So can you put any LED bulb in or does it have to be the ones provided by Stern?

This thread has at least one example of someone saying Stern stuck it to them on a node board within the first 12 months. The guy never said who his distributor was though.

Stern needs to get the price point down on these parts. Gomez during a seminar he was giving for Stern promised us the new system would be more reliable and cheaper, neither is true...at least not for the consumer (perhaps it is vastly cheaper for Stern and they are just not passing the savings down to us).

not sure TBT, but spike is a finicky bitch

I wish I knew how much of the market is still operators vs home owners.

Pinside and KLOV seem to represent home owners, hobbyist and vendors. Surely Stern is aware of our concerns.

Would seem Stern and all other companies would want to promote and preserve this hobby by building things that
we can maintain. 5k+ is a big investment in fun. Being able to maintain that is important.
Who kept things alive when pinball wasn't popular.

We actually use lighted magnifiers that resemble a microscope at work, but obviously designed for looking at small parts. We started out decades ago using 0805 SMD parts (0.080" x 0.050"), then 0603, and now 0402 (0.040" x 0.020") is fairly common. We even have 0201 in some designs, with even smaller (not sure what size) in some of the labs. My hands are steady, but even a 0402 looks like dust at times, given my eyes aren't as sharp nowadays. Can't recall the scope magnification off the top of my head.

I think it is very lopsided towards homes.

My logic for that comes from seeing people’s collections vs what I can find on location in my area. I count the number of Stern Star Trek games in houses vs the few on location... in locations that have since closed. The operator market has pretty much dried up because it isn’t very profitable. Parts and the expenses to keep them going tend to make fairly small profit (if any). So it takes special people to keep going in that.

And that’s not just new games. Classics that have been overlooked out in public have new life in home collections. They get restored and cared for in people’s houses. That’s where the lions share of games are now.

agreed. even though I'm fortunate to live in an area where I have access to no less than 4 locations that purchase nearly every new pinball machine produced, that number is dwarfed by the number of collector's in the area that have impeccable collections as well

for example: with american pinball's houdini, I know one location purchased one, but 2 members of our private league also did the same. so even there, the home buyers are outnumbering the routed machines at a margin of 2 : 1

iron maiden was no different. 3 locations purchased pro machines, but I know of at least 6 or more individuals in my area that purchased, pro, premium or LEs

We have two at work. One has the monitor, which is great because I can just whip out my cell phone to take photos on the screen. Also a picture of the SMD sizes on the head of match, for reference.

images (resized).jpg

images1 (resized).jpg

resistors-on-match-head (resized).jpg

wow! that 01005 is tiny!! what's the make/model of the one with the monitor? that thing is bad ass!

They're from Vision Engineering, although they are both old models we've had for years. Everything is much newer on their website.

The magnifiers like wayout and mbwalker reference are a must, at least for me.

They suck to work with too, no matter how much magnification. Don't sneeze, don't even breathe.

I have a smaller/cheaper one from Oitez: EScope. Cost a bit over $100 10 years ago. Has been fairly valuable for SMT stuff. Can take pictures and even movies.

Microchip Details (resized).jpg

eScope (resized).PNG

$3K-$6K depending on model. ouch
definitely not geared for home use

The market for Iron Maiden has been 50-50, according to people I know in the business and their distributors.

I cant believe that.

Of the 35 Iron Maidens at MGC when it was first release, probably 7 of those were going on route and the rest all went into private collections.

You can get a decent rig on ebay for $200 - $400 depending on features. The better ones have a small screen on them and HDMI out so you can also hook them up to any monitor/tv you want.

If you aren't going to use a display screen, you definitely want to stick to at least a stereoscopic microscope, in my opinion.

I think distributors and what not like to say that, they want people to feel these are true commercial grade devices. I'm with DaveH 100% though. I'd be surprised if the true rout market for Stern is even 5% of their sales...the 50% number they often have tossed out is down right comical.

All I know is some guy I never heard of before posted a video on youtube telling me Spike is bad.

Therefore, it's bad.

Also, 9/11 was an inside job, and the moon landing was faked in a studio!

Hold on I'll dig up the links...

I really wouldn't say that. Five percent?!?!

Here in NYC, I know ZERO people who own an Iron Maiden, and there are about 5 on location. Location pinball still exists, so do operators.

I can see NYC - where people live vertically and space is limited - that being true...cities such as that will be the last places to see the death of location pinball.

Let's talk through this for a second though, NYC has 5 Maiden's... Lake Charles, Louisiana (population 80,000) has 5 Metallica machines in homes and zero on rout. There are three X-Men's here and zero on rout. There are two ACDC's here and zero on rout. There are three TWD's here and zero on rout. The only Stern on rout here is an Indiana Jones that doesn't work right. LC is a better representative of pinball on the national level than NYC where vertical living has impacted the hobby.

There's international sales too. I just can't believe 95 percent of new stern pinball machines are going into private homes.

I mean come on...there's a SHITLOAD of Sterns out there on location. I know you live in Louisana, which has basically zero locations and is a video poker region, so maybe that skews your view a bit.

Supposedly up to 40% of Stern's market is overseas atm. Guarantee you that less than 10% of that is games on route or public locations.

So for Stern to have 50:50 operator / home is virtually impossible.

lol

step out of your concrete jungle bubble Levi.

Madison, a city of ~300k, has 4 or 5 IRMNpro on route. It has aleast 10 in homes that I personally know of and lots more I am sure that are not.
And this is a top 5 per capita pinball density city...

11 Iron Maiden on location in CO, not sure how many home owners, but probly less than half that.
Also, many home guys are dabbling with routing their machines, what does that count as?

OK, we've all established that I've lived in NYC and you guys don't.

But...FIVE PERCENT?!

I'm not sure any of us really have an accurate idea of the split between home/route for Stern. It sure as hell ain't five percent. There's a shitload of Sterns out on route.

Anybody like to make some more rational guesses on the split, worldwide? Since we are all just talking out of our asses, I'm gonna go with 60/40 weighted toward home these days.

all the route tracking apps are pretty good as a combined knowledge base of what is on route and where.

Personal collecitons, not as much, but Pinside still captures a decent percent.

For almost all newer Sterns the Pinside data shows that collectors own the majority of each title.

My guess it at minimum 70% home market currently and likely route has chewed back a small % over the last 2 years (pinball is coming back on route and lots of dabblers)

Shoot, next time you play in a tournament with Trent just ask him. I bet he knows at least what % of his sales are route vs home users. I'd doubt that would/should be private info too. Just saw him at Bat City and would have asked if I would have seen this then.

60/40 seems generous to the operators. What Hilton is describing is the norm here in Toronto as well - one Iron Maiden Pro on location, at least five in private collections, most LEs.

Yes, Louisiana is a particular dead place for location Pinball sadly. Probably close to dead last in the country for games on rout...it almost has to be since there almost no machines in rout anywhere here even in New Orleans (I know of seven machines on rout in New Orleans...).

Things are just getting smaller, no way my magnifying glass would help me with that.

I bought a paragon off a pinsider in st. Charles last year... I think. He said he was trying to route his shadow, did that work out?

While I appreciate the effort to support Stern, I wouldn’t judge Spike so harshly if I hadn’t worked on Spike games and seen the issues myself. You might want to give people a bit more credit for thinking on their own rather than putting it down to them seeing a video on YouTube.

Alas, no that didn’t work out. That game ended up in Shreveport and I believe has now been sold and sent somewhere else.

Besides our scopes at work,we have one of those too (USB camera with close up). Actually rather nice and inexpensive too. Although I tend to use just the scopes most the time with the USB camera doing the job snapping pixs for documentation.

that's to bad, maybe trying a newer game with a bigger theme like TWD or SW. Couldn't imagine shadow would do very well with today's casual players, at least until you develop a following and you can put more then one game at the location. Then some of the casual players turn into pinball players that appreciate older titles like that.

sometimes it's not worth it though, which is why there are dead zones.

You would assume Spike 2 would be double as spiky than Spike 1, but doubling zero is still zero.

So in that regard Spike 2 is a total letdown, but that said I prefer my games less spiky; at least if it's not a Centaur II mod!

Circuit Board Pricing: $1,000 for a new SPIKE II CPU isn't totally out of line. Factory markup for PCB assemblies runs about 6X I think. There might be $150 or $200 worth of parts there.

If you need a new WOZ CPU they are priced at $200 from JJP, if they had them (not available now). It is an MSI H81M-P33 Celeron motherboard and you could get one from Newegg (again, if they had them) for ~$120. Why? Because these are mainstream PC parts, not vertical application-specific parts.

I just bought a Multipmorphic SW-16 I/O board for $45. Pretty simple board - probably right at that 6x markup.

WOZ_CPU (resized).PNG

I might, but that's not what I saw.

I saw a link get posted, and a huge majority of the responses being based solely upon what that guy said in the video. And that's been the source of most of the "I'm afraid to buy a spike game" stuff.

So yes, YOU get some credit for having an informed opinion. The hysteria that grew out of that thread, not so much.

If stern priced the CPU and node boards as cheaply as everyone here thinks they should, the parts for a pinball would probly be less than the cost of a whole machine.
That wouldn't make sense.
I operate several spike and spike2 games, and have never had to buy any of this.
Not sure why the big concern about it. Fear of what "might" happen keeping you from buying awesome machines?
Oh well, please come play mine on location!

I think the paranoid here have it backwards. You guys should all buy NIB and play them until the warranty expires. Then a bunch of folks like me will be happy to buy them from you.

By the way, we now officially have 2 people on Pinside that have had to pay for replacement boards.

I've gotten to tinker around with Spike II over the past couple of days and I still think it's a fantastic system. With the schematics coming and some more explanation of the theory of operation, I think people will change their minds about it.

The sheer number of games using Spike II speaks volumes. There is quality engineering in what Stern have produced here.

Yeah that's sort of the entire problem.

Makes sense to me as you’re not just buying a box of parts. Your buying the art package, the layout, the cabinet, the playfield, the theme, the code, the assembly, the markup, etc. Replacing cost for one system in that shouldn’t cost as much as the whole package.

I overall support spike and as I think I’ve pretty much said from the beginning it has a lot of advantages, I just don’t see the cost justification.

Also a mainstream MB isn’t exactly a fair comparison, yeah they are mass produced which brings down their cost but also the spike board is a much simpler and smaller board.

It is a fair comparison in the sense it is what Stern's competition is offering (JJP) for WOZ.

As another data point is American Pinball. Houdini uses Multimorphic boards. I suspect the CPU they use is the P3-ROC which can be replaced for $175 from Multimorphic. Not sure if that can be loaded with Houdini code by a user. They don't elaborate on this on their site.

I had a broken node board and my friend fixed it.
He replaced an ic and something else (total price 2.20 euro)

So it's fixable...

am I crazy? or did at one time Stern state that they would be offering tech classes to OPs on the new system?

Well, replacement for the board doesn't cost as much as the whole package.
Not sure on the cost of a populated PF, or a wired cabinet, but if you could add those and the board cost and it equaled less than a new game....
You know guys would be building their own.

Never heard that, but that would be neat, even if it were recorded youtube videos explaining things.

This is a bit like when telco guys were asked to start working on DSL lines, and their whole reliable concept of "if there's a ringtone it works" went out the window. They were required to learn new tools and techniques to be able to continue the pace with the constantly changing technology.

Pinball in general has been behind the technological curve significantly for the past decade or two, but Spike II appears to be a really good leap forward.