If looking at the images correctly, that right side maxes out at 40. Whereas you can really collect up to 100 soldiers. Does that mean you have no idea how many you really have after 40 without trapping up and looking at a details screen? That seems to be important information that you really need to know before starting a job. The diff between 40 and 100 is huge. Is there something that I am missing?

I know Karl from IEPinball also wants to see the absolute soldier count on that main screen. Unless that is a percentage of the 100 possible. It is really necessary info to determine if you want to start a job. Maybe JJP is listening and will add it in a future update.

Just got invoiced for my CE balance. Hopefully that means it will ship relatively soon.

Cointaker

CE's have been on the line since the beginning of June (almost two weeks now). I just got invoiced for the remaining balance on my domestic CE yesterday. That would be an indication that either domestics are beginning on the line or will be shortly. I guess we will see.

I ordered pretty early but through a distributor. All I know is that they invoiced me and I paid it. Would be a real bummer if it is still months out and they asked for final payment.

And that is my concern. I have not received a response to my email inquiry. If they sent me a final invoice now and it doesn't ship for months, it will be my first and last purchase from them. However, until I know otherwise, will give them the benefit of the doubt.

Jersey Jack numbers are no indication of build order. In fact, they can be explicitly requested.

Yes , they have a process but the game numbers aren’t order of build and don’t be so sure they that aren’t mostly random. Some people have requested and received the same CE number on multiple of their JJP machines. I guarantee you that they haven’t build close to 350 CEs already which would be the case of those numbers were based on build order.

That isn't exactly correct. You can't call and get to a person right away. However, when I was having a node board issue several months back, I submitted a ticket online and after a few email exhanges, Eddie had me call him and we spent 30 or so minutes on the phone isolating the problem. In regards to getting the replacement node board, I either had to go through my distributor or order myself from Macro, Pinball Life or other online part supplier.

Looks like another code update (1.08), maybe to fix the all red issue reported earlier?

I was told 6 days ago that mine would ship in "about 10 days". That would be end of this week or beginning of next week. We must be getting close.

Not that it matters. They need to learn from Stern and others on this one. "Minor bug fixes", "Updates display, speech, sound", and items like that from previous updates are essentially worthless anyhow.

Got my CE Shipping Notification today. Don't have the delivery date yet but hopefully next week.

Mine is from a distributor.

Just got the call from the shipping company, Wednesday is Godfather CE day for me.

I have never had to adjust my flippers on any NIB pin regardless of manufacturer. They should be adjusted properly before leaving factory. Although it seems to happen from time to time based on others posts here. I will let you know what mine look like when it comes on Wed.

Shouldn't need a new spring, but I have owned a machine or two where I did have to upgrade the spring to one with more tension. Unfortunately, builds do vary. Can anyone tell the group what color spring is in there now?

Here are the spring colors by order of weakest to strongest:
https://pinballmedics.ca/product/ball-shooter-plunger-inner-spring-all-colours/

I know Stern uses those springs, maybe JJP uses different ones.

My CE is suppossed to be delivered today. Will be interesting to see my situation regarding this.

Could always order this and go with trial and error. May be able to tell which is stronger and weaker when the GF spring is removed.
https://www.marcospecialties.com/pinball-parts/10-148-XX

What pitch do you have the playfield set at? Could it be a bit too steep? Just throwing out ideas for you.

Well, it’s here. But will have to wait til tonight or tomorrow to set it up. This thing is a tank. So much heavier than my Sterns.

IMG_8025 (resized).jpeg

It’s been a while since I sold my Hobbit and had to move that out of the basement. Talk about a back breaker. A wide body JJP is worse.

So, got mine all set up but having a little issue with bad guy drop target. Occasionally ball will get trapped in bad guy and target will try to drop but doesn’t. It eventually trigger a bad guy drop malfunction. When I go into coil test, the target goes up and down perfectly over and over.

I got the error to reset in the drop test but a ball can still get trapped in the bad guy when the ball is resting on the target. If I push the ball up a tad, it drops. It is like the weight of the ball is preventing the coils from making the drop go down. I see there are two settings for target. Drop intensity and drop fire time. Drop intensity is already highest. Only thing to increase is drop fire time.

Anything else I can check, I can only imagine that the ball is pushing the target into the playfield and the coil to drop it isn’t pushing it back far enough for the spring to pull it down?!?

I guess I will play with the fire duration when I get back but I don’t think that will fix it.

Some feedback to you guys on this isssue related to the upper flipper skill shots being impossible. With my 1.09 Godfather CE that I just got yesterday, the upper flipper skill shots work. The ramp stays down. My guess is that when you guys plunge, a switch is registering somewhere which invalidates the skill shot and thus raises the ramp. Mine stays down.

I say the above because I had a similar problem with the 3 bank and sling skill shot. I would hit those and never get the skillshot. It turns out that the gate as the ball falls out of the shooter lane and down toward the playfield was adjusted such that it would only register on a powerful shot that swung the gate higher than the ball. A slow roller wouldn't register it. I had to adjust the switch to make it more sensitive.

Short story, the right things have to happen for these skills shots to work. If all the switches on the path aren't activated, you won't get the skill shot. If a false trigger of another switch happens, it could invalidate the skill shot. Have a look and make sure all the right switches are triggering and none of the others are. It may fix your issue.

Are you sure no other switches are accidentally registering when you plunge? I know a couple people had issues with their spinners triggering on vibrations. If that happened on your full plunge it would likely kill the skill shot. Are the purple lights indicating a skill shot still lit after the ramp goes down?

I assume you adjusted your plunger to be centered? Mine does make it around more often than not on full plunge.

Finally got her all set up. Below is the list of adjustments/fixes I had to make to make it work well.

1 Adjust the left flipper button switches. When I got my GF, if I didn’t press the button HARD, the upper flipper didn’t fire. Had to adjust the second leaf switch so it fired a bit earlier but still allowed staging.

2 Adjust the switch on the gate that is just outside the shooter lane. It was only triggering when a ball blasted through there. It would not trigger on slow roller (skill shots) that rolled through there. It was adjusted so the gate would have to swing up more than the ball in height to trigger. Adjust those leaf switches and all is good.

3 Play around with bad guy drop. It was not always dripping when a ball was behind it. Adjusted fire time and slightly adjusted mech and it seems to be working now. Still not convinced it is completely fixed but problem hasn’t happened in a few games.

4 Adjusted auto plunger prongs a bit to make better contact with ball

IMG_8032 (resized).jpeg

Personally, the manual plunge is more of a big deal than the auto plunge. It isn't all about strength either. For instance, turning up the auto plunger power too high can make it NOT go around. On mine, too high cause the ball to jump too much out of the shooter lane and then rattle around and not make it around. Clean hits on the ball with minimal spin (plungers centered on ball) will have a better chance of going around. When my ball doesn't go around, it is due to it rattling around after leaving the shooter lane.

One more adjustment to add to my list:
5 Occasionally, when a ball would get temporarily locked under the lift ramp and behind the up-post, when the post released, it wouldn't drop quickly. It would sometimes slowly drop or even take a flipper hit to get it to drop. I lifted the playfield and noticed friction on the coil coming down... but only when rotated a certain way. At some rotations, it would drop immediately, at another it would not come down on it's own. It seems that the post is probably not 100% straight and the post was biased to the lower part of the hole and rubbing too much at a certain rotation. A little bending of the coil/post bracket moved the post up a bit in the hole and now the post drops immediately no matter what rotation of the coil/post. If anyone experiences that, this may be the remedy.

The only other thing that bugs me a bit is that it seems the spinners on the CE are different than the LEs. My spinners don't always stop in an up down position... they can be slightly angled. I also saw a stream of a CE recently where they had the same "issue". Why is this an issue? Well, it seems that when the spinner is tilted back, when you hit the spinner, it slows the ball down a bit and doesn't rip the spinner like it should because the bottom of the spinner is actually pointed a bit to the ball. I have played with it for a bit but couldn't find a way to consistently get it to stop and rest in the same position.

Dang, was all that disassembly necessary to replace a USB Controller board or were you doing other things like replacing rubbers, etc?

No, if you select the "Super Skill shot" to the Compound it will immediately start multiball even on default settings. Don't confuse this with the "Skill shot" to the Compound which you would have to do twice to lock 2 balls and start multiball. You can only do the "Super Skill shot" to Compound once per game. Regular skills shots are unlimited.

I had the bad guy drop target malfunction and I went through the bad guy device test (not the drop coil test) a few times and it went away and hasn't come back. Worth a shot if everything else is working fine.

This game can be frustrating as hell but it keeps me coming back. My greed usually burns me, pisses me off, makes me scream bad words, etc. Yet I press that damn start button again for more torture. I was really having a problem breaking 150M then this happened. After working up a sweat as it did get a bit chaotic with multi multiballs and pressing that button for 10x multiplier, I decided to call it a night. Glad I didn’t give up. Really fun game even if it does get a bit overwhelming at times.

IMG_8069 (resized).jpeg

Did you file a ticket with JJP online? They actually responded to me within hours on my ticket from last Saturday?

You have to use it a lot to build the max value. On the weapons lights, one will be red. That is the max you can build. Build it up to that level and start using that weapon. The max build value (red light) will advance. Rinse and repeat.

Basically you want to be using that weapon right after you build it to max value. By doing so, you can get to 10x multiplier earlier in the game.

People should be entitled to feel however they want to feel. People buy the Collector Edition JJPs and LE Sterns for different reasons. The ones that buy for collectability and uniqueness, have some valid concerns. This is the way these machines were marketed for years. However, times are changing and this is a general trend across multiple manufacturers. The number of JJP CEs/Stern LEs being produced is rising. In addition to that, companies are now making second runs of some of their "limited editions". JJP did that with WOZ and Hobbit, Stern just did it with JP 40th. They are also both now offering CE/LE "exclusive" items for non CE/LE machines. The James Bond 60th mentioned exclusive topper and then later they are selling it separately for any JB machine.

Luckily for me, I buy machines for what you are getting, not collectability. I still think the extra money is worth it. This is my first JJP CE and I have never owned a Stern LE. I have generally been a JJP LE/Stern Premium guy. I didn't see the value in the extras. Now that the market is shifting to being able to get a lot of the "extras" after the fact for the lesser models, I may not get another CE/LE.

I am not upset or pissed off, but I can also see why some people are. We all have different motivations and emotions related to these things. However, the trend is devaluing CEs/LEs as unique, collector machines. Call them what they are becoming, fully blinged out LEs/Premiums.

True, but you won't have that difference soon. Because of your exact rational, demand for the CE will lower and we all know how supply and demand works. The CEs will be available for a couple grand under MSRP especially now that we will have a lot of people thinking the same way. I am a CE buyer and I am prepared for the bigger loss due to this.

What he posted was for the ratings of Godfather CE. It has only be out in the wild for the last 2 months. The LE had more ratings and is listed on the top 100.

In that mech, the coil to drop the target pushes the target back a bit and then the spring should pull it down. The target may be sitting too far forward or the little lever that pushes it back may not be pushing it far enough. I would look at that and see if adjustments to target placement will help.

Have to ask the obvious, have you checked all the connections on the light boards? Unplug and reseat all of them and try again?

I hope it does, but doubtful as 1.12 is just some bug fixes.

There is a big difference between loose connections and unplugged connections. Loose connections (not firmly seated) will cause intermittent issues. It could be as simple as the RJ45 or USB connector not being firmly seated.

Anyway, hope you get it sorted out.

Doh, dupe.

Every machine is different. But like you, I have mine set up where I very, very rarely get a cheap SDTM. Almost never from the bad guy and only occasionally from the right ramp when it zips down the left ramp and I am not paying enough attention.

Now that right outlane. That is a different story.

Pitch, leveling, potentially a bit of adjustments/bends to rails. So many things that affect pinball. I do feel the cheap drains became less with a higher incline.

Let me take some measurements and I will post. Maybe I will set up my rig to stream Godfather soon and post the video to see how it plays vs yours.