My understanding is you can tune the flipper strength. If you want more EM feel, set it flatter and softer. TPF had both styles set up; both were fun.

One reel is shared across 4 players. There is also a small lcd DMD in the lower left of the play field.

I'm trying to remember - TPF was too long ago already. Anyone else remember?

I vaguely remember having no problems comparing scores with the wife.. but I don't recall if it was because I was watching the LCD or watching the reels.

... Thanks JJ

Unpacked ours today.

- Missing corner trim (all 4 corners)
- Crate assembly = lots of swearing
- Instructions.. need QA. Install the head bolts, before unpacking the headbolts?
- Head spacer (2 of them). 1 of the spacers, left side drilled with right side offset. Had to drill a new hole. 3/8" hole worked OK (original was 1/2")
- Manual .. is *far* from Stern's normal quality in terms of depth of information. Hmm.

Overall, looks great, now that it's put together. And sounds great, with the music/callouts attenuated..

Looks like the firmware has the settings for 3 bell circuits. Haven't looked closely enough to see if the schematics clearly call them out or not. The LCD menu doesn't identify the wires at all.

Yes. [Just checked.]

I should take back some of what I said about the documentation. Layout is certainly different; and board schematics missing. But, beyond that, it looks like the proper detail for what wires do what is there - just organized differently than I'm used to.

Bells for chimes: Documented. Looks to be designed to fire 26-1200 coils, for 1 point, 10, points, and 100 points (3 bell circuits total); and plugs into the same "Node 11" backbone 4-driver board.

Speaking of sound: Simply attenuating all but the synthetic bell sounds.. actually helps a lot. (In my opinion, of course!) You can effectively silence the music, callouts, sound effects, and synthetic bells (4 categories total).

My distributor says that Stern will follow up and get trim kits to distributors. Sounds like it was just a mistake that is getting rectified. As long as it is in a timely manner I'm willing to overlook it. This cabinet is a one off and different enough that there were bound to be mistakes.

Comes with both crate and brown legs. Instructions have you start with the legs as an aid to getting it on the crate.

You basically have to look for it. It isn't too in your face or anything. It's easy to look past the tiny blue glowing window of DMD. But, if you do look, yes, all 4 scores are there; with the active player in bold. Just like a "real" DMD.. only tiny.

Also, at the end of the game: The score reels will bounce through the player scores every so often, for a coupe minutes.

Okay, playing with this more: Can't 100% attenuate the callouts, sound effects, etc. But they do go mostly low enough to ignore. The bell effects are decent; the reel sounds are ok.

I like the crate - a lot. But, I will say this: Nudging it on the crate is a lot more difficult. Feels like trying to nudge STTNG. This is with the crate sitting on a treadmill matt on a wood floor, so that's part of it..

Anyone wondering how stable the game is on the crate, the answer is: "Very".

Congrats, something to look forward to when you come back home!

For those maintaining their games list on Pinside.. Note there is a new WNBJM listing (as Stern) to differentiate from the original 2012 builds.

https://pinside.com/pinball/archive/whoa-nellie-big-juicy-melons-stern

The missing trim hasn't shipped yet. They were missed on the first batch (of ~30?) machines, and something they were supposed to fix going forward.

This is a side view; the corner still has the leg protectors on. When the trim comes, those protectors will come off and the trim will be attached instead.

2015-05-08 13.50.12.jpg

I am . Happier now that I changed all the lights to warm colored.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/a-warmer-melony-in-wnbjm-stern-spike-led#post-2460287

I am considering adding real chimes. But haven't yet figured out what I want to do there.

Note the game does have a few bugs that I have asked my distriubtor to forward to Stern.

SCORE REELS:
When: Standard adjustment #24 "Allow High Scores" YES
When: Feature Adjustment #6 "Reels Show High Scores" NO
Observed: Reels show high scores for minutes after end of game
Expected: Reels show only last score(s); only DMD to show high scores.
VERSION: V1.1 SYS. 1.68 HDW. 3

ATTENUATION
When: Feature Adjustment #24 "Music Attenuation" 60 (Max)
When: Feature Adjustment #25 "Speech Attenuation" 60 (Max)
When: Feature Adjustment #26 "SFX Attenuation" 60 (Max)
Observed: Sounds for these categories still play (just at lower volume).
Expected: Sounds for these categories fully muted.
VERSION: V1.1 SYS. 1.68 HDW. 3

TECHNICIAN ALERTS
Observed: 58 switches reporting problems when game plays fine, and all
switches work as expected when manually tested.
Expected: 0 switches reporting problems
VERSION: V1.1 SYS. 1.68 HDW. 3

This game is really teaching me when *not* to flip. The smaller flippers, compared to DMD era, are .. educational.

ChrisVW: this is a bug. I reported it to stern via my distributor. If high scores are enabled, the scores are shown on the reels no matter what..

Might be worth asking your distributor to forward a complaint to Stern.

The high score reels issue is still a bug in 1.5

The skill shot adding a lane appears to be default behavior in 1.5

(1.5 is being sent with the wood trim kit for the early games)

Yeah there is more. I can't quantify it so much as I try and turn that down as much as possible. I still need to get around to putting in bells/chimes and turning the audio off entirely.

Can you take a picture of it when stuck? Maybe someone will see something in that picture.

6.5 slant here, no issues relating to the ball getting hung up.

V1.5 SYS 1.68 HDW. 3

Standard Adjustment #43 Coil Pulse Power - Normal
Feature Adjustment #9 Trough Power - 155
Feature Adjustment #10 Eject Power - 155
Feature Adjustment #11 Flipper Power - 210
Feature Adjustment #12 Slingshot Power - 200
Feature Adjustment #13 Pop Bumper Power - 200

These are all defaults as shipped with the SD card bundled with the trim kit.

DennisNordman, I'm looking at adding real chimes to mine. I know the node boards have 3 outputs for doing so, and I know the code is there (thank you!). Do you know the Spike system well enough to know whether the 26-1200 coils are with or without diodes, to drive the bells/chimes?

New Code.

v1.51 - July 2, 2015
=======================

- All coils in game are now adjustable! Slow it down for a nice stroll through the fields. Crank it up and have those flippers hotter than a two dollar pistol!
- Melony has been studying hard and knows every player by name! Listen up for when it’s your turn to play! (Billy Bob, Bob Bob, Jim Bob, Shishkabob, and many more!)
- Scores tasting a little sour? Try the new lane carryover feature to ripen up those score reels!
- Once those scores are ready for high score harvest, we have brand new speech, music, and sounds (just don’t carve your initials in the wood)!
- Perked up the skill shot award. It's finer than frog hair. BAZOOOOOOMIEEEEEEE!
- Scores flying by too fast in a four player game? Game now waits for you to take a good look at your score before next player’s ball starts.
- Sounds now fully mute when their attenuation adjustment is set to 60.
- “Score reels show highscores” adjustment now works as advertised. You can track highscores without the score reels displaying them in attract mode.

FWIW all the issues (see above) I reported via my distributor to Stern, are now addressed. The missing trim has also been sent out. I've got no outstanding issues left to report to Stern, other than "I still suck at pinball". But we're enjoying the hell out of the game.

Had this code come out a day sooner, I might have put off ordering a chime kit from chimeunit.com . Since that is now already ordered, I'll go ahead and get that hooked up (hopefully it gets here in about a month) and report back how that works out. There are 3 dedicated headers just for the bells/chimes, to drive 26-1200 coils; and the code appears to be in the game; so why not?

Seen elsewhere, Important for doing the update!

Logan Arcade just did it with old gottlieb chimes. With their testing, no diodes were used.

Chas from Stern got back as well. No diode needed.

At this point, just waiting for chimes to arrive.

Also apparently still a thing: use a small USB memory stick. 4 gig worked. 16 gig did not. Not sure that the maximum USB stick size is before it fails. I can say that tricks like partitioning (either gpt or mbr) don't help.

Jtaudio: would be awesome if we could use "dd" to write sd card images directly. Would be a hack of a lot faster

Good to know. Whoa Nelly is actually doing 48vdc. Possibly PWM to be able to tone down the coils (this last bit is a guess).

Personally.. I have a set on order from chimeunit.com with 26-1300 coils. The game specs out 26-1200. McCullough had the 26-1300's on the shelf already. If that doesn't draw enough power for some reason I'll get McCullough to wind 26-1200. Once it comes in I will document it up.

For those of you near San Jose, CA .. you're welcome to check mine out. PM me for arrangements.