You don't get much information here. You get hyperbole and hearsay.

I help a friend maintain games on location. In 4 years I believe we've had ONE node board failure in about a dozen different stern games. These games are on 12-15 hours a day and get played all the time.

Anybody with real world experience on these games knows how reliable they are. What I see here is nothing short of mass hysteria.

It really is too bad. Information is good but I can't put much stock in most of what I read here, beyond a few voices of experience I trust.

I just read the for sale of the high end TZ and remembering my DW and seeing all of the ribbons, big boards, wiring, etc. I like the simpler package of Spike for sure. The changes may or may not have made production cheaper, but it took development money and really cleans things up.

I'm in the camps that likes to tinker and can replace parts, but doesn't not want to mess with board repair. However, I don't like the idea of shotty construction cabinet, decal, and playfield clear coat, going backwards with lockdown bar, back box locking mechanisms, and moving the power switch.

I think what Levi is saying is that people aren't just stating an opinion to add to the conversation. But rather take criticism personally and then elaborate on and on about their opinion essentially making the same argument over and over - and then it leads to personal attacks.

Just give your 2 cents and let the other(s) do the same.

Just my 2 cents...

At least you admit your complete bias which is more than most of the anti-Stern crowd. I can appreciate that. Good luck in your crusade to save the community. And thanks for once again putting more words in my mouth. I never once said I didn't have a problem with price increases (not buying an SW Premium because of it, I think AFMr LE is a better value), nor did I like having to get my playfield replaced. However shit happens (see chipping reports on Dialed In, on AFMr, playfield wear on WOZ iirc) so taking a stance like it is a Stern only problem is disingenuous at best, but I guess it serves your agenda.

As for people getting bent over, I would just recommend that anyone buying a NIB pin, or any multi-thousand dollar purchase put on their big boy pants and make up their own minds. Before you buy any NIB, whether from Stern, JJP, CGC, understand it may have problems out of the box and be prepared to deal with them. The good thing is, from all reports, all manufacturers are pretty good at responding to issues.

I think it's time for a relaxing Future Spa/Paragon sandwich RGR.

Both games btw are Spike/Sam free and have already been bulletproofed for the next 30+ years so, no tech headaches to worry about during your stay.

Also,
When my TNA shows up you should fly out with RD so we can finally resume our 3AM Pincade wind-down.

He can just come play my TnA.

rd

Fiona's cool with that???

The big question...

Is the hobby

This hobby is built on nostalgia. I hate to break the news, the kids now days are trash. Give it time and our hobby numbers will diminish

Is this really true? I put about 15 incandescent bulbs in my ASLE because I wanted less brightness at back of playfield.

I haven't noticed any issues yet but I don't leave the game on for long periods of time.

Now wondering if I should take them out and put frosted LED's in??? I had no idea you weren't supposed to put incandescent bulbs in a spike game.

Stern and Gomez are clueless........They are not designing a phone! The bottom line is most new technology is designed to be extinct within years. Most new consumer electronics are "disposable technology", so it makes sense to get cost low and make them nonservicable. In the case of a pinball machine, the high cost is related to the reliability and longevity. The fact that node boards are not interchangable is a huge issue and will be a bigger one down the road. Truthfully that is really the only problem I see with Spike. The other cost cutting, although it sucks, makes sense from a cost/manufacturing stand point.

I just took a look and saw half of the bulbs are not lit.

I am going to remove them all as clearly they are not right for spike and don't want to do anything that could make a node board fail!

Hope everything is ok with your game, let us know.

WTF the link you give shows a $200 price increase in last 2 yr and that is ludicrous

Spike doesn't sound noticeably better than the SAM system?

You should have your hearing checked.

Do you guys ever PLAY pinball, or just spend all day bitching about it? Move along

JJP are not at all like 90s games the deepest rule set 90s games were still easy to understand modern games not so much.With $8000 being the cheapest JJP game he is pricing out most in the hobby.When you bought STTNG in 94 you were not the anal collector going over the playfield with a magnifying glass looking for issues

All good thanks.

Spike board took out half the incandescent.

Back to LED and all fine so Spike board works as it should!

Well what I'm saying is that - in this case - the reaction to that video is absolutely hysterical. I've seen this way too much over the past few years and it absolutely reminds me of the blind fanticism that has helped create an army of truthers, birthers, mooners etc.

It should really take more than a YouTube link for someone - and a skeptic at that! - to embrace a fully-formed opinion that they will fight to the death to defend. But the world has lost its mind, so really, some YouTube video by someone nobody had even heard of hours prior is pretty much all it takes these days.

Yes.. I would not run any Incandescent bulbs in Spike games. Put frosted or some of the lower end less bright single led bulbs.

I like the new Stern games for the most part. The quality does have me concerned, I went down that road with my GB. He brings up some good points in the video about the boards not being interchangeable because I didn't know that and as other said that might be really bad down the road, but necessity is the mother of invention so I would say it is likely someone, if not Stern or their supplier will produce replacements in the future, but what will the cost be. I would rather have something that is serviceable and not disposable.

As far as pricing is going I am selling my AS premium to fund 1/2 of the purchase price of a classic car that I wanted since I was a kid. I like AS, but feel I will get much more enjoyment out of my car than a pinball machine.

The video doesn't come across as biased to me.

The clear take away is that the node boards and light boards are a potentially significant problem down the line. I don't really know how anyone can argue with that.

Game specific boards that must be replaced to be repaired is certainly not a benefit to most home game owners.

Remember Stern warranties their circuit boards for two months, so...

Serviceability vs Disposability is an interesting topic. I can kind of see Sterns side of the argument as it makes things much cheaper and easier on their end. It could make certain repairs easier as swapping out a node board is pretty simple. But, it sounds like actually repairing a node board is either much more difficult or impossible compared to a 90's era PCB or even SAM.

I'd be a whole lot more comfortable if the node boards where generic and the LEDs were not surface mounted to the PCBs. Granted, the LEDs should last a long, long time, but hundreds of dollars to replace a PCB because an LED goes out would suck.

If I read Gomez's response correctly, it sounds like they intend to have socketed LEDs, which is good. Hopefully, they can get the node boards down to just a few different types so those will be generic across machines (and hopefully bring the cost down).

Hopefully, Stern and get their act together as, ultimately, I think SPIKE could be a good thing, it just needs some tweaking.

That must include JJP and CGC then, right? They have proprietary light boards as well don't they?

Certainly CGC, which is one reason I'm more likely to buy an original than a remake.

Don't own a JJP game (yet), so can't say but it seems they take the issue a bit more seriously than Stern (or at least are reacting faster).

I'm not happy with the concept of unique, disposable boards for ANY game unless board cost comes WAY down and the manufacturers make a long term commitment to availability of them (like 10 years).

JJP had huge problems with WOZ LED node boards due to terrible design that eventually got replaced with a more robust design way after the fact. The SPIKE issues are tiny by comparison.

as an operator with the majority of Stern games released with Spike, can you get more details on this PLEASE?

I want to know when this is available and how to get signed up ASAP. It would be very valuable.

I'd say that light boards are not really a big concern as they will be very, very easy to reproduce, considering they're basically just custom cut boards with some LEDs, resistors and some basic logic chips.

It's the node boards with CPUs that have software running on them that might prove problematic.

Hmm. I thought according to that video it's a huge issue. Like biblical scale huge.

No other company produces any pinball machine with proprietary parts right? If so I eagerly await the next video!

I think it is the overall package that stern is offering that is the problem. Between concerns about PF, cabinet, decals, Spike, decontenting and steadily increasing prices I think it is fair that people have concerns. The games are fun but those things hit the fun factor.

As to Gomez's comments, he answered questions without responding to the underlying concerns raised. He basically reinforced my nervousness about Spike by the way that he answered.

I bought a SW recently, paid for it but ended up selling it before receiving it. Mostly this was becasue of a personal thing that came up but all the rest made me nervous. I didn't want to get a bad game and Spike worries me.

Stern coming up with universal node boards would be absolutely huge in making me more comfortable about the system. Until they do that though I don't think I will buy a Spike game.

That's too bad. SW is killing it on route.

As long as the pinball hobby remains popular and parts manufacturers exist I wouldn't worry about it. Look at all the companies out their that repro boards and other parts from games from the 70's, 80's and 90's. If there is a need for a part or a special board someone will repro them. 15 years ago this wasn't the case. I wouldn't recommend pouring your life savings into Stern SPIKE games or any other game with unique parts (pretty much every NIB game these days from all manufacturers) but I wouldn't let it preclude me from enjoying some of the great titles that are currently available from Stern and other makers.

That is why I got it, I knew it would earn well. Problem is games here take a fairly big depreciation hit, I would have lost at least 20% in about a year reselling it and don't want to hang on to it any longer. If I had node board or PF issues it would have gotten even worse. In the end it was just not worth the risk.

I keep a spare WPC driver board, Why? because it will go in any of the 15 WPC pins I have

Did Stern Copyright anything on the boards?

My big beef with the video is that these "issues" are being promoted as "fact," when most of it is purely opinion. There is also no context for the real intended audience - a home owner versus operator can see these issues very differently.

Two things I particularly took away from the video was 1) SPIKE vs SAM/older tech was stated in the video as being about the same as far as actual tested reliability (which kind of is counter-intuitive to the rest of the video) and 2) Long term availability of parts (which honestly is the one thing that makes me concerned about SPIKE). It's good to hear SPIKE is on par with it's predecessors, but the risk of not having parts 10 years down the road is significant.

As long as Stern is in business I don't think it is in their best interest to have hundreds if not thousands of their past games not working due to faulty node boards. It would hurt their current and future sales too much. If Stern is no longer in business I'd imagine that someone else would step up and manufacture boards as long as there is demand within the hobby. Copyrights don't seem to apply to other pinball manufacturer's of the past.

I found this thread describing actual repairs to Spike node boards somewhat comforting.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/spike-board-repair-resource

Especially @terryb's note that they work on boards like this all the time in his business. Doesn't mean that home repairs will be easy, and obviously it's a new skill for many technically inclined folks to learn, but for someone like me that was never going to do board work anyway, knowing that it'll be doable by professionals going forward just like in the past is encouraging.

Exactly. It's no different from when JJP's "PC" based system was criticised as unreliable for using off the shelf PC parts under the guise of presenting facts for the betterment of the pinball community. We've all heard the spiel along similar lines before it's just that some of the locals are gullible/servile enough to swallow it time and time again.

4 plus years on and I am still waiting for my WOZ to turn into a $6k paperweight.

The most obvious reason a lot of these domestic solder monkeys are now joining forces and quite frankly injecting an unnecessary and biased level of fear into the community is the fact that the new Spike system in effect removes their limited skillset from Stern's aftermarket revenue pie.

That means the days of charging $300 to solder in a 50c part are numbered so now they will have to find other unscrupulous ways to cash in. Maybe start a local pinball forum and charge people access?

Just presenting the facts though...no pecuniary bias or conflict of interest here. Gimme a break.

I keep hearing - ad finitum - that Stern needs to change their methods to be more like a TV or toaster manufacturer. Well, here ya go.

This is part of the dumbing down of the hobby to accommodate the huge influx of home buyers who have ZERO interest in ever doing board work. Even the slowest home end consumer can probably swap in a node board.

Domestic solder monkey with limited skill set... finally, somebody has given me the right words for my Linked-In profile!!!

Hobbyists will figure out how to work on these boards, just like we always have. Toaster consumer types will enjoy increased ease of serviceability. I can't believe people who should really know better are getting spooked by this youtube video.

If I stand in front of a bunch of my games and make a youtube video assuring everybody that it will be alright and that buying a Spike machine isn't a death sentence, will that settle people down?

I mean, after all, it'll be on Youtube. A Youtube video. The very word...Youtube...it just oozes credibility.

Now excuse me while I find that video exposing how Jurassic Park was actually a documentary...you'll be shocked how high this conspiracy and cover-up goes!