Rottendog is good. Jim stands behind his products. Pinscore is the prior venture by XPIN. I have Pinscore displays in my High Speed and I bought directly from Brett. He was fantastic to deal with, and even helped me when he left Pinscore to do XPIN. If i had to replace displays these days, I personally would go with X-PIN as Brett is a wonderful person to do business with.

Would someone link to the blue one that would work with whirlwind ?

_{Post edited by rommy : wrong abbreviation}

Isn't pinscore owned by Marco?

I believe they are. From what I understand it was a partnership between them and Brett. Between Pinscore and X-Pin, choose X-Pin and support Brett, the engineer.

whirlwind now WW .

Brett is a great guy, don't hesitate to buy his products. He will take care of you.

TY! If anyone has seen a Whirlwind with this in it, please comment, or even better post pics/vids.

I bought some pinscore displays for my Space Shuttle last year. They work great. I would go with Xpin now, to support Brett.

I have also ordered power supplies from rottendog and have been satisfied with them. I'm sure their displays are also good. Plus I have always had great service and fast shipping with them.

I've seen the blue one person and it's really hard to make out the number at a distance. At least with my eyes, the contrast of it doesn't come out clear.

Where is the best place to buy?

http://xpinpinball.com/distributors

I will be needing one for my GL soon, good to hear the X-Pin is working out. Thanks for the pics PC.

I know this is an old thread, but what do people think of Rotten Dog LED displays? They are 50$ cheaper than the others, is there a big difference? I saw OP said he read bad things about them but could not find anything. Would be for F-14 Tomcat.

I have 5 machines that have different display issues,
I am also looking for feed back on each display brand

Its hard to justify $300 for xpin brand, over a pinscore that is $200, vs wolfpac I just found prior to making this post for $129 each are prices I looked up specifically for 1 of my pins

Pros/cons

I need to buy three displays for my system 11 machines too. It would be nice to hear some recent feedback before purchasing. Thanks

I've had good luck with Wolfpac...Xpin's tech support left something to be desired when I had issues a couple years ago.

I just wish the Gottlieb 80B LED displays were not $300 a pop. It's hard to justify that kind of expense on a game that is only worth $1000-$1200.

A few other considerations, depending on what you're looking for.

For Classic Ball/Stern I have two models of DIY Kits with custom digits:
https://www.pinitech.com/products/cat_displays.php

Also, I think Starship Fantasy is still offering 20% discount, free ship on remaining inventory of XPIN displays here:
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/xpin#post-4763500

Solid pricing on Rottendog products here:
http://www.arcadeshop.com/d/34/pinball-displays.htm

General differences or things to look for in LED displays:

• Aesthetics- digit style (ie. height, angle), digit spacing, led color. Some LED displays do not line up well with backglass window or the digits are noticeably at a straighter angle. Some displays use generic digits with decimal, some use custom digits that replicate the original look better. Is there a comma? Light blocks? Do want displays that come close to matching the plasma look?
• Functionality- can you control brightness and does that matter to you? You may not care, but if you get the displays and they're too bright, your only option will be window tint film / grey filters to tone them down some. If they're not bright enough, you can't do much about that. Are there other features the display offers?
• Energy Consumption- This is what can't be seen. The XPIN, Pinscore are going to be decent on energy consumption. I can also guarantee the Pinitech Bally/Stern displays I'm selling are low-energy use. There are some brands that say they're low-power, but really aren't. Some add close to 1 AMP additional load to 5v regulators. Unfortunately this is not something most people will know or test for -- and it's also something I can't really say much else about since I'm selling my own LED displays. I keep hoping someone will put a bunch of brands to the test and post the results!!
• Price- If you're wanting the lowest price, then a DIY Kit is a good option. Otherwise, there's some brands that are known to be the lower priced ASSEMBLED displays like Rottendog. You then have to take a look at what you're giving up in features, aesthetics (see above bullet points) and decide if price matters more than those extras.
• Support- Support and/or warranty. Most businesses are going to support their products/customers, but as someone noted sometimes support can be lacking depending where you purchase or a distributor/manufacturer is just swamped due to volume. A forum search should help turn up some info on various brands/distributors to see what their reputation is.

Maybe more people can post their experiences with various models/brands of displays on this thread and leave some feedback about pros/cons of each. It'd be helpful to the community I think.

I've personally used Rottendog displays in Sys11 games and have been pleased with price/performance. It may just be my eyes playing tricks, but the commas seem a bit brighter than the digit segments? I've also got Pinscore Sys11 displays in a few games too. As far as Sys11 displays go both brands are decent. Not sure on longevity, energy consumption, etc -- but for the price Arcade Shop sells them for, the Rottendog Sys11 displays are definitely appealing. I honestly don't know how they can be offered at that price assembled.

Hope that helps! Lots of great options for displays than there were 5 years ago.. esp for DIY Kits. And that's a really good thing.

Boston Pinball had been the only one offering Gottlieb LED displays (Sys80, Sys80A) for a long while. The Sys80B displays are the newest of the bunch and they're again the first to offer. Believe they were the first offering Data East 128x16 LED displays. I definitely have respect for them innovating like that.

I think the pricing is reasonable considering design, tooling of custom digits for Gottlieb displays, material costs, assembly costs (or 2-3+ hours if hand-assembled) and business overhead. The $300 can easily turn into 1/3 of that in terms of net profits after material costs, PP fees, business overhead, taxes. Plus there's time of assembly (2-3+ hours if hand-assembled) to consider -- or additional hit to net profits if assembly is outsourced. Along with supporting customers. Just offering the other side of the coin. I think it's amazing some of these products are offered at the pricing they are -- or even offered period. Lower volume niche products have higher costs all-around than the mass-produced stuff.

That said, yeah.. for some games, it's probably hard to justify. But at least the option is there!

I wholeheartedly agree. I don't begrudge them for trying to turn a profit, but its hard pill for me to swallow. That being said, I am in need of one...so I will probably buy one at some point.

Purchased a Rottendog for my DE Time Machine, worked fine with no problem and looked great.

Have PinScore in Blackout and Phantom of the Opera, both work fine and look great.

I am not sure if Wolffpac has the 6803 displays listed for sale yet, but I had worked with him on getting them made last year. The sample one he sent me works well and looks good.

<TL:DR>

Having spent over a year now working on reproducing boards for System 11 and WPC I can definitely say that it's hugely time consuming to design, source parts and hand populate the boards. Then I have to test them and find out issues with them. For the initial revisions I only order 5 of a board (the minimum) and it's expensive to do it that way. If I order more and have a dud or a board that's crippled (requires trace cutting and re-routing) it's a waste of time/money.

Some points to note:

1) Hand populating boards does NOT scale. It takes me several hours of the course of several days to hand populate a big board (like System 11 CPU or WPC-89 Power Driver). I'll admit I'm OCD about it but when the CAD software says 2,500+ pads that just takes time when hand populating.

2) For displays (specifically relevant to this thread) I was not able to find a retailer that sold the 16-segment alphanumeric LED unit. I had to go to a manufacturer who had a MOQ (minimum order quantity). That means I'm sitting on inventory that is excessive and I may not ever use. For other boards with NLA (no longer available) parts it's scouring eBay or other merchants and taking a chance that the IC works.

3) I plan on offering bare boards for System 11 displays (all types - discrete (High Speed), quad (Swords of Fury), double (Whirlwind)). My system was primarily designed for bench testing but it does work in machines. I have all the boards ready I just don't have an installation guide. I have to write that up too. With the aforementioned 16-segment alphanumeric LED unit issue I will need to supply those because I wouldn't expect a customer to buy in MOQ numbers.

4) I often remember people complaining at my previous job about things. The issue I have with complaining is that often the person complaining has no real idea what is involved in building the thing they are complaining about. I only appreciated this after trying to do it myself. You can complain that something like the Rottendog 9211 board is close to $400 but I can tell you that once you calculate the time invested in developing it, acquiring the parts (and potential risk with 6821 counterfeits) and assembling it that cost is actually close to reasonable. Niche products are never going to be cheap.

5) I have spent at least several thousand just on board fabrication already (does not include parts, etc). I haven't "recovered" any of it in sales. I'm doing this because I really, genuinely want reproduction boards to be available to keep machines running. I always tell people interested in this ... "DON'T QUIT YOUR DAY JOB". Even at retail prices you can't make a living on this stuff.

</TL:DR>

I only buy Pinscore from Marco.
Why one may ask?
Well it's to support the real people who funded all of the R&D and spent a ton of money only to be screwed in the end.
Anyone who claims they are supporting the people who took all the financial risk and made the Pinscore possible (and subsequently X-pin) should be thanking Marco.

Lot of truth right there.

I founded and ran a business serving the turbocharged Dodge community; first company to bring an adjustable cam sprocket to market, turbo kits, custom calibrations, onsite dyno tuning, ported & flowed heads, the works. Lots of R&D money was never recovered, just enjoyed bringing good product to market after the market had largely been boned by vendors selling untested goods. Lots of 16 hour days.

Suppliers were maddening and one factor in retirement. Trying to find good suppliers, suppliers breaking their agreements, suppliers not willing to develop parts *even though all expenses were offered to be paid up front*, suppliers shipping wrong product, not enough product, too much product, defective product.. you get the idea.

Kudos to those serving the pinball community with a servants heart! My hat goes off to you.

Time Machine; one has factory plasma, the other Rottendog LED. Looks pretty much the same to me in this picture.

20190615_143100_resized (resized).jpg

Most LED displays will look a bit different than plasma if you look closely at everything. If you want led displays to exactly match a plasma, it's not going to happen 100% b/c plasmas have this aura/glow you can't entirely mimic. That said, you can get pretty darn close to having LED look like plasma, as I have found

As far as Sys11/DE displays, I think the Pinscore / XPIN are a closer match to the plasma look & certainly being able to dial the brightness up/down helps with that.

Digits are noticeably taller on the Rottendog displays. Not sure why they designed them like that, maybe for something different. The orange led color is a bit darker too. And on the style of display you had (alpha led blocks on top, numeric on the bottom) the alpha characters are shorter than the numeric digits, which may stand out a bit. Still though, can't beat the price on them.

Oh on that I agree, but the average person won't be able to tell.

Awesome feedback here, thats what I was hoping to see. I definitely understand the R&D portion adding to the costs, although I have no experience myself.

As the end user, overall cost of the product is certainly a concern, especially how sellers are so unreasonable with pin pricing.

My comet I picked up had a destroyed playfield, so 350 to hardtop
300ish to display
250 in bulbs, bands, and misc, and I have a Comet im into for more than itll ever sell for lol, even though resell isnt my plan i doubt ill keep a game forever.

Gatecrasher. I pmd you

opps posted in wrong thread please ignore.