It would help if pinside had posting limits. A lot of what makes reading threads a chore is the people who post 20 times per page across multiple threads, with nothing more than their opinion. Nobody's opinion is that valuable. There are thousands of people on this site and it's always the same dozen or so people chewing up the scenery.

Pirates rocks. It's the most fun I've had on an LCD era pin. I guess it depends on what you enjoy about pinball, or maybe where you played it.

I used thin, water based super glue around the edges after using the playfield iron. I'd used it in the past to repair scoop holes with great results, so I figured a little extra bonding around the edges couldn't hurt.

Not exactly. I'm guessing the fogging you are referring to is air under the clearcoat, like the 'ghosting' on inserts. I'm not sure how you could get the glue into those pockets. The super glue acts more like a spot clearcoat, sealing in any touchups or chips, and hopefully preventing the clearcoat from pulling/lifting away from any edges where posts are installed or ball impact occurs. As a hail mary play, I have actually glued chips back into place and then glued over the chipped area, and it looks almost 100% again. I'm no expert though. It's just a method a friend had showed me that has worked for me a few times.

Here's how JJP used to make their playfields. This was a point of pride for them at one time.

Can't you just run a line out from the port on the CPU? On Pirates, there is a mini-jack cable that connects the MPU to the sound board. You can just run it to a another amp instead of the sound board. GnR should be the same...