What have you seen on your games?

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Thinner plywood?

Chalky paint?

Unplated metals?

Thinner glass?

Unheard of designers?

Mono sound?

A return to incandescent lighting?

A smaller color pallet on playfields?

Mylar instead of clearcoat?

Missing coin mechs?

Staples instead of woodscrews?

Wall paneling for cabinet bottoms?

Unfused bridged rectifiers?

No longer UL listed?

Hack artists rather than the masters?

Audio clips rather than full songs?

Do they make it all the way through the leg plate threads?

Tron Pro and LE both weigh 250 pounds.

Put nuts on the back of the leg bolts and watch the fun.

Exactly.

Saving money by not installing a feature they don't feel is necessary.

We are not here to discuss differences in models.

We are here to determine if Stern's quality has gone down the drain, exponentially.

"Exponentially = characterized by or being an extremely rapid increase, increasingly rapid"

I love words.

If the cab still weighs the same as before, how is the wood less dense?

How can we determine that the wood cost less than the crappy wood that was used throughout the 70-90s?

Would you not rather have a Metal Backbox than a wood one?

All the old wood backboxes are always missing chunks and generally look like ass.

Where are you seeing this?

I have a Rockwell hardness tester at work. I can verify your findings scientifically.

What game did they stop shipping coin mechs on, GOT?

KISS came with coin mechs.

KISS has the same thickness legs as WTP, so it appears to be the same.

Decals have been peeling at least since the 1980s Bally's. Nothing new there.

If Stern fired SR and hired an unknown designer, everybody would be crying like bitches that they had "cheapened the design" by not paying SR his $260,000 a year salary.

You know that.

Honestly, I don't see there being all that big of a hobby in 20 years.

Today's youth is not taking their lunch money every day and wasting it playing pinball.

They aren't standing in line at the gas station to play the latest TWD game.

I'd guess that in 20 years people will be searching for old smartphones so they can play Mindcraft "how it was meant to be played", reliving their lost youth.

Flipper mechs have bee stripping out since the 70s.

But I do have an AC/DC, so I can take a flipper mech to work and compare it to a mech from WPT and see if there has been a change in metal hardness. The thickness is the same.

Excellent!

I'm glad to hear quality improved on a Stern product.

Every time I see an unrestored Shadow, my toes curl.

That was a bad batch from a while ago.

I'm not seeing that on KISS.

Even if I did, it's a $2 replacement part (and you can even use the $1 B/W stops if you want to).

LOL, Having a bad batch of something is completely different than "quality going down the drain, exponentially".

I've had bad batches of Williams stops.

I've had whole batches of Bally aftermarket stops that magnetized within weeks of installation.

Of course it will happen again.

It's been happening for the last 50 years of pinball, and it will happen in the next 50.

The decals on most Shadows suck ass.

stupid.jpg

Like 5 years ago, and Pinsiders have been acting like someone smothered their kitten ever since.

If you guys would quit buying non-LCD games and stick with only buying WOZs, Stern would be forced to move down to making LCD pins.

It's your fault.

How about a cargument instead?

Ford had a bad batch of tires from Firestone.

The resulting tire recall did not stop the F150 from being rated the highest quality vehicle that year.

"Ahh, I see........."

How do you pull a PF completely out and flat on a game like F14?

It was the 5th best selling Williams game of all time, yet no one ever cried that the playfield did not pull out (it does not pull out at all, it only pivots in place).

It does not hamper the servicing of the game .

We disagree.

I replaced my AC/DC bell with an aftermarket unit and I did not have to pull the the whole playfield out to do the work.

I have 48 games in my collection and maybe 9 of them have playfield slide brackets.

Different people have different mechanical abilities and industry oldtimers like myself are used to working on games that never had any mechs to slide the playfield forward.

But as you discovered, if you need assistance, those playfield slide rails are cheap and readily available!

Buy them if you need them:

535-6862-05_set.jpg

And that is because you guys are totally fine with the price increases.

Everyone cries like a bitch about the artwork, cries about the rails that got eliminated 5 years ago, cries like a pussy about a scratch, but they keep buying more games than ever.

So obviously none of that stuff is a deal breaker.

LOL

If the backboard is missing a screw, I'm out. That is absolute proof that Stern's quality has gone WAY down.

All my Gottlieb games were fully stapled and screwed

It's a moving target and anything that gets shipped by common carrier 1500 miles standing on it's head is bound to pick up a few more problems along it's journey.

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In 2014 JDP said that there were 117 problems per 100 cars sold in the USA.

In 2013 there were 113 problems per 100 vehicles, so "New car problems are on the rise!" the headlines screamed.

But of course two data points is not a real trend, so we will have to wait until this year's numbers are in to see if there is even a micro-trend on new car problems.

Sure, and think if you paid $30,000 - it would be even more disappointing.

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Harley Davidson used to have the worst reputation as far as quality. Everything used to constantly leak out of them, all over the garage.

But look, now BMW is the worst bike over a 3 year period!

So Harley owners can defend themselves and say "Hey, at least it's not a friggin' BMW....." as they trailer their bikes in for repair.

percentage-of-bikes-with-problems_large.jpg

So, is having 30% problem rate with your product too high of a number?

Do new Stern pinball machines have an average problem rate of more than 30%? (non wear items, of course).

Will people keep buying BMW bikes, even though there are so many problems with them? Yes, of course they will.

Buy a Russian sidecar motorcycle if you need more of this kind of "quality" in your life.

That's why every time I go to someone's house they always have a dead Adams Family or Playboy in their basement. People buy this stuff and have no idea what they are in store for maintenance wise, so that stuff just sits for a decade or more; keys lost long ago.

Same thing when people buy used CNC machines at auction or from a landlord and then put them in their garage at home. They call my boss and have a heart attack when they hear it's $500 an hour for service plus parts and travel time.

But just like Pinball, CNC mills are commercial equipment and come with commercial service requirements.

You need to have deep pockets, or be a jack of all skills........

Customers who bought from a LOCAL distributor at least have someone to call for in home service.

A tech who can solder a new light board, replace a coil stop or apply a new decal.

It's the customers who bought from out of state and don't know anything about servicing pins that will soon have a new basement corpse.

The Pin came with in home service - because it was marketed to housewives.

Coinop games are commercial equipment - no in home service included.

The local distributors were sent to fix them.

I only got one call asking if I could service a Pin from a dist, but I was out of town and somebody else took care of it.

Plastic ramps have been around since the 80s (think Space Shuttle and Comet) and are sometimes chosen just for the speed of the play (TRON) or visibility (WhiteWater) .

Lockbar clasps are pretty normal if you come from the 1970-80s world of servicing video games.

Oh, yes.

You should have been there helping us with the deployments.

Most games are indeed commercial coinop games, but every once in a while they make something like IM Classic for you.

IM_Classic.jpg

Routes in my region are growing.

Many arcade pubs opening too with vidgames and pins.

By law, if they have coin doors, they are considered commercial coinop amusement devices (even if set to freeplay) and must have a license in many cities.

I put a dozen of these blank doors on an arcade pub's pins in order to skirt the licensing law:

BlankCoinDoor.jpg

They have not had a single game broken into since I installed them.

Don't be afraid to let us know who the sucky distributor was.

I'd hate to accidentally give a guy like that my money............

ty!

Once I get my hands on 'em there is nothing to complain about.

Always.

Stern's balls are only OK, the "super shiny" ones are excellent.

Cue faked picture of Star Trek playfield in .......3.....2......1......