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Stern Star Gazer restore


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Ok I thought I would start a tread to show the progress of me restoring this Star Gazer.

I have gone halves with my nephew as this pin will be at his place once finished

Its serial no 0550 of 869 built, manufactured date of 26th of June 1980, under the lock down bar it has written in black artline Australia, 1/10, 240V, so from this I understand that it was factory ordered for Australia, and is 1 of 10

I have looked on the serial numbert data base and there are 2 others listed 0544# & 0545#, I do believe that there is a Perth member that has one also and I hope I can ask some questions and get some pictures from him sometime :D

 

I will list my progress and my running tally of what it has cost as I go

 

Cost so far

Purchase price $200

 

Here are some pics of the playfield, im not sure what i will do to this yet as the playfield is pretty rough as you will see in some of the pictures here

 

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l461/prktkljokr/StarGazerplayfield.jpg

 

Here is a picture of the girl, you can see that she has been touched up and she is not like the original

 

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l461/prktkljokr/girldetail.jpg

 

Here is a pic of the playfeild that shows the wording and you can see that the G has been repainted in, as its not even the same size.

 

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l461/prktkljokr/Girlwithtassle.jpg

 

This one is just above the girl and also has been touched up, you can see in the detail that the origonal paint has gone like fish scales

 

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l461/prktkljokr/starabovegirl2.jpg

 

The backglass is mint, which is what made me want to restore the machine, as I suppose its the hardest thing to get, if it was stuffed I would not have bought it.

 

http://i331.photobucket.com/albums/l461/prktkljokr/StarGazerbackglass.jpg

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Well, you got it at the right price - If the backglass is as good as it looks from the front it would be worth that on its own! As I said in the other thread I am the owner of #546, and will help if i can. She is an awesome machine when up and running.

 

cheers

Ian

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Mate, it looks a tad rough but as you said the glass is in fantastic nick.

 

Corroded board is not a showstopper either, may be able to fix it or there are aftermarket boards out there too.

 

All in all, a good project pin :D

 

Cheers

Jacob

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Well, you got it at the right price - If the backglass is as good as it looks from the front it would be worth that on its own! As I said in the other thread I am the owner of #546, and will help if i can. She is an awesome machine when up and running.

 

cheers

Ian

 

Cool I might be PM'ing you for some info and possible pics now and then, They have done some rather nasty looking mods in the wiring department and I dont know what its called but its behind the coin box and looks like a power distribution board of some sort with fuses, it looks pretty sad with its bodgie repairs, at least it came with the wiring diagram and manual though :D

 

Looks like the serial numbers from 541 - 550 may have been the 10 ordered for Australia wonder how many are left out of these.

 

Has your girl on the playfield have the tassle above the knee also?

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Yeah, mine is the 'tassel on' version. Power supply board is usually butchered on Sterns as the pins could not handle the current, so they would get hard-wired in all sorts of ways. You need to rebuild the rectifier board (with the fuses) including new male pins then repin the female connectors with trifcon (three contact points) pins. I have done this to all of my Sterns.
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  • 3 weeks later...

I might be on a win with the Star Gazer artwork.

 

I have been surfing the net looking for any tips on the artwork for this machine when I came across a guy in the states that reprints directly to playfields, just by chance he has Star gazer listed as one of the artworks he can do.

 

I know that it would cost too much $$$ to send my playfield to him, so I dropped him a email asking if it was possible for him to print it to a viynl overlay for me, wack it in a postal tube and send it to me, Me paying for it and postage of course.

I thought like most times ive requested stuff from people from the U.S. that is a bit different from what they usually do, that I would not get a response.

 

This morning I recieved a response saying that he would check with the guy who does the artwork and his printer to see if it was possible, I know they do do a few other earlier playfields, I just cant find the site that I found it on now.

 

I have the cabinet stripped out now and am trying to match the colour of the blue so I can repaint the cabinet, ill throw some pictures up this weekend

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I might be on a win with the Star Gazer artwork.

 

I have been surfing the net looking for any tips on the artwork for this machine when I came across a guy in the states that reprints directly to playfields, just by chance he has Star gazer listed as one of the artworks he can do.

 

I know that it would cost too much $$$ to send my playfield to him, so I dropped him a email asking if it was possible for him to print it to a viynl overlay for me, wack it in a postal tube and send it to me, Me paying for it and postage of course.

I thought like most times ive requested stuff from people from the U.S. that is a bit different from what they usually do, that I would not get a response.

 

This morning I recieved a response saying that he would check with the guy who does the artwork and his printer to see if it was possible, I know they do do a few other earlier playfields, I just cant find the site that I found it on now.

 

I have the cabinet stripped out now and am trying to match the colour of the blue so I can repaint the cabinet, ill throw some pictures up this weekend

 

Out ot interest does this same guy do reproduction backglass prints?

 

I'm chasing a few early 1960s backglasses

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Out ot interest does this same guy do reproduction backglass prints?

 

I'm chasing a few early 1960s backglasses

 

I think so ill check tonight for the website I found it on and let you know.

 

personally I could live that pf as is, clean and polish would play well and look ok

:)

 

If you saw it up close you would understand why I wish to do what im doing, it has had some 3 year old do repairs with daddy's cordless drill.

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Ok I found it again, he has artwork allready scanned for a few machines.

Have a read here

http://greatpinball.com/index.html

 

John Greatwitch is his name, maybe some of you guys have allready heard of him?

 

Never heard of him but gives the people in the hobby something to be happy about. Imagine what will be available in 5 to 10 years time :)

 

There is another guy in the US (well there are 2) that are making reproduction prints for backglasses - was hoping you had more details on hims as I was ordering 2 tomorrow morning!

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  • Super Moderator
Ok I found it again, he has artwork allready scanned for a few machines.

Have a read here

http://greatpinball.com/index.html

 

John Greatwitch is his name, maybe some of you guys have allready heard of him?

 

Do a search on RGP on this guy plenty of info there about him and his ideas,from what I have read about him a lot of it doesnt work, but hey read it all and make your own mind up

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  • 2 years later...

Well I was starting to give up hope that this pin was ever going to get restored, after a lot of emails to John Greatwitch and waiting, it looks like the Stargazer is going to finally get done, I contacted John back in 2008, and again a few times in 2009, it felt like he was not really intersted in doing a overlay for me, he may have been too busy with other things :unsure, I also decided it was too costly to send the playfield to him to have it reprinted then sent back, anyway I decided to send him another email yesterday just to see if he would help me out for the last time, otherwise I was just going to scrap it, as the playfield is just too bad to try and restore (well at my level anyway).

Things are now looking up as he tells me he can do the artwork printed on a vinyl overlay and supply the masking for the cabinet aswell for a reasonable price :), he tells me he will contact me in September, hopefully telling me its done, now all I need to do is get someone who can copy the playfield plastics and the pin will look like new.

 

I am really looking forward to getting this pin done, I think the artwork is fantastic and will look great with some LED's behind the backglass.

 

Ill just keep my fingers crossed :)

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I remember reading this thread a while back.

 

Glad to see you're not scrapping this one. There's a way around everything and this is too unique a machine to give up on. Just so much modern technology to help out these days. If it comes to the crunch ever thought about scanning images, then touching up, and printing decals etc.:)

 

Personally, I would love this as a project (no, I'm not trying to take her from you mate, I'm out of room ATM).

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