Hey folks. I joined the club this week! This GZ Premium is my first NIB pin. I'm glad there weren't any major issues, but I am having some of the minor problems others have reported. Since this pin is fresh off the line, I figured it might be good to let ppl know that these problems are still happening.

1) The under-bridge/over-magnet plastic is the shorter modified variety.. it's still getting clipped a little by the bridge and I can see some damage starting to form. I want to try the fix (https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-godzilla-official-owners-club/page/128#post-6714220) where you add a washer to the coil stop. QUESTION: Am I supposed to be putting a small washer inside_ the sleeve? Or a big washer outside around the metal nub on the coil stop like this (https://pinballvegas.com/pics/006aiq3.jpg)? Seems weird to add a loose small washer inside the sleeve, but that's what it looks like in the photo.

2) Two balls were occasionally getting kicked to shooter lane and getting stuck. Reduced the trough kick out value and the problem is gone.

3) The building VUK sometimes takes two tries before the ball makes it to the top. I haven't attempted to fix this, but I see a couple ideas in the thread. This is low priority for me since it doesn't seem to be causing any damage.

4) After about 40 plays, the two sides of the bridge plastics started getting stuck on each other and preventing the bridge from dropping. Gonna try loosening the plastics and moving them apart tonight.

5) Manual plunge skill shots are hard because of the sloppy launch. Still working my way through this thread looking for a fix.

6) Magna grab is working great.

Loving my GZ Prem so far. Very confusing game at first, but 40 plays later I managed to crack 2 bil. Now I'm struggling to get 1 bil again. It's like I know too much and my beginners luck has run out.

I'm hearing some relay clicking in the backbox when I turn on the machine. Sometimes it's 10 or so clicks.. some times it's none. I heard about 40 clicks last night when I switched it on. Everything works fine once it has settled down. Is that normal for a new Stern?

Interesting. Thanks for sharing that. I don't get a reset, thankfully, but I certainly hear more than "a few" clicks. I'm curious if a CPU board replacement also stops any excessive clicks. Keep us updated!

Mine also has the centering guides. My plunge rattles around in the launch lane about 90% of the time. Adding the chrome candy metal plate did not improve things for me. The plunger tip appears centered on the ball ok. I’m just learning to live with it.

Agreed. The worst is when you have a battle mode stacked with a multiball then that voiceover starts saying "you're running out of time" and you have no idea what needs to be hit next because an endless sequence of videos is playing and the playfield lights are going crazy. I could totally hit it.. if I only knew what "it" was.

I gave it another try last night. Works better than I originally thought. With the chrome candy fix installed, it’s much easier to get long plunge skill shots. I’d say it still rattles around about 10% of the time with long plunges. For short plunges it always rattles around, even with the fix in place. I guess that’s an improvement since I can at least try for the super secret skill shots now. Its definitely not the “100% fix” it’s advertised to be.. at least in the case of my machine.

Comes off easily. I stuck mine to the coin box for safe keeping.

I was hitting destruction jackpots pretty consistently last week. I think I've hit maybe one on the initial flip since the latest code update. I figured I was just in a slump, but now I'm wondering if maybe the ball isn't falling in the same place it used to. Hard to think that could be caused by a code change though.. unless the code is doing more than just switching the magnet from ON to OFF.

The only explanation for how many balls end up there.

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Get used to that rattle. I've noticed that 'clean' shots that would probably be OK on most machines are not OK for the GZ left ramp. A successful shot is a little late and just scrapes along the left side of the lane. I wonder sometimes if the ball even deflects off the upper flipper as it's on the way up. Been wanting to catch this on slo-mo, but haven't tried yet.

The good news is that most failed shots to that ramp will safely come down and dead bounce over to the right flipper for a trap. Key word is 'most'. Some that are coming down fast will dead bounce and hop the right sling into the ever-hungry right outline.

Question about a Weird issue.

I missed a destruction jackpot shot, got the ball on the flipper, quickly shot the center spinner to try and get another flip at the jackpot.. and the jackpot triggered as it went thru the inner loop before it even got to the flipper.

I can vaguely recall this happening once before on this machine with about 500 plays on it. I’ve noticed no other strange switch behavior.

Known issue? Or something I should be troubleshooting? Any tips on where to start?

Watching this latest stern vid.. Jason Werdrick restarts his Rodan timer. I didn't know this was possible. How do you do it?

Ah, I see that now. Thanks for clarifying.

Six months of home use. < 1000 games. Should I be expecting chips in the playfield already??

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