Oh I'm sure they know as these types of complaints have been going on for over a year. At some point within the last 3 years or so Stern coil stop quality went down. I don't believe I've seen this on my Ghostbusters Premium but will need to take a closer look. After regular price increases, and $6k - $9k+ asking prices there's no reason for Stern to reduce parts quality on items such as coil stops of all things. A cousin of mine bought a NIB Dead Pool LE and within 100 plays had this exact same issue...

There is little doubt in my mind that they know about the cheap ass parts they are using.
Coil stops that can't hold up in a home environment, nevermind if it was out on route.
And everyone say these are commercial machines? SMH
-Mike

Yep, all my coil stops on Jurassic Park self destructed too.

I can handle that if they would just do something about my playfield....

They replace them on an as-needed basis.

I just had to replace all 3 on my JP Pro

The first game I noticed this on was with Metallica. I didn't have issues with the stops until 2014; so this problem has been around for at least 6 years now...but it seems to be getting worse.

Forget about a warranty claim, it’s not covered. If you tried they would just tell you it’s a wear item. If you really want a legal battle maybe consumer protection laws in your country would give you some protection.

FB496171-3B42-4C4B-B1DA-B34BF77684D5 (resized).jpeg

"Warranty periods are effective from date of shipment from seller [Stern] to its authorized distributors"

So PCB's are 2 months, displays are 9, and no other parts are warrantied (?!). So 2 or 9 months *from date it leaves Stern's factory* means an "old" NIB pin at a distributor may effective have zero warranty at all?

WTF? Shouldn't the warranty start when the game is resold by the distributor? Isn't the benefit of a distro that they can track and advocate for such things?

Instead of a reasonable commerical-grade or premium product warranty, this reads like those "warranties" on inexpensive products that say the product will be replaced if you pay shipping and processing to return it - usually at more expense than the product is worth. (For the record, even Hot Wheels cars have this garbage "lifetime warranty").

After I had this problem on 2 straight games, I have been moving the spring washer on every new stern I get to the non-coil stop side where it should be. That doesn't mean that the coil stops they use aren't bad, but I also have not had to replace one since. It's rather annoying to have to do this for every flipper mech on a new game. I wish they would just assemble them the right way from the factory. And yes, I have told them about it.

Everybody here knows the printed warranty is CYA boilerplate and if they call stern they’ll get some replacement shitty coil stops, or some other form of compensation.

Seems like most people get treated right if their requests are reasonable.

Are flipper mechs the only coils with these washers?

They should be just on the flipper coils. Aren't they there just to prevent the buzzing vibration sounds when the flipper is held up?

I’ve wondered why they are there. Half the time I lose them and don’t bother replacing them.

Who sells good coil stops? I had the bottom left flipper coil stop break in my Jurassic park. I had an extra coil stop laying around from a sega game I put in but now the left flipper has a further throw than the right one. I guess I need to do both, or all three at the same time.

Pinballlife

I was a victim of a bad coil stop 1 month after my NIB JP.

Pinball Life for sure. There may be others.

I'm not convinced they are necessary either but as stevevt mentioned, they may be there to tone down the flipper buzz. The problem with putting them on the coil stop end is it makes plunger/coil stop contact less stable. I learned this years ago on the old Bally linear flipper mechs from the 80's where it caused the flipper mechs to get sluggish and not work quite as well after a while and in some cases blow out coil stops when I put them on the wrong end.

Such a greta warranty, sign me up. That's why I used to purchase new Sterns from Jack at Pinballsalesdotcom. He gave an extended warranty. He was not the lowest price but the extended warranty gave peace of mind for aboot $300.00

My manual (Star Trek Vault) has the springs on the coil stop side. At what point did they switch it. I’ve seen the reference you are referring to.

JP was my first NIB Stern. I had never dealt with a bad coil stop before so I actually had no idea what happened. It took less than a week for it to go bad. I just noticed the flipper kind of sag, and so I took apart most of the flipper and probably noticed the coil stop waaaaay later than I should have.

Now I tell everybody who gets a NIB Stern to watch for the gold dust. I think replacing them all immediately is a good call. I bought a lot of them from pinballlife.

For people who are unfamiliar with this phenomena, like myself, it's a difficult thing to look up. I just noticed it played different and I did a manual inspection under the playfield. From my experience from my other machines nothing quite lined up with a problem I was familiar with. I was looking up "weak flipper" and "sagging flipper" in pinside and couldn't really find it. I didn't think something like a coil stop could go bad so soon.

first clue something was wrong for me was the noise of the coil stop getting smacked changed. I took off the coil stop and the nub part just fell out. It was flopping around in the sleeve. Flipper actually still worked OK at that point.

They've been building them this way for many years, so maybe they have been doing it this way from whenever they started adding them. I don't recall seeing them in the older stern titles from the prior decade, but those were also the ones that had flipper buzz.

They probably purchased 100,000 coil stops and they are going to use them until they are gone...

One issue is that dust is conductive. If it ends up on a node board that would be an issue.

https://sternpinball.com/support/contact-us/

I think they are different, in a couple different ways.
This conversation always turns into a bash fest for the Stern haters to latch onto, just check previous threads. I have had some last a good long time, on route, with heavy play, all while gold-dusting the cabinet. If the plug comes loose, they get replaced, if they play fine, I’ll let them go for a while. I replace stops often anyway.
As for the spring washers! I find them on all coils for recent Stern I thought, perhaps unless the fit is too tight?
I don’t think they are there to prevent buzzing, because they don’t. What I have found is that the keep the wires from breaking all the time at the coils, from the slight movement a coil will make each time it energizes. And I would certainly recommend keeping them in a coil!
I don’t think it makes a difference which end of it.

I have in a pinch. They are not an exact fit but work good enough to keep going. There is a very slight difference in flipper travel but not enough to really notice.

When I bought my Spike 2 games for route, I just replaced the balls, coil stops and flipper buttons on day one. At least I knew I might have at least a trouble free month before other issues cropped up.

Low quality coil stops, low quality cliffy's (i.e. Deadpool scoop).

I'd pay extra to have better versions of these parts installed from the factory.

I love the new pins, but some of the cost cutting is a bit frustrating.

They're not exactly the same. I've used B/W stops temps until the right Stern ones came in, but that's about it.

Stern needs to save $1 (if that) per game by making quality cuts to coil stops of all things. One would think that the regular price increases and all time record NIB prices would prevent quality cuts but nope!

For $6k - $9k+ none of us should have to give Stern another dime for better quality. All of the price increases over the years should have resulted in quality at least being maintained compared to 10 years ago versus going down.

It's as if Stern has regular meetings where the topic is "What can we cut back on next"? Hmmm, maybe shave .6 mm off flipper mounting plates to save 25 cents per game, brilliant lol. The quality cuts from Stern are beyond ridiculous at this point, they are insulting considering the asking prices.

Distributor sent me a dozen...fuck off...they basically said...

I've been keeping an eye on my February 12, 2020 build date Deadpool, and no pixie dust in the cabinet so far. I'm not sure if this means a) Stern has recently addressed the issue, b) Stern has finally used up all the bad coil stops, or c) I got lucky.

Might be interesting if people posted the build dates of their machines that have/haven't had the issue.

Issue comes and goes. They probably have a dumpster fill of the shit ones and when the heat dies down they start using them again

I guess I meant more when did Sten switch from installing the washer springs on the coil stop side to the other side? My ST manual references the springs should be on the coil stop side and the manual from a Batman 66 I am borrowing mentions they should be on the other side. Clearly there is a reason - even though they still seem to be installed on the coil stop side (haven't checked the springs on the Batman 66)...

Also my 2019 manufactured Star Trek coil stops are going strong ~1500 games.

I just checked my early-2020 BKSOR; it looks clean. Threads like this are very educational; now I'll know to keep an eye on it.

Its more "operators" and when its costing them time and money well of course they get a hate on. I've never had an issue with a node board or coil stops, rreally anything but my pins get maybe 500 plays a year and its rare they last much longer than that. Not saying the ops aren't justified in their complaint or it doesn't happen to non ops but there should be a sub section for strictly operators. Thats a breeding ground for hate, regardless how much u love pinball the "operator" is a different animal than the collector or simple enthusiast. Maybe not, who cares.