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https://www.amazon.com/Yongcun-Screw-Mounts-100pcs-CTM6292/dp/B01JHD8GCO/ref=asc_df_B01JHD8GCO/

Why did you replace the lockdown bar? Isn't the OEM one chrome?

At least one I know showed up with a broken backglass. Looks like it just needed glass.

I'd like to welcome Pinhead1982 who's TBL just shipped from DP. Would you mind sharing high-resolution photos of your under playfield, boards, and cabinet so we can compare any differences between DP builds vs. ARA built ones? From one of the photos you posted, it seemed like the apron might have not been screened. Was that fixed before shipping? Hoping so...

Welcome aboard buddy.

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I've been waiting to update code until I can make an image backup myself. Just haven't done it yet. Need to order a replica ssd. Does anyone know exactly what drive it is?

I already had to get in there fixing things though. My backglass didn't survive shipping. Looked like the foam edge fell out and the head rubbed against the rails scuffing them up. The back glass must have been cracked though because it all broke into pieces as I lifted the head for the first time. Luckily nothing irreplaceable was damaged. The translite was scratched but I already got a new one. I got new glass too and I'll order new rails since the scuff marks won't come out. Like others, my lock bar was scuffed too. Thinking I'll take the opportunity to change the top armor over to copper. I think that might look cool. I'll post details about replacing the glass and translite when I get to it doing it.

I have both mirror and art blades. The mirror is nice to get extra light in the back left corner but I thought it looked odd having a mirrored White Russian and garage. This look works for me. I got the Bally/Williams DMD Mirror Blades from CoinTaker and the fit is just fine.

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Check your translite. The extra one I bought is not the same size as the one my game came with.

FYI - TBL alt side blades are on sale right now for $60: https://www.tiltgraphicsinc.com/product-page/the-big-lebowski-gameblades

I put a powerball in the bowling alley and had all kinds of problems. Mainly, it wasn't registering the ball drain after bowling. So the game would just sit displaying what pins were knocked down and never progress forward. It seems like a software issue too because it never times out. The game sits there and I have to hard reset. I think it's an opto down there and I guess that's why the problems? Not sure. Never had issues with a powerball before but as soon as I put a standard ball back in the problem went away.

1. Installed a complete clear plastic protector set from CoinTaker. Clear for everything but the lower ball guides. I ordered a blue set too and used those here. The blue doesn't look good anywhere else and makes it much darker.
2. Added cabinet/leg protector plastic & felt underneath
3. Added Cabinet button Mylar
4. Greased the rug mech screw with Super Lube
5. Added mylar around the scoop as the metal here bends very easily. Hopefully, Cliffy will sell a better replacement soon.
6. Added flipper overlays - cosmetic only
7. Added Anti-rattle glass tape. Warning - this makes the glass super slick and it slides out easy
8. The rubber is already pretty worn and my game has very few plays on it. I suspect it's from age having sat so long in the box. I've yet to order a rubber set but will soon. I doubt I'll keep white.

9. I didn't put mylar under the lock bar and I wish I had. It's pressing against the decal and has already made some wrinkles. I didn't notice until it had already happened. Thought it could have been that way from unboxing and I never noticed too.

Custom Mylar - keeps the metal from bending too far up
Plastic protector set - clear
Flipper overlays - Purely decrative
Cabinet leg protectors. Im switching my armor so hense the black legs
Plastic protector set - clear and blue
Plastic protector set - clear and blue
Anti rattle glass tape
Rubber worn already
Cabinet button Mylar

*correction - The complete clear plastic protector set came from Pinball Life (PBL-300-0054-00) and the Fluorescent blue slingshot & return lane protector set came from CoinTaker. I unless you're willing to buy 3 different sets as I did, I recommend the Pinball Life clear set as its complete and seems good enough. The CT clear set is thicker so I mixed and matched for the best of everything after spending way more than I should have on clear plastic.

After I played with the powerball I thought about it and decided I didn't really want to have different balls from the alley than on the main playfield. We all know it's not the same ball, but there is a bit of an illusion that the ball could be traveling from the upper playfield to the alley. Keeping it looking like a continuous ball. Knowing its a separate ball takes away from that effect a bit.

Of course, you could change all of your pinballs out to black ones I guess. I change my play balls too often for that personally.

I have felt underneath the plastic protectors.

Post a link to the protectors you're using. The metal ones I've seen previously screw into the cabinet. I'm not interested in putting screwes into the cab but would consider swapping them out for better ones.

@QuickSilverShelb did you take any photos of your disassembly? I put plastic protectors on mine everywhere but the rug shot for the same reason you saw. I would like to install mylar on the rug itself though.

I'm really glad to hear this. The shuttering of the car (especially when a new game starts) is the weakness part of this machine. It feels very much unfinished and janky.

Something I think needs to be added is a way to cancel out of bowling once you're in bowling mode. I've had a ball not register drain after shooting in the bowling alley and the game just gets stuck there. It's waiting for the ball return but it never finds it. It has happened 4 or 5 times to me. There is no timeout or ball search in bowling mode. What I do is hold down start to reset the game. Then the game works fine next time I get into bowling. I think it's just missing the initial drain switch and then the software never checks again.

Is there really anything different from a generic PCB audio board or is it just about having all original parts? Is the plan for long term repairability? The main failure point on those boards is caps right?

Mine stutters badly too. I really want to get in there and research this problem. It only happens on ball start. It must be in software trying to check if the door is closed or not. I'm not sure if Dutch is doing anything custom in MPF or not. I don't recall Mission or P-Roc having native stepper driver support so they might be. I'll need to check if there's an external driver board controlling that. Seems like it would be an easy fix in code if it was in MPF. Maybe I can find time over the holiday weekend to tear into my game.

Has anyone updated straight from .45 to .51? Or do we need to apply .48 first?

I have coin mechs in mine. They weren't provided with the game.

Nope - Stutter is worse than ever on 0.51. It's just faster now.

Adjusting the switch fixed it. I posted a video and explanation in the TBL Maintainance thread.

Trying out copper I got from @sc93cobra. What do you think? This was kind of an experiment and I'm not 100% sure I'm going to keep it on TBL. I'm worried it's going to look odd with my mirror blade on the left side. I've got something else special on order so I'll wait for that to arrive before deciding and installing the rails.

Anyways, here's TBL with copper.
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cpr9999

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Just the tip is inside the hole.

- She

Whatever happened to reaching out to Cliffy about TBL protectors? Did we ever hear if he was working on anything for our game?

Can we buy from him directly or is there a specific distributor of the TBL ones? I can't imagine they'll be too many sets made with only a 100 or so games out there.

How does the Cliffy scoop differ from the oem one that shipped installed from DP?

Can we order those from you directly? Whats the best way to order the TBL stuff?

There's a thread with a bunch of known issues: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-big-lebowski-software-bugs-and-errors-post-them-here

A bunch of us have expressed we'd be willing to pay Koen for his time to update and polish the code. Personally I'd be willing to pitch in some money if we know generally what was trying to be finished.

Here's something different. #TBL with speckle flake rails and lockbar. I decided to go this route over the copper because the mirror blade on the left side looked odd with a shiny copper next to mirror. The design idea here was intended to mimic those Terrazzo concrete floors with the metallic and glass bits embedded. That always felt very 50/60s jetsons to me when done in black. IMO it fits the bowling alley look in Lewbowski. There is a slight metallic sparkel, but it's generally fairly flat in depth. I definitely didn't want it to look like a glitter starfield and I don't think it does. Overall I'm happy with this.
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I had chrome originally but the lock bar and rails got scuffed up either sitting in the box so long or during shipping. Since I was replacing it, I wanted to do something unique. I ordered a set of copper first. It looked amazing, just not so much with the mirror blade I installed after I ordered. I'm going to save that set for a future game. Maybe I'll use the copper set for Cactus Canyon or JJPOTC with and a new lockbar. Willams parts are on a lot of stuff.

No plans to do the legs. I wanted it to look like a floor / counter surface so I only had the main horizontal bits done. The legs are standard powder coat black. Might test out the chrome legs without the yellow plastic just to see how that looks with the sparkle black. Not really expecting that to look good though. The chrome legs might end up being saved for yet another pin someday.

What's up with all of the TBL sales / trades recently? Seems like a whole bunch has been listed. Are people getting tired of it or did a lot of people just buy it on speculation and are getting out? There's still only 100 or so games and like 10% of them have been listed since December. I guess you could say the same for JJPOCT at the moment but I feel that's more of people cashing in on the looney tunes prices those are going for.

Best of luck getting a new TBL from DP. Its been slow but new ones seem to be rolling out. I'm on the lookout for a POTC CE myself but the NIB prices up recently are just insane. I'd personally prefer one that's out of box where I can inspect the playfield. How about a temporary swap? I wouldn't ever sell my TBL but loaning it out to a high end collector... hmm maybe.

I bought some voodoo glass during CoinTaker's 2 for 1 sale. I'm not really seeing a difference here in this $200 a sheet glass. Anyone else got the fancy stuff on their TBL? Am I missing something?

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This group needs this.

Audio On: https://i.imgur.com/TDfBOjX.mp4

Only 49 more years until it's paid off then. Based on DP's schedule, should be about right

How many TBLs have been delivered, 100 - 110? Guessing Barry is going to sell about 100 of these new Aprons. Put me down for one. I had in my mind to do this myself. Bought an apron and colored plastic to laser cut but never got around to do. 100% would rather buy one ready to go with integrated lights. Please don't make this $500 Barry.

$200+ shipping sound good? And can we please buy this through coin taker? I'd rather deal with them please.

Its custom aspect with unique vertical lines of resolution (I suspect 1280 x 480) so yeah it won't be replaceable with an off the shelf LCD because the computer likely has a custom display driver outputting that resolution. I have two very similar displays that were tested in the Last Starfighter Pin:

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https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/southern-california-homebrew-anyone-interested/page/11#post-4420746

Those displays cost us just about $100 shipped from China. I suspect its probably the same LCD panel but the driver board and housing may be different. Its unlikely to have a totally unique LCD panel just for this very small run of displays. But I guess it COULD be possible. Usually need 25-30k units to make custom LCD glass make sense and only a few manufactures actually make the displays. That might explain the crazy price. I wanna say the panel inside the TSL was made by Samsung. I could try popping the TLS display in TBL and test if you'd like. Though its going to be a bit of a wait. Too many things going on right now.

- Time

I'm not so sure I'm in on an apron for $500. I added up everything I've got into my TBL and I'm already over $14,600. Granted I'm not complaining because I know some are in for 21 at this point, but I need to step back and think about dropping that kind of cash on 6 extra LEDs and an apron that doesn't support player cards.

I'm impressed. Looks like its one of these LiteMax products then being, 1366x510. Seems like its the SSD1722-A. LiteMax are industrial displays. I looked at them when trying to find displays for TLS but it was too costly. They make a way better screen than what I ended up using.

With the LED lighting, what we'd really need would likely be LED control boards and driver boards and not necessarily the panels. Its unlikely the panel would go out unless it got damaged. I'd think the control boards would fail beforehand. From the data sheet, control board AD6038GA and LED driver board LID17A is whats in there. Wonder if those could be bought cheaper as a backup. $500 seems like a lot for a backup display. How many is a "small run" If we ordered 20 could we get a better price? How much did Barry quote you? DP must have bought a whole bunch up front.

California just hit me with a $1,277 tax bill for the TBL I imported last year. Wow.

I'd be interested in one.

Thought - These are likely going to be fragile as they'll be the furthest part sticking out from the front of the cabinet. Probably fine for home use, but shipping with these unboxed installed will be risky. Maybe this is why DP dropped this?

What about using translite material? Then designs could just be printed similar to the current start button design. In theory, we could customize the colors by changing out the plastic printed layer ourselves. I've done something similar with transparency film for my coin slots on other games.

Is it odd that two protos are up for sale right now and a 3rd was recently sold?

Personally I wouldn't want one with such different boards. At least we know the earlier ARA protos are interchangeable with current boards.

Thats what I mean by interchangeable. With the Xytech ones you have to worry that all the connectors might be slightly different. Screw holes for the mounting to the play-field will for sure be different. You have to hope the code is still the same for future updates. And who knows what other misc brackets and loose customs bits might be hard to come by. Without an ARA TBL side by side to compare this could be a big undertaking converting it. We know the playfields and Williams off the shelf parts are exactly the same right? Xytech didn't remakes those. We can assume the cabinet is standard too.

Yeah if you got it for a crazy good price I could see doing a project. But it would be a project for sure. Currently its not priced like that.

You can indeed light the bowling ball start button mod but the LED in the original start button isn't bright enough. The original single chip LED makes the mod very dim. However you can use a 4 chip LED which is plenty bright enough to light up the ball.

One issue: a #555 4-chip LED won't fit inside the button housing by default. There is a +1.65mm difference in the diameter between the original and brighter 4 chip bulb. I disassembled the white plastic button plate and used a 1/2" drill bit to widen the hole. The wider LED fits fine after some wiggling.

I found warm white LED looked better than cool white. Using an actual yellow LED looked very dim and bad. FYI, I'm using these LEDs: https://www.cometpinball.com/products/4smd-bulbs

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We're expecting a code update to integrate the new apron with the game lighting sometime soon. As far as we know thats the only update right now

I've had 3 lit and I'm by no means a strong player. My average game score is round 7 - 9 million on TBL. "Characters" & "Rug Modes" are easy enough if you focus on them. But "Collect Balls" is a lot of bowling - You can collect one with each start ball through the skill shot (Not impossible). "Mark it Zero" has been hard for me because you need to quality it and hit the shot 5 times (Not impossible but I've only done maybe 2 out of 5). I'm actually not sure what "Super Jackpot" is but "Car modes" are hard for me. Its a ton of shots on the upper playfield to get it going and then it resets on drain. I've never tried just going for car but I suspect it too is not impossible for a strong player.

I'd say the Wizard is definitely possible but probably not by me. Karl from iepinball could do it no problem. I'd watch that but as I understand it, TBL doesn't have a Wizard mode programmed yet. Rensh has probably done it multiple times with his insane TBL scores.

I've never seen a ball search work for mine. More than once I've had a ball end up back down the shooter lane. It just sits there and you need to power cycle the game. I've also had a ball sit in the scoop more than once and the game also just sits there requiring a power cycle.

I'm running 0.51, what version are you on?

Logically, not sure what should happen if the ball gets back down the shooter lane. If it doesn't auto-fire it should at least let you press the launch button to get the ball back out.

So excited for 0.55v code. Where's the beta tester's signup?

I installed Rocket City Pinball's (@skyking2301) bowling pin posts in a few spots on The Big Lebowski Here's what it looks like:

Before vs After
Close Up
The fit is a bit tight on TBL, I had to press them into the rods with a small amount of force
Full view

thoughts:

I might get some clear rubber for the posts below the White Russian. Its a little hard to see what they are when the posts are that close to the player. The posts do block a little light vs the original transparent ones but its no issue in the location I installed these. For these reasons though, I won't be replacing the orange posts under the slings.

The posts are pretty high quality, definitely better than I would expect from a 3D printed post. I can't tell its a 3D print when they're installed and they're smooth all around. Definitely worth the $3 IMO.

The two posts in the rear are larger than what TBL comes stock. I played a few games and I couldn't find any play difference. The wider posts work just in this location. In fact, I think it might cover the front edge of the Donny metal guide rail even better.

If this is your style, I recommend them

and here I was just thinking it was looking dimmer than usual. Wish we could choose to just have the alley lights white. The RGB leds are hard to see

Wooo Hooo!! check out what just arrived. I've got a project tomorrow

TBL Starry Lit Apron
Woo Hoo!

I wouldn't trade my TBL for a BBB. Big Bang Bar is ok, but its only value is that it's super rare. TBL is way more fun to actually play

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Monetarily assuming that deal would certainly be a TBL + cash if anyone did offer you their BBB. No one would do a straight up trade between the two.

Decals go all the way up under the siderails. I changed my siderails. Was careful but wasn't too much of an issue. I don't recall using heat at all. The decals pulled away from the wood a little at first, but they were easy enough to press back on when I installed the new rails. The doubleside tape I rolled in an upward motion to keep the decal from pulling away from the wood again. Spent about 90 minutes doing the job from what I remember.

I believe I used a large flat plastic pry tool, the type used to remove car trim pieces. Once I got it started I pulled up on the metal to remove it fully. I wasn't trying to save my original rails though because they were damaged in shipping. This might not work for you if you're trying to save those.

Have we always had total games played audits? Missed when we got that if it was before this update.

Anyways, looking at the number of games I've played, take what I paid for tbl, divide games... and.. oh no... oh no. TBL has cost me $48 per play.

anyone have all the rubber sizes in the game? They don't appear to be in the manual.

I have the blue one on one side of my game.
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-big-lebowski-official-club-thread/page/15#post-5411789

TBL with blue targets and gray post sleeves

Finished a little mod tonight. Changed the red handicap targets to blue and swapped the white post sleeves to gray. The red and white just never really did it for me.

Somewhat related, does anyone have any pictures of early TBL prototypes? I remember seeing a TBL at Expo 2017 where the dude ramp standup targets were teal, not white. I specifically remember this because I recall thinking how I had never seen teal targets before. Can anyone confirm this?

New one for me. Here's a quick little mod of a mod I did on TBL tonight.

I missed seeing the The Big Lebowski text in mirror finish on the original apron after switching over to the lit one. The orange just never really looked right to me so I swapped the orange plastic.

Original Lit Apron
Orange Lebowski Text
Orange Lebowski Text

The LEDs under the apron are all white. The apron itself is held in with just two screws. Very easy to access and change this.
Apron LEDs

Underside of the apron has glued in colored plastic to defuse the light. I used a heat gun to warm up the glue to remove the orange center plastic.
Underside of the apron

Using the original as a template, I cut out a new piece with the miter saw. I used a laminate blade to cut the acrylic sheet cleanly and it worked well.
Cutting the acrylic

I got defused white off amazon the same thickness as the original plastics. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07MG8KTBX
New white plastic

On the front side of the new plastic I installed one way mirror window film. I then cut it to shape with a razor. They sell mirrored acrylic sheets, but I couldn't find any that were also translucent.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B093C4PS28
Mirrored window film

Used double sided tape to put it all back together. The tape is slightly too thick compared to the original. If I ever re-do this I'll likely use hot glue next time.
Lit apron mod, now white unlit
Lit apron mod, now white lit

The white really ties the room together. Its not any more distracting while playing and looks a lot cleaner IMO.
White Lebowski Text

Whole project took about an hour from start to clean up. I have lots of left over material. If there's enough interest from people with this lit apron, I may consider making a one time run of a few extra white plastic pieces. DM me if this is a mod you'd do on yours.

Referencing: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/the-big-lebowski-official-club-thread/page/57#post-6537553

Made a stack of extra translucent mirrored plastics pieces for the TBL lighted apron mod. These are to replace the orange text and make it white/mirrored. I think these will only fit the standard lighted apron, not the EA one. Read my earlier post for what's involved to install and DM me if you'd be interested. These are just left over material from my mod project. I'm not planning to make anymore. I'll be at expo next week. If you let me know beforehand I'll just give you one there.

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Where did the Black pinball come from? Any issues with the Optos on the drain? I had an issue with those when I tried to use a white powerball. Wouldn't trigger the optos about half the time.

This is my favorite thing in the 1.0 code:

**Walter will now complain when you select him as a bowling challenger on Shabbos (saturday). If your date/time is off you can change this in the PC's BIOS for now.

So unnecessary yet so amazing