hey, my O1 doesn't either. Stern must make the best playfields ever. I don't have dimples but I do have some outhole wear.

I've said it before. If your super anal about everything and expect your machines to look like museum pieces for life. Your in the wrong hobby. Pinball gets used dirty and played. Things break and go out all the time. It's expected. No playfield is perfect, especially NOS ones. The reason they are NOS is because they had flaws in them and were never used. Hence a lot of stockpile of NOS from old games. It's just the nature of the beast, and if you can't look past things like dimples and what not, your never going to enjoy the hobby as it's ment to be enjoyed.

only reason dimples look like ass, is when you have "less than 50 plays" on your HUO games. Play the hell out of them and you'll notice it less. ONce you hit 1000 games, you will be like, "what dimples?".

well not necessarily. An EM would take a really really long time to dimple.

I like the way that shooter lane looks with the high contrast layers. B/W, most are high contrast like that. Adds a nice look to it.

i know it was s joke because you don't have as many if any airballs. Still have to have somewhat of and airball to make a dimple.

keep in mind the game you are talking about as well. No airballs means....no dimples. That's why these older games don't have dimpling. I don't get airballs on my alien poker, but I sure the shit get them on INDY 500. And guess what. It dimples. And has a shitton of them. So many in fact, that the field almost looks flat again.

Even if you use some insanely hard clearcoat. The wood under the clear is going to flex. If the clear on the top is soooooo rigid, that it cannot flex with the wood.... It's going to let go of the wood and cause a ghost dot where the dimple would be. It's better for the clear to have some flexibility so it can move with the wood, as the ball is beating the living shit out of it.

dimples 005 (resized).jpg

no, because it's all pound flat again. when it was new i'm sure it looked like a golf ball. But Indy500 has a ton of airballs.

give it time. This game probably has 25k plays on it, if not more, and there were a ton of airballs.

it only compresses so much then it will not compress again or beyond that point. and I see the playing surface areas impacted more than non exposed surfaces. When i'm restoring fields on airball games, I see it all the time. It's just the slope from the, "pounded to shit" parts is a gradual incline to the "untouched" areas. Because the closer you get to targets, plastics, posts...the less airballs are able to hit those areas.

dimples are not as deep as you think they are. And the ball doesn't land as hard everywhere on the field. The closer you get to objects, the less direct hits you can get. It hits posts and targets first then hits the field. this makes the ball hit at an angle and less speed than something in the middle of the field coming close to straight down.

dim your room lighting and you won't know they are there.

Fact : If you have airballs, you have dimples. Accept it.

Fact: If you have clearcoat, you can have ghosting eventually on any game that has inserts. Premature ghosting on a new game shouldn't happen, and means the inserts are not glued correctly. Or the hole is cut to the wrong size and allowing to much movement. Or the air is massively humid or massively dry and causing massive expanding/contracting early in the games life.

Fact: Pinball collector world is no place for the anal retentive. Games cannot be and will never be perfect. If you can't handle some imperfections with things. Pinball is not the hobby for you. You will drive yourself nuts if you do not have the ability to look past certain things. Plus, you must have the drive to want to learn how to fix and maintain your games. Or you will not be here for the long haul.

just for the record. Dialed in doesn't have many airballs. SW is a airball juggernaut. Big difference.

it could be, that through the leveling process after inserts are inserted, that they are grinding off to much on that top layer making the top layer thinner than it should be. But then the entire playfield would be thinner than before. Hard to gauge the thickness as we would have to measure with a micrometer before clear was added to compare.

it's not a May...it's a Will.

that's a hell of a sales pitch. Ink will still wear off.

just remember, depending on the artwork, and the way the lighting is on a game, will also make dimples look better or worse depending. Different colors and art packages accentuate dimples, where others seem to hide them better.