Playfield looks amazing! The art is absolutely on point with the original. My playfield is so faded and worn that I can't comment on how accurate the colors are, but I honestly don't care as this is so far ahead of what I had before. The pearl edition was done very well in my opinion. They commented that it was done tastefully and I would agree. Its hard to see it on some of the brighter colors, but you can see little pops of pearl in the blacks and dark colors. Its just enough to see it when the light is right, which is exactly how I would want it to be. It does not take away from the original art at all, it just adds a little pearlescent sparkle here and there when the light is right.

If you can't tell, I'm very happy with the playfield. I really need to wipe mine down and take some shots in the sunlight so everyone can really see the colors. I know a lot of people give CPR a hard time for variations in playfields, backglasses and plastics, but man am I happy with how this turned out. Thanks KevinCPR for the Excellent playfield and Plastics! I'll try to get some pictures up tonight if I can to show how nice the playfield is and how the pearl effect turned out.

I agree. Well, I agree as far as the artwork is concerned. I can't comment on how it plays as I've never played the game.... yea, I guess I'll figure that part out in the near future. This one was so bad when I got it, there was no way I could power it on.

I will say this though, while the artwork is absolutely stunning on both the playfield, cabinet and backglass, it is a huge pain in the a** to to stencil the cabinet on this thing. So many details and complex shapes to work around when doing the whole stenciling process. Had PinballPimp not done such a good job with his stencils, this thing would have been parted out before I ever got this far along.

Ok, I'm doing a poor job of keeping up with this thread.
After a week of moving my brother into his new house, I finally got the lighting finished for my basement.
Originally, the house only had 2 bulbs in this basement. Needless to say it was a bit dark. While this is by no means perfect, or permanent, its is so much better than it was before. You also get to see the current state of my basement. Only been here just over a year now, so its not exactly organized the best...
Workbench side of the room
workbench side
This side is mostly my couch and crt tv. I still play some old console games and occasionally repair\restore them, so the old tv is super nice to have for that. Plus its a late crt style, so its widescreen, flat panel, 1080i, has nearly every video input I could ever need, but it weights like 100lbs.
tv side
With the lighting I can finally work on getting the Space Invaders finished.

Here are a few pictures of the new playfield. I have not cleaned the inserts yet or wiped it down too much, so expect to see some dust.
Full view
full frontal...
you can see some hints of the pearl in the dark areas
some sparkle
more sparkle
Big question for anyone reading this, what is the best way to remove the clear from these rollovers? Its on there pretty thick from what it looks like and I honestly don't know the best way to do this without damaging something. I've seen dremel tools and files mentioned in other threads.
left rollover
right rollover
Back is pretty clean. No paint at all, but I'm okay with that as it appears like they laser etch instead of dimple the back of the playfield now. I had a Xenon playfield that was painted and dimpled. Not sure if it varies by playfield or what, but I like the look of this one.
back

So after a short 8 month hiatus, I'm picking this project back up where it was unceremoniously left at.
As with most hobbies, life gets in the way. New house, became a dad, Covid, promotion at work, home projects, personal health issues and the desire to relax a bit pushed pinball on the back burner.

But I'm back at it today.
I finally got my rotisserie painted thanks to some nice weather. Etching primer and some black lacquer paint made it look great.
It also gave me an opportunity to sand and paint the original rails. I wanted to get some Reese Rails made, but he has been swamped with rail requests and has been having a hard time getting stock. I gave it a shot and they came out ok. Definitely not Reese Rail level, but it will get me by until I can get some new ones made.

Big step today was the cleaning of the star inserts. Those things are a PITA. I spent probably 30 minutes each to get all the clear out. An Xacto knife with a fresh blade, some very small files and a dental pick were my weapons of choice. They look good and are working great. My way to clean them was to cut out all the clear that had got into the small areas the fins sink into, then clean the clear out the area around the base that would pool some clear and keep the star sitting too high.

I'm going to start drilling and installing posts on the top side. I got a the horseshoe completed, minus the two front posts that I apparently never ordered. I'm going with the original mini posts in the front instead of the fix Bally later made, which was a red finned post instead of the mini posts. I'm hoping for easy mode when I finally get to play so the mini posts made more sense to me. My original game was hacked so it was a mini post and a machine screw with rubbers stacked around it.

I'll get some pictures loaded up once I have something notable to take pictures of.

Thanks for the link!
I took a ton of pictures on my game when I tore it down, but it was so dirty that I may have to reference these at some point.

Been working on the top side over the past few days. I really only get an hour or so at most in the evenings to get some work done.
It takes a bit of a mess to do, but spreading out my parts helps me stay organized in some chaotic way. All my parts are in bags and in piles based on how I progress through the playfield.
organized chaos
I started in the center and worked my way up to the top on the upper left side. Horseshoe (new from Vid1900) was installed, along with two of the pops, a few dead bumpers, new plastics with the annoying bell posts for the captive ball and some of the upper playfield posts. The bell posts were heated with a soldering iron to remove from the old plastics. I then trimmed the top 1/4in or so of metal off to just have a shorter overall post that will still hold itself in place on the plastic. It worked quite well overall. The missing posts should be here before this weekend to complete the horseshoe area as well.
upper playfield mostly finished
I worked my down the side and got the ball drain areas completed as well. These were pretty simple to install. Just a few holds to drill and widen and put it all together.
PXL_20210304_035100939 (resized).jpg
Just an overall shot of where I'm at right now.
PXL_20210304_035046395 (resized).jpg
I probably have one more evening to get the topside completed (well posts and major components installed, not doing plastics or most rubbers until the bottom is complete as well). I think I need to do one more dead bumper, one pop bumper and a handful of posts along with the spinner. At that point I can put the rails back on. They were in the way too much during component installation so I just remove them while I worked around.

My goal is to get as much of this done this weekend as I can. I would love to get the underside completed, but that's a pretty lofty goal at best.

I'm definitely thankful for that. 2020 was a year of chaos so it's nice to come back to something that has waited patiently for me the whole time.

I heated them to allow the plastic around them to melt, allowing me to pull it out.
When its pulled out, it has a bell shape on the top of it as well that holds it into the plastic.
I basically took it to a grinding wheel on my bench grinder and ground part of the top off. Just enough that it will snap into the new plastics, but not too much where they will fall out.
It wasn't horrible to do, but it did take a while. I had to cleanup the edges a little bit as well. I didn't make them super nice as this will be inside the plastic buried under a screw or another plastic.
Hopefully that helps.

Back from another Hiatus.
Good news is I have finished soldering the wiring harness back onto the playfield and strapping it down. This took far longer than it took me when I did a Xenon PF swap. I think some of the crammed spaces just made it harder to work on in general.
I took the opportunity to install a few connectors in the harness to disconnect a few things to make maintenance easier. I did this for the kickout coil (as its on the topside of the playfield and would have to be de-soldered otherwise) and the coin door coil (home use, so it wont be used).
The topside of the playfield is being finished currently. Most plastics are installed, save for the largest one which is giving me a hard time getting it installed completely. I have most of the rubbers installed and all lighting in place. I still need to install the flipper bats, apron and all its attach points, playfield hangars and the rubber grommets for the back of the playfield to keep it in place during transport (These have to be cut to size).
I did get the playfield back in the game and got it powered on.
PXL_20210611_035217508 (resized).jpg
I found a couple wiring issues I had to fix:
- I had a SW Bus and SW RET line swapped at one point on the playfield, causing a ground short. Only lost 1 20A fuse, in the process.
- I had the diode installed backwards on 3 switches. Stupid on my part, but easy to fix.
- My ground braid was attached to one too many lights near the left slingshot, which happened to short the SW Bus to the GI Bus, causing another short. Another 20A fuse lost. Again, an easy fix, once I found it...

Here is my to-do list :
-Finish installing plastics
-Finish installing apron, shooter gauge and associated hardware
-Finish installing playfield hangars
-Install playfield rubber grommets in back below retention bar, cut to size
-Install balls
-Fix issue with test mode causing a CPU reboot
-Check all switches in test mode
-Check all lamps in test mode
-Play the game?

Thanks for the Compliment!
This whole resto has been stretched out over ~5 years now.
I got the game and went to town to rebuild and paint the cabinet, stencil everything, rewire the head re-pin the cabinet and head harnesses and rebuild all the boards. I then stripped the playfield and restored each major assembly, re-pinned the PF harness and then sat and waited to get a new playfield.

During my wait I was promoted at work, moved to a new house, wife finished her Masters Degree, had my first kid, been in 5 weddings, 3 family deaths, wife becoming a stay at home mom, personal health issues, COVID, etc...
Yea. Its been busy with so many life changes and world level changes going on. I find time every now and again to work on my arcade and home automation projects, but some of the gaps have been months in size. My model trains have been packed away for ~3 years now, only got some out for Christmas and bought one new one for my daughters first Christmas.

Once CPR got the playfield released last year, so I had it ordered/payed for in less than 10 minutes from when I got the email. Let it sit flat for 6 months before I started on it. Having 99% of what I needed to get it playable helped me motivate a bit more to get it finished.
Summer is always super busy, so I've been working on it after my wife/daughter go to bed, when I have the energy. The hope of BBQ and pinball events with friends and family is motivating me right now.

Ok, end of the "my busy life" story.

I did spend a bit of time on the game late last night.
Fixed most of the issues I was having.
- 3 switches with the wires backwards. Seems my hours long soldering session was less successful that previously imagined.
- 1 pop bumper with a bad diode
- Flippers installed, but forgot to adjust the stacked switch that triggers the upper flippers. easy fix thankfully.
- CPU reboot on hitting the test mode button fixed. I had my indexing off on a connector on the solenoid driver. This also caused the flippers to not work. moved the pins and fixed that.

Here is my remaining to-do list :
-Finish installing apron, shooter gauge and associated hardware
-Install playfield rubber grommets in back below retention bar, cut to size
-Check all switches in test mode, two are still not working correctly (left outlane and the standup behind the left drop bank).

Something I do need to figure out is the apron. The black looks faded compared to the playfield and cabinet. I could sand it down and repaint it, clear it and apply decals, but I feel like it wont come out how would prefer it to. Decals never look as good as the real thing. Keeping it as-is is a bit more authentic, but it looks out of place due to how faded it is. I'll likely install it so I can FINALLY play the dang thing, and see how I feel about it at that point.