Joined the club this week. Arranged a trade for a basically NIB ECLE WOZ. ~20 plays on the machine, indistinguishable from new. Absolutely pristine.

This is a lovely game, I’m very impressed. Only issue is - like other early/mid ECLE (mine is number 550 or so), it has unbuffered 7.5 light boards. Sure enough, the lights are freezing up on play. I can get maybe 5-10 minutes before most of the lights freeze. A reboot restores things, and they work fine in attract mode. Once I start play, they pretty consistently freeze up.

I opened a ticket with JJP. Short of installing 2.0 boards (which JJP says will be available 1Q 2023), is there anything else that can be done to limp along? Lower LED brightness? Disable shaker? Reflow solder on any of the boards? I’m open to suggestions.

Given this game was just unboxed and never registered prior to my purchase, I did register the game with JJP. I have no idea if the warranty is active.

Thanks, and please excuse all the questions from a new owner.

Thanks LTG (JJP should hire you back...) and konghusker. Will do. I just swapped out the cooling fan for something not made by Pratt and Witney.

Thanks for the suggestions. Did a thorough unplug/replug of all the cabinet connections, firmly squeezed each from both sides, then went through the entire lighting chain and pressed each connector firmly. I also disabled the shaker.

So far, no issues. Was able to get through a couple of games without any lights freezing. Fingers crossed. Ultimately, installation of 2.0 lighting is probably the long-term solution, but for now, I can enjoy this excellent title. Really is a knock-out. My third JJP, as well. Looks great next to Hobbit. Love those widebodies.

Spoke a bit too soon. Had a longer game, 25 min. Same lights froze up. I took a picture so I can ID the board that seems to be the problem. I'll go do a bit of troubleshooting and see if I can find a workaround.

edit: traced the lighting daisy-chain to the suspect bad board. Was one of the small boards at the front of the chain (#29) Swapped it for a board at the end of the chain, and all has been trouble-free over a couple of hours of play.

Condition was consistent with NIB. Absolutely no wear, no dust, and no small ball dents on the PF. Indistinguishable from a new pin from the crate. I’ve owned/restored about 70 games. This one was new.

Just me playing about a dozen games the last few days has nearly doubled the amount of visible, small, ball dents in the PF. Only the single board was bad. As soon as I moved it to the end of the lighting chain, the game has been stable and no lighting issues in about 3 hours of play.

Installed the Precision Flip system in green w/green Titan rubber. Shoots great! Quite a noticeable difference.

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Probably easiest to see the thread dedicated to these flippers. A significant change in flipper feel, for sure. Much more powerful and snappy. Most folks (myself included) turn down the flipper power when installing these. Also, amazingly more precise. Very, very repeatable shots. You have to try these to see what we’re talking about.

Thread here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/review-precision-pinball-products-cnc-flipper-system/page/24#post-7220728

The Smaug Kill shot is my vote for coolest moment in Pinball.

Question for those that have upgraded to 2.0 lighting: how much dimmer is the whole package? I've got the 7.5V buffered boards in my game (and a backup set of boards purchased as spares). An opportunity arose to pickup a 2.0 lighting kit, and I jumped on it. I can't decide if I should upgrade or keep the 2.0 kit as ultimate insurance, and continue with the 7.5 boards until they were no longer viable. One of the nicest features of my WOZ is the fantastic and bright light shows (such as the all-green Forest mode with red-light shots).

My understanding is the 7.5V kits are brighter overall, and you take a bit of an light intensity hit with the 2.0 system. Is this noticeable? I actually love working on my pins, so upgrading to 2.0 would be a fun project. My 7.5V system has been mainly reliable, but it does freeze up ocassionaly in longer games. Not having that happen would be nice, too. I'm truly undecided on which way to go with my absolutely pristine ECLE WOZ. (BTW, *LOVE* this game) Thanks.

Just installed a 2.0 lighting kit into my basically-new ECLE WOZ. Prior to finding the 2.0 kit, I had purchased a complete backup set of 7.5 (mostly buffered) boards as spares. 2.0 Kit is great. Not at all dim to my eye. Works great. Happy with this upgrade.

(note: old boards sold)

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Shoot me a PM. LMK the length. I have tons of these cables (2 complete sets). I'll mail you one for free.

Finally getting some quality playing time with my (relatively) new WOZ. I read the rule sheet, and the final wizard mode (Somewhere Over the Rainbow) looks brutally, brutally hard to reach. You need all 8 gems, and some of those require lots and lots of sequential accomplishments, all without losing a ball. Is it just me? Do others routinely reach this? I’ve played quite a few tables over the decades, this honestly may be the hardest to reach Wizard mode I know (at least, reading how to do it in the rulesheet).

Of course. I was referring to individual gem modes where you can't lose a ball. A great example is the gem from Rescue Multiball. The rulesheet is below. This seems nearly impossible to me to complete during the multiball (where you have to actually keep at least 2 balls in play). You have to cycle through every shot a minimum of three times and then bash the castle and enter the saucer at least 6 times before you can even light a mega-jackpot. Brutal.

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Rescue Multiball

During this multiball the following jackpot shots are lit: Spinner, Left Orbit, Winkie Drop Target, Ramp, Right Orbit, and Throne Room. For each of those shots, the first time you hit it will award a 1x jackpot. The second time will award a 2x jackpot. The third time will award and 3x jackpot. And hitting it after that will award 0.5x jackpot values until the end of the multiball or a super or mega jackpot is scored.

Once a 3x jackpot has been achieved for a shot it will light a corresponding R-E-S-C-U-E target letter on the castle mini-playfield (R – Spinner, E – Left Orbit, S – Winkie Drop Target, C – Ramp, U – Right Orbit, E – Throne Room) and enable Super Jackpot. To collect a super jackpot you need to hit at least one blinking RESCUE target and then get the castle doors to open and finally get the ball into the rescue saucer. You can stack the super jackpots by collecting multiple blinking rescue letters to get even more points (e.g. collect 3x jackpots at multiple locations and then get the super).

Note that once a super jackpot is collected all shots revert back to 1x so keep that in mind if you have good progress towards lighting the Rescue letters (e.g. 2x on the other jackpot shots). Fortunately a super jackpot does not unlight the rescue letters that have been collected.

Once all R-E-S-C-U-E letters have been lit (by collecting 3x jackpots from all jackpot shots and then hitting the R-E-S-C-U-E letter) a Mega Jackpot can be collected by getting a search orbit to castle door combo (i.e. hitting the search orbit and then immediately hitting the castle doors breaking through them and getting into the saucer behind).

Scoring a Mega Jackpot also immediately awards a Jewel towards SOTR.

What’s “Splash”? Google came up with nothing.

Oh, got it. Thanks. For $600, I'll pass....

There's new Beta software available for WOZ. This update comes in 2 parts, both dated Dec. 15, 2022. The first is beta 6, which "updates the updater" and the second is beta 7, which installs a new operating system. You'll only see beta 6 until its installed, then check for updates again and beta 7 will be available. FYI.

It adds an audio graphic equalizer (same one that's on GnR) and updates the operating system. As near as I can tell based on the update notes, that's it.

The original OEM strips are pretty fragile. Mine also went dim like this after I removed it. I could wiggle it and it would occasionally brighten, but I couldn't get it to stay that way. I ended up ordering a new one from JJP. Just FYI.

There is a change log that comes when you perform the upgrade, which you can read during the update. For the latest Beta, it listed two changes: installation of a new OS, and addition of an audio graphic equalizer.

Save the wires. It's not that hard at all to remove all the prior wiring; there is a market for these cables as they occassionaly go bad. I've sent out several to other owners.

Can you switch the power connector with another board? That will help diagnose the issue. Often, when problems like this arise after a period of time, it's cracked solder joints. (That board is close to the pop bumpers, among the most active of the coils, which can over-time fatique these joints). Your symptoms are consistent with this (when starting a game, it goes bad; this indicates to me that when coils fire, etc., its interupting something on the board).

I'd look very carefully at the power board connector solder joints on the board. Reflow these with a soldering iron if you can (or hot-air workstation). More than once, this has solved intermittant problems on pins for me.

I purchased a Woz with the 7.5 buffered boards and was repeatedly told there were no issues, they were solid, I shouldn't worry, he didn't have any issues, ever. Within the first 2 hours of play, whole segments of the lighting failed. I bought a set of used 7.5 boards (they're easy to find when people do the 2.0 upgrade), and I replaced the bad boards. I continued to get failures and continued to replace boards on a regular basis.

I finally had enough. I found a set of 2.0 boards and installed them. Zero issues since. Good luck, YMMV.

The 2.0 boards are 90% awesome. I did the conversion last year. As far as reliability, they're a major improvement and will also help with value/resale.

There is a downside, however. They GI lighting in the 2.0 system is dim. Very dim. JJP fixed these issues with Hobbit and subsequent games, but for whatever reason, the 2.0 WOZ system has very weak GI drivers. Some folks have tried to rectify this with limited success. These efforts still aren't as bright as the prior (5 and 7.5) versions. FYI.

Do a clean installl of the full software from a USB. Instructions on the JJP website.