The kerning is one of the issues with those apron decals; most of the fonts are also not true to original. Plenty of shortcuts used to make those decals.

Does anyone know where can I get decals for my Sorcerer apron?

This is just sad to me, as a graphic designer. These kinds of details are immediately noticed by even the untrained human eye/brain and need to be as close to perfect as possible so as not to distract from or "sour" the whole piece. It should be also said that they can be some of the easiest things to do in graphics. People will notice that long before they ever notice how the upper right chevron is thinner than it is the left side. In fact, it looks like the black screen's registration is slightly off, too.

This early stuff is pretty easy, too. It's just sad. If there was a job available in it and someone could get me nice scans and overall dimensions, I'd remake the apron artwork for every pin ever made up through 2000-ish. And I don't use tracing programs... TAF took me well over 40 hours to perfect. I don't mess around.

I have a really nice high quality vinyl apron EBD decal I'd sell.
NOT the classic arcade junk

It is the original white color like in the flyer.
https://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=762&picno=4182&zoom=1
Most 1981 EBD's apron color is white cream due to aging / sunderization (yellowing). Best to sand off old paint and paint / powder coat white again before applying the decal.

Eight-Ball-Deluxe-white-1981-Pinball-Apron (resized).jpg

OK. I'm looking for Rocking horse crap I know, but has anyone got a really nice fathom apron I could buy, or a set of the quality Fathom apron decals.

How about a fathom apron magnet?
Pm me if you want a picture of it.

I created this forum with a list of sites that sell apron decals. I believe that PPS and Marcos are buying their decals from Classic Arcades (EBay seller), and some European sites as well. Make sure to look closely at the colors as some people have issues with the Classic Arcades overlays and decal colors.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/apron-decal-options

Please someone make the classic stern apron decals!

Yeah like the EBD apron decal for sale above. If you are going to all the trouble of making the freakin' decals you should at least get the colors right. And right means the way the real machine is.. not some obscure prototype wet dream from a flyer that never existed in the real world. That's the reason the EBD repop aprons sucked too. All that work just to screw the pooch on the colors.

Thanks, I have only heard bad feedback for the classic arcades stuff, incorrect fonts, incorrect size of stripes etc. I believe there are some good repro aprons out there as per this forum thread - but they aren't being produced any more, and the pinball rescue guys aren't making them either.

Something to do with the guy who owns the copyright to Bally I believe???

Yes, Pinball Rescue stopped making/selling the Bally decals long before they closed shop due to the copyright issues. It's a bummer since I bought a few from them and like them. I still have 2 EBD apron decals from them in my parts hoard.

In the absence of decent decals, if you wanted to scan your old apron, clean-up and provide the file to a print shop as a one-off for yourself... what product do you ask them to print it on?

Maybe this has been discussed before? For a Bally decal for example, what thickness, type of adhesive, paper/inks, coatings?

Thanks.

Just messing around and trying to learn Photoshop. That software is powerful but has a steep learning curve. Think I have the shooter gauge close. The other pieces look a little easier..

Anyone have some suggestions for the decal type to get printed to make my own apron? Thanks.
F8795644-3E14-4B09-9124-9BF55AC2ECF1 (resized).jpeg

If you have access to it, I'd actually recommend using Illustrator for this kind of stuff. As you can see in your picture, the edges aren't sharp as Photoshop uses raster images while Illustrator uses vector art. How they're different is that vector art is scalable with no loss in resolution. The same can't be said for raster images. Photoshop's print quality is determinant on many different settings being maxed out to ensure crisper lines, but that also means huge file sizes.

If you start learning Illustrator, you'll be learning by drawing with lines and shapes that will stay nice and clean regardless of who prints them, as long as they print them as vector files and not raster images. PDF's retain vector image integrity perfectly, and most all printers can print PDF files just fine. Here's a quick copy of the graphic you did in PS, but done in Illustrator. It's saved as a PDF to retain its clarity. Took me about 10 minutes to do. It's not 100% accurate since I was just working from your screenshot. Once you get good at Illustrator, you'll be able to churn out stuff this fast, too. A lot of EM stuff is nice and easy like this. Untitled-1.pdf

Once you have a finished artwork file, and it's sized correctly, you'll save it to a PDF. I would clean the old artwork off the apron as best you can and leave just the main color on it. Depending on how the artwork was printed on the apron, it could just wipe off with some light solvent(I know it does on some 90's B/W games!) or if you have to sand it off, you can repaint it or you could even possibly have it powder coated, if you want. Then, depending on what kind of printer you have, you should buy home-printable waterslide decal paper. Yes, the stuff they use on model cars; you can make whatever you want, for yourself! They make it in white and clear, but I'm guessing your apron is white, so the clear paper should suffice. However, the white would be fine to use as well. You could even get a sheet of both and see which ones work better, if you'd like.

Here's a decent page describing most of the brands and their pros and cons:
https://www.tomostudio.com/best-waterslide-decal-paper/

Once you have settled on the proper decal paper type, printed them, and applied them, you'll shoot a couple coats of clear over the whole apron and once that's settled and cured, it should look damn near factory!

Thank you Miguel351 for those details. Vector is a huge improvement in sharpness. I'll need to learn and move forward with that format.

Wish I could upvote your post more than once! It’ll take me awhile but here’s the before for eventual comparison:

4AE3E967-C12E-4AA0-AA9F-83B41916F59C (resized).jpeg

I's slowly recoloring the apron(then fix it edges) and fit two parts into one
and see if i can print it. fingers crossed

anyone smarter then me care to make these

left.PDF

If you can print an apron decal with “s, inc.” you’ll be the smartest person to ever print classic Stern apron decals.

I have this if anybody wants it. not guaranteed to be perfect, made from my Dracula.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dpah54xr2hvmyfn/Stern%20apron.ai?dl=0

pasted_image (resized).png

I made a scan of a similar repro decal I bought a few years ago. I'm not good with graphics and decals maybe someone here can clean it up and make something of it.
Stern Elec Apron 1 (resized).jpg
Stern Elec Apron 2 (resized).jpg

If someone takes on this project, please add the missing text in the manufacturer’s title. The name is Stern Electronics, Inc., not Stern Electronic. That missing text on the Pinball Rescue decals has always bothered a lot of collectors, but they were the only option out there.

The R in “FOR” doesn’t have a straight leg either — compared to the scan above. Need someone obsessive about these details to work on it.

I’m not sure why people use premade fonts instead of tracing the original lettering

What a lot of lazy graphic artists do is either use a website or special software to find a font that matches as close as possible to the letters they're trying to reproduce. But, in doing so, they typically fail to check every single letter to be sure they're all accurate. They find one that's about 90% correct and call it good. Well what happens over time is as all the original examples go away either by people restoring and using the readily available bad artwork, by trying to fix the artwork they've got(which can result in minor errors here and there), or by games that just "leave the earth"(get thrown away, parted out, or left in a barn for decades and slowly wither away), the original version of the artwork can get lost. As people just keep making copies of copies, you get what I call "design drift". An effort needs to be made to get it right the first time. Sure, your final product is fairly cheap and you don't make as much on each sale compared to the man hours spent recreating the graphics, but at least you've made them correctly and preserved said art for posterity. What's really sad is a lot of times when you're laying out artwork you're reproducing, you put the new stuff on top of the scanned image of the old stuff. Things like the leg on the R of "FOR" should've stuck out like a sore thumb to the guy working on that artwork. Of course, so should have the "S, INC.", but you get what I'm saying.

Or, you could be like PPS and just simply OWN all the factory original screens for all the artwork. I know he's got the screens for most all the B/W playfields, but I don't know if that includes apron art.

I'm looking for a new apron or a decals set for Xenon.
Any help will be appreciated

Looking for BOP silkscreened apron or high quality decals please.

I should've known better than to buy something from Classic Arcades. It's just so frustrating that he takes the time to make a decent looking repro design-wise and the decal itself is good but totally F's up the color. This is what he thinks the Blue in Night Rider should look like. Arrrrghhh!!!

IMG_2860 (resized).jpg

Well this is ironic - I just stumbled across a Classic Arcades eBay posting for a Bally Black Jack apron decal set that looks a lot closer to the actual Night Rider BLUE vs. the Powder Blue he's using for his Night Rider decal set. So he has the ability to print the darker blues. I reached out to Jeff to see if he'd exchange.

IMG_2860b (resized).jpg

IMG_2860c (resized).jpg

Join the club. Shame on me once…..but I did it again..with hope. Run! He is color blind.

He is just as likely to call you an asshole before blocking you.

I got a short one sentence reply from Jeff this morning: "I will send you a Black Jack".

Here's hoping he follows through. If he does, I've gotta give him a thumbs up on this particular transaction.

It would be unlike him, but I'm rooting for you.

Good luck. Heard that before and he never sent anything.

Still nobody screening aprons? I'm going to have to give it a go eventually, can't stand those stickers.
Seems to me that it wouldn't be too hard to set up the screens as long as you have 2 examples of an apron.
I've screened skateboards, apron can't be as hard, anyone here try it?
B

The thing to do is have the blue area of the decal transparent. Then the lettering automatically matches the color of the apron. There was a company that did it that way. Don't remember who.

The real problem comes from how close the artwork gets to the edges of the apron. It can be difficult to align the screen placements in between colors to make sure they're registered correctly when real estate is at a premium. A pretty serious jig would have to be built. Not saying it can't be done, though. The other side of it that would be tough is finding enough nice original examples of games with aprons in good enough shape to be considered accurate representations of the colors used for the artwork. The B/W stuff would be easy as all it would take is a call to Rick @PPS, who should have all that info. It's the Gottlieb and all the other manufacturers' artwork that would have to be color matched as well as scanned to reproduce their artwork.

Again, not a difficult task, it's just a huge undertaking that would require a lot of time and money upfront as it would be a while before any kind of real profit would be seen from this kind of venture. I almost wonder if that's what happened after one of the guys who were doing the first runs of these reproduction aprons moved to another state; it got to a point where it wasn't going to be cost effective, regardless of how many they could sell. It also kind of fits with how they did their run of aprons. It was actually an era of games that all used the same apron shape and the same artwork, just in different colors, making it way more affordable to do as your "installed base" is massive compared to doing it for just one game at a time.

Like I've said before in this thread and a couple others, if there was a job with a major pinball parts company that wants to start doing this, I would gladly be their graphic artist for it. I love reproducing pinball/arcade artwork and this would be a blast to do for a living! (I don't have the funds or the shop space to start something like this on my own, otherwise I would have by now.)

Thanks for that informative post Miguel, good points to consider.
I certainly wouldn't be doing this for a business, just for my personal restores and to help a few fellow pinheads so $ isn't the motivating factor, building a jig is my jam, I own a full fabrication company so that is not out of the question. Most of the aprons I'd want are Bally or early Williams so that helps. My biggest hurdle is time, already restoring a White lightning, theming out my game room bar and bathroom and got a honey do list a mile long+ the zoo stuff....just need an extra 4 hours a day ( that nobody knows I have!)
B

No gloves!
Impressive. Looks doable

There's hope! Jeff sent me a tracking number this morning!

I need classic Stern 'Stars' apron and shooter gauge decals. I don't want them from Pennsylvania. Is there such a thing ?

I've been looking for a classic stern apron decal set (for Meteor) for over a year. No luck yet.

I can cut you one when I do another batch, be a few weeks though at best.

1903ca9e5bf97009942928b43cfc59746f84978d (resized).jpg

37937b472532008479700112960c92ecbecffddd (resized).jpg

I have successfully airbrushed an apron. It's an option.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/silhouette-cameo-pinball-restorers-club/page/8#post-5382809

I believe Stars would be the same as the vector I made for my Dracula, posted earlier in this thread. Maybe gdonovan or someone else could cut you one if you don't have the resources yourself. Not quite as straight forward as a simple decal, but probably better looking.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/reproduction-bally-aprons/page/18#post-6833543

That would be fantastic, @gdonovan, thank you in advance. I've waited this long so a few more weeks (or months) is no big deal.

If you're custom making them, this may be an opportunity to make it really fit my restoration color theme. My apron and shooting gauge are powder coated black (should've wiped the finger prints off before taking the photo):
1 - Apron (Powder Coated) (resized).jpg

Here they are in the pin:
11 (resized).JPG
15 (resized).JPG

Here's a pic before media blasting and powder coating. Would LOVE to change the OEM orange to red on both pieces if you could:
0 - Apron - Meteor (Original) (resized).jpg

Easy as pie.

I’d be in for a og style Meteor apron also!

For the color mismatching decals a hint would be to plot out the blue areas. So people can paint the whole apron and will have the exact color.

The printscreen is just WOW !!!

This is 'Stars':

IMG_20221205_122016318 (resized).jpg

I saw Meteor mentioned - I'd be in for one of those as well, in case they come up!