Excited to have officially joined the club! Looking forward to tearing into this one.

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So if I get a new game that works (as in, I can play it without having to shop it to literally get it working) I like to get to the wizard mode before I shop it. So in this case, I have a while before I dig into it.

One thing I've noticed consistently is that the game has trouble "keeping track" of balls during multiple-ball. For example, it doesn't consistently kick out the right number of balls during each multi ball. Khan multi ball will sometimes kick out 2 and sometimes kick out 4 (and I think it's supposed to only kick out 3 every time).

The balls sometime take a bit of time to register when draining.

Upon starting up, the trough kicker kicks twice.

I'm guessing I just need to go through and clean and maybe replace the trough optos, but any other things I should be looking at?

I mean upon powering on and booting, not starting a game.

I was about to recommend exactly against this, but I guess everybody's eyes are different.

Spotlights are a must on this game IMO.

If you do an LED job on a WPC game without an LEDOCD board, well, you've done an incomplete LED job.

It gets expensive.

Shadow doesn't have as much dimming in the GI so much as it has very uniquely timed flickering that is unpalatable in my book when LED'd without the LEDOCD in the inserts and GI.

I kind of always tried to overlook the downsides of an LED job without the LEDOCD boards but a few years back a client had me fully go over his WPC-S games and do full shop jobs on them with the OCD boards included and now I refuse to LED a WPC game without them (unless the customer TRULY is always right and REALLY insists)

Are all the coils correct?
No mismatched leg lengths?
There isn't a "coil pulse" setting in the menu like there are in Data East games is there?

Never quite thought about having the flipper bats be yellow, but they look pretty cool.

Hi all,

I've been working on my shadow the past few days and I've been thinking about modifying the sanctum bottom switch to be a roller style actuator rather than the leaf style actuator. Seems like it would make a lot more sense to do that, but would require drilling new switch mount holes closer to the end of the bracket. Anybody do modifications to this mech to make it a little more sturdy?

I've also noticed quite a few small mechanical differences and a few red boards in my shadow..... playfield artwork is definitely the production run but wondering if I might have an early sample or test on my hands. There were a bunch of chicken scratch test notes in the envelope/goodie bag when I picked it up.

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If anybody has a magnet & opto bracket w/nut part A-18387 to sell me that would be considerably cheaper than buying one from Marco, please let me know. Magnet is fine, but the core and bracket on mine are absolutely shot.

Alright folks. The sun is shining, but the ice is slippery.

Needing some collective head scratching on an issue I'm having with my Shadow.

The issue I'm running into is that the magnet isn't catching the ball on the initial part of the ball lock show cycle.

Upon rebuilding my flippers (wow so snappy and strong how did I wait so long to do this!) the ball now flys so fast through the optos that the magnet isn't able to stop the ball in its tracks. Instead, it flys past, bounced off the drop target, which gives it a little air, and then misses the ball entirely on its way back down. This only happens when I'm shooting a forehand shot on the left flipper and doesn't bounce across the metal guides (swooshes only).

I'm afraid to "just increase the strength of the magnet" by moving it closer to the playfield because I feel like that's what originally caused so much burn and drama in its original run out on location. My Sanctum area is pretty nice and was mylar'd early so I'd hate to damage it.

I am having a hard time figuring out if the optos are the issue or how to get them to align better of send signal quicker (if that's even a thing). They work properly in the test setting and they are solidly mounted onto the bracket. I've cleaned them (they were a wee bit dirty but not bad).

It is NOT an issue of the Sanctum drop so don't even suggest it. Fully rebuilt. Switch working actively. Drop target sequence works perfectly every time. When the magnet does catch the ball, it throws it in properly and everything.

Magnet coil reads 4.9 ohm. Seems in spec.

I'm going to go ahead and replace the optos anyway to see if that makes a difference.

Any thoughts?

Nope. You're misreading the issue I'm describing. The magnet works properly and goes through its sequence properly (you can hear the magnet work through its sequence). In fact, if you make the shot cleanly, the magnet missed the ball, then you make the shot again in a more gentle fashion before it does its release and throw, the sequence and ball lock/throw effect still works perfectly.

@mad_dog_coin_op, or anybody in this thread, maybe I'm not fully understanding the magnet adjustment. I assumed that the adjustable threaded core, moving farther down the thread (closer to the playfield righty tighty fashion) increased the magnet power. Is that the correct line of thinking? About how far poking through the magnet do you all have yours adjusted to?

I think the issue is the optos still. I've noticed that mine aren't perfectly aligned through the cut holes in the metal guides. Partially because the magnet was over adjusted and was bending the bracket, and misaligning the optos. Was hoping that recentering the optos would magicaly fix the issue but no dice. Still can't catch the ball.

Well, I keep finding new things/oddities about my Shadow. First, red boards all over. Second, a bunch of mechanical differences with the sanctum targets. Then, this: my the steel guides have a different cutout than most guides I've seen on every other production Shadow out there... Seems like my game was still undergoing some tweaking when it went out on test/sample/early production/late proto???

Every other Shadow I've seen has the opto holes cut all the way down to the bottom of the guide (making the magnet adjustment actually do something). Right now if I adjust my magnet to be stronger, it puts the optos out of alignment of these holes.

Talk about a mystery.

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They do, but the Shadow Prototype Prototype (like the real deal) had quite a few differences in playfield artwork from what I've seen. I would be surprised if the boards were just leftover from a prototype run as they're not ALL red. Just some of the main light boards.

Is there any way to tell from the serial number where it is in the production run? I've always been told that WPC serial numbers are pretty arbitrary and unless there is a grand record of all the shadows out there with all of their numbers, we won't really be able to gleam much.

From what I can gleam from the labels, it's not anything special.

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Anyway, what's a good way to cut through those guides? I have a feeling hte best way to do it is probably with a Dremel but wondering if anybody has any ideas on how to do something a tiny bit cleaner. I've never had to do any work with these things before.

I feel kind of odd calling this one a victory, but you know what change has made the mode difference with the magnet issue? New balls...

The set Marco has is absolutely the set from CPR. Be warned though: the color isn't great. The blues are way too light and the fading details in the main large "sunset" plastics have a gradient rather than the nice half toning that came with the original pieces.

I've also found that the black stand off posts that hold in the airball plastics and any other bits don't fit snugly like they should. With new standoff posts or the old ones.

Much stronger though. That's nice.

The CPR set (available from CPR or Marco) includes all airball plastics.

If you order on Thursdays Marco offers free shipping on orders over $99.

If you follow their with streams PinTech Live (which I highly recommend watching, I learn something new every time) they give out a free shipping code every thursday at 3pm est.

The sun is shining, but the ice is slippery...

I can't seem to find anywhere in the manual that indicates which stand off posts are supposed to be supporting the in-lane guides... mine clearly have 9 of the same and 3 shorter ones.

Anybody know off the top of their head which size these SHOULD be and/or where in the manual it points out the position for these?

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Where are all y'all putting your spotlights? I installed some on the top of the slings, but found them wholly too intrusive visually and have never been a fan of how pinstadium lights look too side heavy.

Thoughts:
I am pretty strict on WPC games: if I'm going to LED them, I want to do it right. What that means to me is doing warm white throughout the GI, then Sunlight or Warm White throughout all the inserts, Frosted 1SMD usually, WITH AND ONLY WITH the LEDOCD Gi and Insert board. The attract light show on games with large inserts is too good to fuck with, and the GI dimming is awful when not using the LEDOCD boards. If a client asks me to shop out their game and do a full LED package, I will insist that they also get the LEDOCD boards.

I played the shadow recently at a convention and noticed that the inserts didn't look that bad without the LEDOCD boards. The attract show lighting isn't as sweepingly interesting feeling as most WPC games.

This got me thinking as well: in what moments does the GI dim on this game? I know it dims during the multiball startup sequence, but are there any moments where the GI dims during gameplay?

What's with the hate for the original translite? I don't get it.

Only art package I've seen that looks like it fits the game...

I would always take a playfield with wear over a shitty touch up job.

And no Brian, you can't have mine.

Anybody interested in a nearly complete CPR Plastic set? $100? Only thing it's missing is one of the slingshots.

Me after a bad bout with Taco Bell.

Make sure the plastic stud ball guard under neath the shooter lane isn't making it pop into the glass.

It all sounds pretty good but, as always, with most pinsound packages, the orchestration of how the sounds transition into one another is extremely abrupt and clunky sounding. Not a knock on your orchestration, just a limitation of the platform, and why I think the stock boards and ROMs for thees games will always be superior.

Might want to join the Sys80 thread then.

If that's the only problem you have with the CPR plastic set, consider yourself lucky.

Sometimes cleaning the optos is not enough. Sometimes you really must replace them.

I had an issue where I was experiencing a million issues with an opto trough issue. Cleaning and reflowing had minimal effects. Replacing the actual optos themselves can be the silver bullet you need.