Finally bought my personal Holy Grail

[DonAla]

So, I finally purchase a STTNG pinball. I watched auctions and manned up. I should be at my house on Tuesday or Wednesday. I bought it from FUN! in Texas. I checked there feedback on E-bay and all looked good. I didn't search the group here until it was too late. I just hope I don't have a horror story to share with everyone. On the flip, they did have the machine for a week before shipping so, hopefully they shopped and cleaned as promised. I just can't wait.

 

[Kyrosfear]

Sweet. Really great game.
-Kyros

 

[carolinamarcg]

Hope it works out. FUN is overpriced but the game should be in working order. I sold a game to him once, easy enough guy to work with.

 

[firepowerplayer]

I love to hear some good news, woo hoo for you

 

[zenomorp]

Congrats! Post some pics! Just be careful though, on most of these machines THERE...ARE...FOUR...LIGHTS that easily burn out.

 

[DonAla]

One of the first things I will do to it is change to LED's.

 

[stevenp61]

One of the first things I will do to it is change to LED's.

One of the first thing you SHOULD do to it is go thru the underside of the pf and tighten any loose nuts/screws, then play a few test games and tweak/adjust any lane, guide, mechanism that isn't working smoothly and exactly as it should. Far more important than throwing some pretty lights in the game. At least if you'll be playing it.

Please tell me you spent well under $5k for it?

 

[timberterror]

I hope this works out for you. He always has a ton of games on Ebay. Last year he had an auction at the Texas Pinball Festival and I can tell you that the machines for sale did not match the description of the ebay listings. Most were in far worse condition than stated. He is a typical flipper that charges higher than retail prices for games he got cheap.

I personally think you would have been better off dealing with someone local. Hopefully it will work out well. At least if the machine doesn't match the ebay description you may have recourse. - Barry

 

[stevenp61]

I hope this works out for you. He always has a ton of games on Ebay. Last year he had an auction at the Texas Pinball Festival and I can tell you that the machines for sale did not match the description of the ebay listings. Most were in far worse condition than stated. He is a typical flipper that charges higher than retail prices for games he got cheap.

I personally think you would have been better off dealing with someone local. Hopefully it will work out well. At least if the machine doesn't match the ebay description you may have recourse. - Barry

Ouch. I missed the online/remote part. I sincerely hope the game is in good shape; I have seen horror stories. Good luck!

Also DOn, there are a LOT of people selling games locally, in the NJ/NYC area. You really should follow the advice above. Lots of good people around here, and it really is FAR better to see a game in person before buying. Heck, there's one for sale now in Bridgewater NJ for $4300 (saves on shipping too) on the Mr Pinball classifieds. And a nice one for $3950/OBO in the Philly suburbs, on the Pinside classifieds. FAR better than the ebay route when making big-dollar purchases of complex things like pins.

 

[Les Manley]

So, I finally purchase a STTNG pinball. I watched auctions and manned up. I should be at my house on Tuesday or Wednesday. I bought it from FUN! in Texas. I checked there feedback on E-bay and all looked good. I didn't search the group here until it was too late. I just hope I don't have a horror story to share with everyone. On the flip, they did have the machine for a week before shipping so, hopefully they shopped and cleaned as promised. I just can't wait.

I would get familiar with pinside so you are ready to ask all the questions you need to in order to get the game into good working condition. You are going to need their help. STTNG is a maintenance nightmare and fun! has a less than stellar history when it comes to delivering games in the condition stated. His MO is to ship a game in not the stated condition knowing that the person is not going to spend the time or money to ship it back to get a refund. Then he blackmails the buyer into giving him good feedback for a couple hundred dollars refund.

On the flip side, STTNG is the best pin ever made, so if you do get it working and looking good, you have a great game on your hands.

 

[awarner]

I have some advice about STTNG:

1) Don't change out the bulbs to LEDs - it makes it look garish and resale value could lower.

2) Make sure there are no burnt connectors on the PCBs in the backbox. If there are, change the connector AND the pins they connect to.

3) The advice about tightening things is very good but be careful around flippers, they need some slight vertical slack to be adjusted right.

4) DO NOT set this game for 5 ball! It ruins the fun completely. A friend loaned me one for a month and I couldn't wait to give it back because I set it to 5 ball.

That's what I remember. But congrats, it's a fun game to play.

 

[DonAla]

So, my STTNG pinball arrived. The White Glove service is nice. The machine worked great for about 2 hours. Then, dun dun dun. The display started to get snowy then turned to a single horizontal line that scrolled. I got in touch with FUN! and they put there tech on the phone with me. He thought it was the display so, they told me to ship them the display. After they received it, they called me and told me the display was fine, it must be the display driver board. So, last Friday I sent them my driver board. They received it on monday (yesterday). Just waiting to hear back. While all this was going on, I did several mods to the machine. Replace a the 2 ships with one's with LEDS. Added a USS Enterprise with LED's. Replaced turrets with New Laser turrets. Installed Borg Plazma Mod. Installed Cliffy Neutral Zone Protector. So, I will keep you guys posted on how Fun! continues to handle my display issue.

 

[stevenp61]

So, my STTNG pinball arrived. The White Glove service is nice. The machine worked great for about 2 hours. Then, dun dun dun. The display started to get snowy then turned to a single horizontal line that scrolled. I got in touch with FUN! and they put there tech on the phone with me. He thought it was the display so, they told me to ship them the display. After they received it, they called me and told me the display was fine, it must be the display driver board. So, last Friday I sent them my driver board. They received it on monday (yesterday). Just waiting to hear back. While all this was going on, I did several mods to the machine. Replace a the 2 ships with one's with LEDS. Added a USS Enterprise with LED's. Replaced turrets with New Laser turrets. Installed Borg Plazma Mod. Installed Cliffy Neutral Zone Protector. So, I will keep you guys posted on how Fun! continues to handle my display issue.

Just curious: how much time have you spent tweaking/adjusting game features like the pops, slings, lane guides, etc.?

 

[JamBurglar]

FYI,

You may find that adding LEDs in that era causes you to lose a lot of the lighting features in the game. Early to mid 90s Williams and Bally games did a good bit of fading and LEDs are incapable of doing that (without aftermarket MODs like the LED OCD and GI OCD).

When I first got a game of that era I got a bunch of non-ghosting LEDs thinking it would be all cool but quickly discovered I lost a lot of the cool lighting so I switched back. I've got the LED and GI OCD boards now and one day, when I get the time, I'll install standard LEDs (non ghosting types don't work as well with those boards).

But hey, I agree with A Warner completely. Get the game 100% fully functioning and set up how you like it. Familiarize yourself with how it works stock before you go too crazy with LEDs or other mods. You'll save time and money that way.

 

[DonAla]

So, I received the DMD and driver board back from "FUN!" last week. They also shipped it with all new ribbon cables because they didn't find anything wrong with either the display or driver board. Low and behold she's working GREAT! I didn't install 2 LED's only because some of the MOD ship's tie into lights that the removable socket and when I tied them in, the regular bulbs would dim. I've played at least 50 games and everything seems to be working really good. I'm going to go through and make sure everything is nice and snug. I did notice one time I was playing that the game started to not recognize that ball play had ended and just kept putting a new ball into play. I found that I must have knocked loose the opt plug on the ball trough. I just opened the coin door found the plug loose. pushed it on and all has been great since. This is my first multi-ball game. There are a couple of more cosmetic MOD's I want to do and some LED's but on all the bulb's. I did notice the play field is dark in the far left corner but I can see the bulbs working. Any insight into that?