F2K Preorder Notice

[CheffoJeffo]

Just got my request for payment ... bad timing financially, but not going to miss the opportunity to spend more on playfield/plastics than I can ever get for a mint machine! 

[smartbomb2084]

Looks awesome!

I love this game. Have a backglass hanging on the shop wall for decoration.

How about some particulars... that is...

How much? Where from? And is it clearcoated?

[CheffoJeffo]

It's weird ... I know 3 people other than me who have ordered. People love spending too much on their F2Ks.

smartbomb:

http://www.classicplayfields.com/f2k-flyer.pdf

http://www.classicplayfields.com/photo82.html

[smartbomb2084]

That is a beautiful piece. I think the price is about right or at least average don't you?

I see they make a SILVERBALL MANIA backglass. They need to make a playfield for one too.  I have never seen one that wasn't worn to bare wood in the center above the flippers.

Too bad the guy who also posted to this thread who is always spouting off about artwork this and artwork that can't appreciate it. If HE doesn't like it, WE shouldn't either.

Nobody needs to respond to every thread. Nobody has that many relevant things to say. If you can't say it nicely don't say it at all.

We are NOT lucky that the moderators around here are clueless.

Sorry, that wasn't nice and I shouldn't have said it but I am just going with the flow.

[RayB]

I don't know, that thing looks a little weird to me.  Same deal with their Xenon playfield - the colors are flat.

Maybe it's just because it's so shiny and new and perfect?

It's likely the artist is working in CMYK, which for screen printing is ... wrong. Makes blues and purples dull.

[Pinball Wizard]

Ah well, CPR's got a great business model going.  Have other people do the tracing, pay them in product, and sell the rest of it at gigantic markup to collectors.  Give your buddies free stuff so they'll talk it up online, too.   

How else should I restore my pinballs for cheap? Haven't done it yet but the more artwork I trace the more pin restorations I can do with a cheap (free) budget.

As for color registration compared to old one you have to consider 20+ years of fade. Example, the "white" on my centaur playfield ain't nothing like it was new, but when they reproduced the playfield it has the bright white it had when the pin came NIB.

[saint]

We are NOT lucky that the moderators around here are clueless.

If rules are being broken on the forum you are free to report it to the moderators. 

[smartbomb2084]

RULES aren't necessarily 'being broken' per se, but the overall experience here is negative due to one bad apple rotting the whole bushel.  Again... Clueless.

[saint]

RULES aren't necessarily 'being broken' per se, but the overall experience here is negative due to one bad apple rotting the whole bushel.  Again... Clueless.

I'm sorry I don't meet up to your standards. I don't agree with Xiaou2 frequently, and have asked him to tone down his rhetoric on more than one occasion, but he is entitled to express his opinion -- as are you.

Two points:

1. I don't read every single thread. If you think something should be attended to by a mod, but isn't, see #2:

2. If you see a thread that needs attention, you should report it to the moderator, because see #1.

As always, please keep it civil everyone. Thanks!

--- saint

[smartbomb2084]

Sorry I am not trying to offend you and Xiaou2 is not who I am referring to.  At least he actually THINKS before  he posts and backs up his opinions with information not just his 'funky world view'.

The guy that annoys the most here is pinballjim.

[saint]

Sorry I am not trying to offend you and Xiaou2 is not who I am referring to.  At least he actually THINKS before  he posts and backs up his opinions with information not just his 'funky world view'.

The guy that annoys the most here is pinballjim.

Doh, I owe Xiaou2 an apology then! PBJ and I have locked horns before also...

[ChadTower]

Give your buddies free stuff so they'll talk it up online, too.   

Works for me!

I have several of their playfields, matching plastics sets, and a backglass.  I am very happy with all of them for the price paid.   

[pinballwizard79]

LMAO @ Saint for immediately assuming it was Xiaou2   

PBJ is alright, he is like the Eeyore meets Charlie Sheen of BYOAC. Xiaou2 on the other hand is the Gary Busey meets Silky Johnson.

Anyway I want all the pretty reissued playfields, ALL OF THEM!

[Donkbaca]

 PBJ has good taste, he likes the SFII pinball machine so he's good in my book, though he hates pretty much everything else. I think it's okay to be negative, as long as you aren't personal

[CheffoJeffo]

After some hemming and hawing about the cash outlay at this particular time (absolute worst time of the year), I pulled the trigger and followed-through on the order.

I, for one, LOVE the CPR business model, especially when compared to the other models that are happening in the hobby. I didn't have to put out any money in a preorder and now have spent more on a single order than I have ever before in this hobby.

Compare this to the more typical preorder with a deposit or full payment that recently seems to fail more often than we would like. For my Exidy Multi440, I had to put down a deposit, then pay the rest when the boards were ready. Communication was good and I have no qualms about prepayment with Dave or Mike. Sadly, that is not the norm.

By comparison, CPR is making enough money to keep moving forward, producing a decent product and not asking us to part with our money years before a product is available and just take things on faith.

 

[CheffoJeffo]

Got my tracking number -- should be here Monday.  

[Xiaou2]

heh  Its ok Saint.  I get a lot of people riled up.

  As for CPR, their renos are usually inferior to the originals.  A combination of them getting people who are not artists to do work for them, is a poor decision.  At very least, you would think they would hire One good artist to do Quality Control, and fix the messes that the noobs made.

 Color is especially a problem, because only a real talented/trained artist can visually look at a group of colors and realize that one does not match the correct hue, shade, intensity..etc.. in an instant.

 The technical tracers cant.. and their only excuse is Color fade.

 Firstly, most fade on Pins is the cabinet.  Unless the thing is sitting outside on a sunny beach... its rare to see notable playfield color fade.  Glass reflects a bunch of the UV rays, and so does the Mylar. The mylar usually yellowing a bit due to an inferior chemical formula... but under it, are colors like new.

 White is especially hard to fade, because white reflects.  White usually is just dirty and the surface worn/pitted... and the thin layer of lacquer they put over the playfield has yellowed more, getting much darker.

 As for all the Fade 'stories', one can pretty easily search and find a Pristine machine with No wear/fade whatsoever.  The thing is.. the company doesnt care enough to even check...  and its leaders/owners just are not good with colors, and THINK everything is fine.  In fact, they were completely in denial when I brought up the countless errors in one of their plastic sets.  Needless to say, I didnt purchase, and kept my original set.

 If you are going to pay over $600 for a new PF, it better be Damn Perfect.  Thats a huge chunk of change for mediocrity and errors.  Even spending +$100 for a sheet of Plastics is insane, let alone for a set that doesnt even match your game (a game that has no fade).

 So what... they pay one artists to clean things up, and whats it gona cost them? Add another 10 spot to the bill.  Whoop tee doo.

[ChadTower]

Even with all that it's way better than having nothing to swap into burned out machines.  Not everybody sits and clenches their butthole over a blue being slightly off from whatever the original was - assuming that the original on every single playfield in a given machine's run was identical.

[CheffoJeffo]

I'm with Chad on this ... most F2K playfields are worn to the wood. Beats the ---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- out of not having an option.

[CheffoJeffo]

Agreed ... except they are still worn to the wood.

It makes no economic sense to buy a new playfield for an F2K because I'll never recoup it. I look at it the same way as I do my MultiExidy -- it's a machine that I am going to keep and play forever.

[ChadTower]

Yeah, except that $600 gets you nice original Flight 2000s all day long.

 

How much do you plan on getting for that Sharpshooter?  You know very well it's not always about the end value.

[ChadTower]

A bad repro completely dilutes the market and now you have no hope of anyone coming in and doing it right.

The problem with that logic is that what it hopes for has never happened anyway.  If you want to go the other way the repros open up the market for used playfields that can be restored for people who need 100% accuracy to original rather than 97%.  The problem with that logic, of course, is that nearly all of those burned out playfields are ending up either in the trash or on somebody's wall.

I'm not sure how someone can 100% consistently reproduce a playfield that had high manufacturing tolerances for both screw positioning and ink mixture anyway.  They were never 100% consistent among each other in the first place.

[TOK]

Does anyone have links to comparison pics (or just complaints) about the reproduction playfields vs. originals? I ask because I'm on a waiting list for a playfield that hasn't been done yet. My situation is just like Jeffo's -by the time this machine is done, it will probably have way more invested then it will ever be worth.

[ChadTower]

They don't actually make a ton of profit per unit.  I'm not saying they don't make money but it's not a 100% markup or anything.  I have seen their equipment and they made a substantial investment.  It's not mickey mouse hardware.  They have a real automated laser cutter, a cnc lathe, and a commercial screen printer.  When you consider the volume they do going much lower in cost wouldn't be sustainable.  Anyone else producing playfields expects twice the price for a playfield that isn't dimpled or clearcoated.  It might have changed since I was there but the only thing they were outsourcing a couple years ago was clearcoating.  

I expected a secondary market of restored swap-out playfields to pop up but it never did.  For all those people complaining that these products aren't what they would like nobody is making anything better available.

TOK, it's nearly impossible to do a real colormatch comparison on a monitor.  Sure, you can see they aren't the same, but odds are decent you're not looking at the actual color on either due to any number of things that can get in the way.

Obviously I'm less picky about minor changes than jim.  That said I have seen a lot of these playfields in person and I have yet to see one that had anything glaringly off.  I concede that I'm often looking at a playfield for which I've never seen a nice original in person.

[CheffoJeffo]

TOK, it's nearly impossible to do a real colormatch comparison on a monitor.  Sure, you can see they aren't the same, but odds are decent you're not looking at the actual color on either due to any number of things that can get in the way.

+1

I do find it somewhat ironic and funny that Xiaou is the guy who uses this precise fact in his arguments about monitors, yet ignores it here.

In any event, the playfield that I get on Monday will be far better than any that I have had opportunity to buy since I bought this machine.

And it will be a nice project to keep me busy.

 

[Xiaou2]

 First, Ive seen their plastics both on my calibrated monitor, AND IN PERSON,
at the Allentown show.

 2nd, even if your monitor is not calibrated well... and you shift the values of All the colors at once... then they still all match.  They are just darker or lighter.
 
 However, if one color is seriously off due to improper matching, it stands out.  It stands out no matter what you do to your monitor.  It stands out in the game like a Blue LED pointed right at your eye.

Heres a simple Pictorial Example:

 On the left side, we have a group of colors arranged by their Color and Value.
The color being from left to right, and value from V1 to V5.  

 We will ignore saturation and other aspects to be simple.  Also, we will call the entire row of colors in a value, a "Family".

 In example A & C, we can see they are entire families, and thus all the Values match.

 However, in Example B, the first and 7th colors are Not from the same value levels... and so you can see that they stick out at bit.  Especially when compared to A & C.

 Example D shows the same, and shows the main family (green line), & the alternate values (orange lines).

 And finally, example E, which is much easier to notice due to the extreme levels of value changes.

 Of course, this is only a simple example to do with value, and does not even touch on the much more advanced aspects.  

 Edit:

 If you play with various art programs on the PC, such as Photoshop, you can see a section of both a color wheel... and a color Swatch section.   One thing you start to realize, is that picking the right colors is almost a mathematical thing.  

 In windows, there are 3 main colors: Red Green Blue. And each color can have 16 values.  If we take a single dot (pixel), it could be:  0,0,0  which would equal Black. OR 16,16,16   which would be white.  For Red, it would be  16,0,0.  To make pink:  16,10,10.

 This is important, because when you arrange a swatch palette, you often would be altering the colors values by a mathematical formula.  For example, changing each color by adding +2.  IE: 2,4,6,8.    If you made a mistake... you could spot that color because it shows up against the rest of the colors.

 Its much like Music.  If you play the wrong note in a sequence, its going to be noticeable.   Music is also very mathematical btw.

 In the next picture, we can see various color swatch palettes in photoshop.
As we can see, the bottom left corner is a Pastel palette, and looks completely different to the bottom right Palette.   If you did a Pastel painting, and dropped a color from the other bottom right palette in there.. it might look very out of place.
(unless the palette is very wide in contrast and depth)

[Xiaou2]

So, heres one of their BK2K plastic sets:

Top left, you can see the Purple they chose for the towers, is way too light.  Its more of a Pastel than a Royal Purple.

 Their excuse?  UV fade.  Wrong:

 Top Right = Proof of nearly no UV fade on a super old plastic set. The Left one is the Older Original plastic that has typical yellowing from the plastic exposed to UV.  The one on the right, is an ORIGINAL NOS plastic.  You can tell the thing has been kept sealed up in something, as theres no plastic yellowing, no scratches or fading of any kind.   No photoshop tricks here. Both plastics were set on top of a piece of white inkjet paper and photographed. No image cleanup or shifting was performed. Only cropping.

 Then of course, we have missing windows, shading on towers missing, and even shading on the castle wall bricks missing.   I believe I counted like 12 errors on this single plastic.  Insane to be that far off on mistakes.

 Of course, the real problem is when you try to install these, and see that none of the new colors match your playfield or backglass artwork.

 Its granted, that no color match is going to be Perfect.  However, what has been done here is that the person has tried to make it look like he wants it to look.  Basically, he is artistically altered it.  Which is why it doesnt match the game.
 
 If he had noted the exact value differences on an original set, he could have applied that to his new palette, and gotten results that at least looked close.  Instead, he chose to either eyeball it, and or just chose a color he thought it should be.  So in the end, its absolute and utter Garbage.

 edit:

 Btw - If you compare the two largest towers, note that they have changed the line art.  The thicknesses and even directions of the lines.

 Why is this a problem?  Line direction is used to create texture, such as woodgrain.  In this example, the roof shingling should all be at the same angle.  They are not.   

 The line thickness is this picture, is used to create shading.  Such as the middle of the tower.. where its most dark.  The thicker black lines make the tower look darker. Where as the new version has thin lines... which isnt correct.  This is because he has no idea of even the most basic of artistic principles... such as cross hatch and line based shading.  Its just sickening to see such butchery by a clueless noob.

[TOK]

Thanks for the pics Xiaou2, that was exactly the kind of example I was looking for. The loss of the colors in the tower art definitely hurts the depth of the art. I still think I'm going to stay with my playfield preorder because its much simpler art than Black Knight, but wanted to see actual examples of the errors.

[ChadTower]

If you make a repro part that's more expensive that decent originals, and collectors can spot it's a repro part from a mile away, what's the point?

I don't shop my games to impress other collectors.  I shop them to my own level of satisfaction.  Even on my permanent keeper games I don't care about differences like that purple shown above.  If I sell a game with repro parts I sell the originals with it anyway.  Other times I'm working on games with either missing parts or like my BK which had all the plastics but half of them were broken.  I could dredge up originals but on top of the brand new cleared playfield even an original plastic sometimes stands out like an overcooked shrinky dink.  The yellowing of the plastic just looks bad and you're not going to find non-aged plastics unless it's NOS still in the bag.  I have a NOS plastics set for my Rack 'Em Up waiting to go on, in an opened bag, and even they are yellowed.  In that case it will work fine because I'll be putting in a NOS playfield once I learn to clear them.  The yellow/aging will match.  For whatever reason the color difference in ink doesn't bother me but a difference in aging does.   

[Xiaou2]

I also shop my games for my own satisfaction... and personally, I cant be satisfied when parts are sub-par.  Id rather try to make them myself than to pay for someones else craptastic job.

 This is a remade slingshot plastic.  It isnt a CPR remake. However, it shows how a poor color can really ruin the look of a pin.

 Its even worse looking when you see the entire machine with it on.  It was a big waste of my money.

[ChadTower]

You might want to forget the plastics and fix the inserts on that game.  A plastic isn't going to change gameplay.  Bad inserts will.  Which is more important?

[Flake]

Seriously?  Wow....its amazing what some of you find to argue about.   Xiwhateverthehellyournameis - do you get all up in arms when comic book superhero movie costumes dont match EXACTLY like the original ones in the comics?

[Xiaou2]

You might want to forget the plastics and fix the inserts on that game.  A plastic isn't going to change gameplay.  Bad inserts will.  Which is more important?

 You shouldnt ASSume things.  They were temporarily placed there as a test.  I have a 2nd playfeild that Ive restored, and the beat one is getting swapped, and possibly restored & sold off as well.

Seriously?  Wow....its amazing what some of you find to argue about.   Xiwhateverthehellyournameis - do you get all up in arms when comic book superhero movie costumes dont match EXACTLY like the original ones in the comics?

 I dont pay anywhere from $1200 to $3000 to own a superhero dvd/comic.

 Nor would I pay a house painter a boatload of cash to make my rooms look like butt with a crappy color choice.

 This isnt some small issue.  Just because you are colorblind, and art challenged, doesnt mean the rest of us are not.

[ChadTower]

You shouldnt ASSume things.  They were temporarily placed there as a test.  I have a 2nd playfeild that Ive restored, and the beat one is getting swapped, and possibly restored & sold off as well.

Ah, yeah, I'd hate to look like the ass here.  Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[Flake]

This isnt some small issue. 

Your right Xiwhateverthehellyournameis....I'd put it right up there with some of the big issues of today....say for instance trying to find clean gas station restrooms on your way to work when your IBS flares up.

[ChadTower]

This isnt some small issue. 

Your right Xiwhateverthehellyournameis....I'd put it right up there with some of the big issues of today....say for instance trying to find clean gas station restrooms on your way to work when your IBS flares up.

You don't get it, apparently.  The real challenge there is finding a place where the NOS stains colormatch the new stains he is going to put down. 

Nor would I pay a house painter a boatload of cash to make my rooms look like butt with a crappy color choice.  My own butt product is far superior to the latex coatings used by the common house painter.

This isnt some small issue.  Just because you are colorblind, and art challenged, doesnt mean the rest of us are not.

[Flake]

You don't get it, apparently.  The real challenge there is finding a place where the NOS stains colormatch the new stains he is going to put down. 

   Cant really top that

[ChadTower]

I've never seen a repro slingshot that matched the original exactly.  You have to replace those in pairs unless you find NOS.

NOS is still no guarantee.  I've seen them a few times where one was old and yellowed and the other wasn't.  It wasn't always the NOS one that looked better.

[ChadTower]

Thanks, Commander Obvious.

No less obvious than "plastics made by separate companies 30 years apart may not have exactly the same colors when compared side by side".

 

[Xiaou2]

I've never seen a repro slingshot that matched the original exactly.  You have to replace those in pairs unless you find NOS.

 PBJ, I of course bought them in a pair set.  However, that Navy blue they used isnt anywhere else on the entire machine... and it stands out like a guy wearing pink pajamas to a funeral.

 Its not like the blue is a Little bit off.  Its "off the charts" off.   More than likely, someone goofed bigtime and they didnt want to refund money for the misprinted
parts. Parts were sold as is, to unsuspecting collectors... and no refunds available.
(pass the buck)


 Can anyone tell me how to load MDF into a truck? I just cant wrap my brain around it...