Joined the club this weekend! I've played TSPP on location a fair amount, but it seems like a machine that always has something important wrong in the wild. (Weak upper PF flippers make it hard to do much!) Mine is in great shape and came with Cliffys already on the ramps, which was a pleasant surprise. Definitely gonna spring for the shooter lane and Itchy hole Cliffys, and thinking pretty hard about ColorDMD and the TV mod.

This game is so deep and challenging. Love how easy it is to have a few bad games in a row and then boom, everything clicks. It's a keeper!

Only one blurry pic for now. Too busy playing to take good ones. Just wanted a shot of my two friends together.

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Yeah, I think they go together really well. TSPP is strategy for days, WWFRR is a pretty clear progression game. I'm not going to be in a position to add a third any time soon, but I'm thinking something fast and flowy would really round out my small collection.

Thanks for the heads up! I'll probably hold off until after you're back.

So with TSPP being only my second pin, there are a lot of fixes/tweaks I haven't yet had to do. In this case, adjusting VUKs.

The kickout from the IS hole started out doing what I think is the normal behavior (kicking to the left flipper) but as I've played more, it first started hitting the top of the right sling, and now seems to have settled on chucking the ball SDTM. Obviously not ideal. How can I tweak this?

Meanwhile, the VUK under the upper playfield is only successfully kicking the ball all the way through the hole and onto the upper PF about 30% of the time. It always gets there eventually, but this is a pretty big flow killer. In this case, I definitely want to have a good idea of what I'm doing before taking the time to remove the upper playfield to access it.

Any tips very much appreciated!

Have one on the way! May hold off on futzing with it until I get that installed to see what the impact is.

Great, thank you! I'll fiddle with it a bit and report back.

Day 10: I love her but she treats me so bad.

I've still only put two scores up on the reset high score list. I can only seem to pull off one good ball out of every 12 or so.

The first was a couple of days in. 27 mil. Nothing amazing, but was psyched to punch my name in for the first time.

Just got the second a few minutes ago. Played a few gams when I came home from work, totally forgetting my eject hole cliffy had come in (thanks again, Cliff!) Once I remembered, I took the time to put it in (sidenote: putting cliffys in is a great task for noobs like me to feel more comfortable diving in and unscrewing/disconnecting things.) Started a new game to make sure it ejected smoothly and the plunger felt fine after the install. Didn't even plan to play the game out. Nice solid plunge, hit the Comic Book Guy skill shot, and was about to flip it off when I realized, hey, good start to the ball! Let's play it out!

Hit the right orbit hurry up, got control, hit the left orbit hurry up and then nailed the treehouse ramp hurry up. Clapped my hands. Damn good start!

Up onto the upper playfield (sidenote: VUK is firing 100% again after some adjusting), started TV mode, locked ball one. Nice.

Missed the skill shot (D'oh!) relit TV Mode, hit the garage, up to the upper playfield, started another TV mode, locked ball two. Woah.

Made the skill shot, but ignored the hurry ups. Same as ball two, started multiball with three TV modes running. Yowza!

Obviously can't do a graceful play by play here, but it was definitely my best multiball to date. Highlight was when I was down to two balls and they started to come down the middle more or less in a perfect line. First one got by but I managed to save the second into the slings, where it quickly shot into the already lit Itchy hole to keep things rolling.

Also hit my first super jackpot! I've played a ton of RBION over the years, and while I think that's ultimately a more satisfying build-up and release for a super jackpot, I felt a similar rush with this one! If my collection grows a bit, I'd love to have a RBION alongside this. Maybe put a CAUTION: DEEP END sign above them.

Ball came to an end somewhat unceremoniously, but by the time I was through I stood at 41 million with an extra ball gained from shooting the right ramp. Surely this would be the game where I took the GC score from KEF!

I'll spare you the gory details, but there were two separate outlane drains off the plunge involved. It was humiliating, but honestly, I ain't even mad. Keep kicking my ass, darling.

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FWIW, Pinbits has I+S protectors in stock (http://www.pinbits.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=13_19&products_id=74) and it was less than a week between me emailing Cliffy for the eject hole protector and having it installed in my machine.

Not to dissuade anyone from buying from you, of course. I'm sure they'll save on shipping.

Just had another game same as the others: Huge ball one, choke city for the rest. Tried watching Bowen's tutorial for inspiration.

Watching it got me thinking: What rules does everyone keep theirs on in the home environment? Seeing Bowen play it on competition mode made me realize how much easier it is to get Alien Invasion when it's set up that way. What other rules do people play with?

Personally, I've been enjoying playing that an EB is earned at 12 Million, instead of a replay. Normally, I don't like having points earn extra balls, but I find it's a good way to give me another chance on games where I start out reasonably well. (Not ready to resign myself to five-ball just yet.)

On Wednesday I moved to a new place. The move went well. I was on a second floor walkup, but am now ground level. For obvious reasons, that's much better.

Finally got the pins running this afternoon. I had them setup a few days back, but with so much on my plate, leveling and verifying that they played 100% took a backseat. But today, finally got a few games in. They're setup about the same here as the old place (if anything, maybe a little steeper) but it's clear the new place has much more pin mojo.

First game on TSPP, finally reached Secret Stash for the first time. I drained instantly, but hey, I made it!

I was gonna shut it down for the night, but decided to do one more. Recently, I've been focussing on nothing but TV Modes in an attempt to get to Invasion. Tonight was the night! I made it to four balls in Invasion, and got Daredevil Mania along the way. Not bad at all.

I still have so much to learn about this machine. So many rivers to cross, some I know I never will. But for tonight, at least, I'm thrilled.

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Don't know if I've ever actually posted in the thread, but I joined the club about a year ago. TSPP is my second pin, and while I loved my first (WWFRR) there's really no comparison. Obviously.

Sold WWFRR a couple of weeks back, and finally got around to giving TSPP the love it deserved:

-Replaced wall plug (ground was cut on the original. Really shouldn't have put this off so long. )
-ColorDMD
-Sparky TV v2
-Lermods (Trough lighting, Kwik-E-Mart decal, flying saucers, bus)

All the mods have been great, and the creators plus the Mezel crew have been very friendly. All highly recommended!

Hadn't really messed around with mods before this, so it was great to get a bunch and see how they run. Now that I've got a sense for it, I'm probably going to take a stab at DIYing speaker lights, and if it goes well, I'll give an LED Backbox a shot.

Also want to address the speaker hum at some point. Found this thread and may try the demonstrated fix. It doesn't bother me too much while I'm playing, but I'm sure once I fix it, I'll wonder how I ever lived with it: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tspp-speaker-humbuzz-fixed

Loving this game more than ever! I'm sure I'll go back to two games before long, but I'm definitely in no hurry.

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It's a joke.

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+1 For ColorDMD and DotXL setting. I loved it from the moment I put it in, but didn't totally appreciate it until I saw another one without it. You can't go back!

I moved to a new place last year, and one of the major drawbacks was the realization that although my TSPP would fit in the basement, I would need to take the head off in order to get it downstairs. I was diligent about taking pictures as I disconnected it, but nonetheless a little reluctant to go through the effort of putting it back together once it was downstairs.

I finally took the plunge last night, and it's up an running again with everything working perfectly! Not much sizzle to this story, I realize, but TSPP is only my second machine and I hadn't had to do anything nearly that involved until now. So I offer this as encouragement: Go slow, take lots of pictures, and there's no end to what you can accomplish.

Glad you guys started talking about NVRAM. I was long overdue on switching my batteries and discovered one had started to leak! Didn't make it any further than the battery holder so I yanked 'em out of there and placed an order for a 6264 that should be arriving today.

But yes: As best I can tell it's a dead simple install and I just dodged a bullet.

For anyone following along with trying to install NVRAM: One side is "notched" so you know which way to install it, but the chip I replaced was not itself notched. Every *other* chip was (on the bottom, in my case) but this slowed me down a bit when I went to do it.

But it's done and working perfectly!

One of the joys of living in Philly is super tight staircases. I just completed my second move including my TSPP. Head comes off, down the stairs in parts, put it all back together. Second time was much easier.

With that said, while disassembling a wire came loose from the J3 connector. It's the only wire that was going there. Do I need to fix this? And if so, what would I need? I can strip the wire and jam it back in there, but will that work or do I need a special tool?

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Everything's all hooked up and running smoothly with one exception: The TV on the upper playfield.

Could the loose wire above be the culprit? If so, not sure how to fix it. If not, what else should I look for? I checked the connection on the TV itself, but couldn't figure out which connector(s) in the head correspond to it. I did check every connection in the head but perhaps one is still misaligned or loose.

Hey all! Philadelphia homes have very small doorways so I recently had to disconnect and reconnect the head for a move. I'd done this once before with no problems but am having an issue:

Everything plays correctly but the TV/Timer doesn't display anything. I checked all the connections in the head and everything seemed fine except for two things:

1. I have a cable that's not hooked up to anything. I can't find an empty connector on any of the boards but this seems like it can't be right.
2. There's a connector with a single pink wire that came out while moving. I re-crimped, but am wondering if that might be the culprit and I should try crimping again.

Appreciate any ideas on where to go from here!

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