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Get a pinball machine. Any pinball machine. Take off the apron. Hold a pinball 300mm above the surface and drop it. You will get a dimple with a diameter of 4.2 +- 0.2mm. I have done this dozens of times on machines of all eras. It’s so simple to verify for yourself.
Quoted from PinMonk:You don't have to measure.
Yes you do, sir. Yes you do. Otherwise whatever you have to say carries no weight and is easily dismissed.
Quoted from swinks:maybe a unbiased group of people should make a video, like a mythbusters approach and test playfields from different eras and do a good video to explain once and for all the differences between the eras of playfields, the types of wood, the layers, types of clear and then perform a series of tests
- Janka Hardness Tests
- ball drop tests
- automatic shot - loop, impact etc
and gather some true data along with before and after still images.
Yes timber is most probably softer now due to the demand across the globe and instead of hard ply layers throughout it is just on the exterior. For environmental reasons clearcoats are changing and going to a more flexible and forgiving clears
But there are still some quality issues as the clears shouldn't peel up at the shooter lane within a few hundred games so then that alone gets people concerned and question quality.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/live-dimple-quest-the-ultimate-test#
Quoted from PinMonk:Well, the wood hardness already HAS been measured with a gauge and new Sterns came up among the softest. So if you NEED that because you can't SEE the craters, there you go.
Why don’t you just go and do the ball drop test under the aprons of all your machines?
Quoted from PinMonk:Why bother?
Because then you could go to all the dimpling threads and present your data and be more persuasive. Otherwise people will just argue with you and not necessarily believe you.
So for those who want to fixate on the hardness test data, let's get some context. A range of hardness numbers from 200-140 will change a dimple diameter from 3.7mm - 3.1mm.
So, for this list in the "key" post 
, I'll put the difference in dimple size next to it..
(Stern) GB PRO: 92-104 HB : 4.2mm
(CGC) MMR: 119 HB : 4.0
(Stern) GB PRE: 133 HB :3.8
(Stern) TSPP: 138 HB (mini playfield was 153 HB) : 3.75
(Stern) TRON: 155 HB :3.55
(Stern) MET: 157 HB :3.55
(Stern) ST PRE: 161 HB :3.45
(JJP) TH: 163 HB :3.45
(Bally) TOM: 170 HB :3.4
(Bally) AFM: 177 HB :3.3
(Stern) LOTRLE: 178 HB :3.3
(Williams) NGG: 181 HB :3.25
(JJP) WOZ: 184 HB :3.25
So the hardness data does nothing to indicate whether something dimples or not, or even if the difference is significant. Good luck determining the half a millimeter difference in the average size of all your dimples, which is exactly the difference indicated by the "$10k" hardness test machine.
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Sydney, Oz