few other times the revive didn't give me my ball back and the ball just ended. Occasionally it launches a second ball after I plunge, but I can just drain it and the game continues on okay. No issues with the game crashing or anything though like other people have reported, so those seem like simple issues that can be fixed in software.
My one big concern so far: one time, I drained my ball, and the ball didn't end. I checked the trough, but all the balls were in their proper positions, and the status leds showed that the optos were all working properly. I went into switch test, and pretty much all the switches on the lower half of my playfield had stopped working. Tried wiggling cables on the boards under the playfield, etc, but nothing helped, so I was forced to reboot it. Hopefully this is just a bug in the firmware or something and not a sign of more connector issues down the road.