Arsey

Looks like the ones that Cue Power flogs, so they can probably give you an answer. But a really question that should've been asked before you put down money 🤔

Seems Jed is a fan of SSF too! :cool: I've not played a vpin cab with solenoids to be able to compare as Jed has, but I find SSF to be great. I had to do a bit of fiddling around at the start - balancing volume between the front and rear channels and finding where on the cabinet resonated the most to give the best "feel" - but once it's set up it just works. Because it's been in my cab all along, I turned the SSF amps off at one point to see if it was really adding anything and did I miss it. It's like night and day ... the cab really does feel more alive and real with that feedback! I absolutely would recommend every cab should use it and forget the solenoids, unless you specifically want those too for some other reason. Oh and like Jed says, it works best if you DON'T have an MDF cabinet! It's simple to set up ... you just need your pincab computer to have 7.1 sound output (if you want 4 exciters for accurate positioning, and why wouldn't you? ;)), and then pick up a few exciters, an optional sub, and 1-2 cheap amps depending on how many you need for the configuration you want to implement. The whole thing probably costs 100-130 bucks total, and you can implement it in a few hours. Find the discussion threads on here or on other vpin forums, and look for the SSF facebook page and join it - it has details of the common configurations other cab owners use, and people chatting about components to buy and how they implemented it and so on. You know how you watched 25 hours of info about vpin cabs? By the time you get this project "finished" (not that they ever are lol) you'll have watched loads more, and have spent a hundred hours reading forums! :D

Welcome to the forum lowmac, and good luck on what I guarantee will be an eventful journey building your pincab :D I started out in exactly your position, being a lifelong fan of pins but only having the room and spare cash for one machine and thus deciding a virtual cab was my best option. Getting that dream to reality ended up taking me three years (with a number of unplanned interruptions in the process) because there were so many things I'd never even considered which I needed to learn along the way! Very satisfying to get it all completed though, and to know you did it all from go to woah :) As you've surmised, a 40 inch screen is the current norm for a playfield for a standard sized cab. I'm not sure I'd recommend buying a playfield TV from an online vendor though ... there's a few things you probably will want to ensure the screen will do, and the easiest place to do that is in a store where they have one on display because some of them probably aren't going to be mentioned online in the product's specs or in a downloadable user manual. Firstly it's best if the screen will return to the previous state after power loss - that way the playfield will switch itself back on when you start up your cab without you needing to find the remote. Many TVs have this as a setting in the menu somewhere but it's not always obvious ... the playfield TV I bought had the setting hidden in a "hotel" menu which needed a special code to reach. Having access to a real TV you can unplug/plug in the store makes this simpler to check. Similarly you'll want it to return back to the last input it was using (eg. HDMI) before it lost power, so you won't have to use the remote for that. I reckon most TVs do this automatically, but again you can check this easiest when you have an actual TV to play with. Most TVs perform some form of image processing by default to try to make the picture look its best. Sounds good, but this causes a delay between the picture signal it receives and the output it shows and for pinball that lag is super frustrating. It's likely there will be an option in the TV settings to switch off processing (might be a profile called "computer" or "direct" or something instead of just an option that can be set to "off") and a user manual might mention this one at least. And lastly, you probably just want to be able to check the quality of the picture with your own eyes! Is the image crisp or not, is the colour balance good, how visible is the picture from an angle since that's how you'll be viewing it in a pincab. You can't judge these things unless you see one working in person, so it's really worth going into a store if you're able to. And once you've found a model you're happy with then by all means look for it cheaper online to purchase ;) I can't give any feedback on the Zebsboard question - I went with SSF instead of solenoids, and didn't include a shaker in my cab.

Aaaaaaand right there is why Google will struggle to get many aussie customers on their shiny new streaming service.

Great summary from Dave on post 20 ... prior to that I really didn't have a clear idea what this thread was discussing! :confused: If this is an accurate statistic - and I guess possibly it is as high as 99% - then it makes perfect sense for the IFPA WWC to waive the US$1 fee for non-US competitors. This would engender goodwill in the international pinball community (and put an end to "it's the principle of the thing" threads like this) and thus maintains that community's interest in their hobby/sport. Which in turn increases the likelihood they will share their passion with their friends and family ... let's face it, we all want the current re-discovery of pinball to continue to grow in the public consciousness! :) Waiving the fee is also tacit recognition of the financial burden to those few non-US competitors who do choose to attend the finals, and who will probably pay ten times that of their US counterparts for the privilege of competing with their peers. And the compromise to achieve these positive gains? The sacrifice of 1% of the overall prize money that would otherwise have been collected. Seems an obvious course of action ;)

If (like me) you only have space for one machine, then a vpin is really the only practical way to go ... if you buy a real pin you'll tire of it and forever be craving to swap it out for another and another! The tech you can put in a vpin now will get them pretty darn close to feeling real, and the reproductions of tables that talented authors create now are just stunning, so vpins aren't the compromise in realism that they were a few years ago. Personally I reckon building it yourself is better in every way ... you learn new skills, you know exactly what's inside the cab and how it was put together for future repairs/upgrades, and you get a real sense of achievement from following it through. And I suspect you'll play it more at the end because of the time you invested in creating it in the first place! It has more value to you than a unit you simply bought. What a vpin can require though is a heap of time to make. I was the opposite to you: I figured I'd be fine with the computer/software side of a vpin, but I had no space/tools/experience with constructing the physical cab. That lack of confidence caused innumerable delays every step of the way for me while I researched doing things I'd never done before, found alternative ways to get around my lack of tools, practiced steps on a mock-up and discovered all the gotchas I'd never even considered, and so on. From buying the first parts to being 99% finished took 3½ years for me, just working around everything else going on in my family life at the same time. Also, you probably shouldn't assume you'll be saving a packet by building it yourself instead of just buying something pre-constructed. If you want the cab to feel as real as possible (which I assume you will since you said you're hard to please ;)) then you'll be sourcing decent components and original trim parts and so on, and the dollars can add up real fast. If you still have a budget of $5K though then you'll be about on track for a very nice vpin. Are you mad to think of attempting it? Nope! It's a fulfilling project, gives you a talking point when mates drop over, and provdes endless entertainment for years to come as you can upgrade/add features in the future. The communities here and on most other vpin sites are awesome, really knowledgable and helpful. And OzStick is every bit as helpful as he seems ... just set aside 5 hours for the conversation :blink::) Read everything you can find for stuff you wish to know about and figure out what makes sense to you, and ask questions if you genuinely can't find answers. I'd say go for it!

Success! Borrowed the better half's hair dryer and tried just heating the side rail and trying to work it off, but found the rail stayed stuck fast to the decal and was lifting that off the cab ply instead. I fed a length of fishing line between the rail and the cabinet but found it didn't separate very effectively unless the rail was also heated, so I borrowed the better half's hands as well so one of us could heat and the other could work the line. After 10 mins or so we got the rail off, though the process had carved up the decal a little in places and left it stuck to the back of the rail (and conversely some glue strip remained on the decal): As @vett had foreseen though, all damage was hidden behind the rail so it wasn't a significant problem. After cleaning the rail and the cab to get neat surfaces, I ran some more double-sided tape along the back of the rail, made sure I had it in the right spot this time, and used the genius hint from @newy16216 about leaving the backing paper attached to the tape and pulling it out from under the rail once it was positioned properly. So now, I have a rail sitting correctly on the slide ... ... and no visible sign that it was ever in the wrong spot. Plus my lockdown bar secures in place again, so I'm the happiest of campers :) Huge thanks go out again to all you guys who offered guidance on this - the outcome was so much better than I was thinking it could be! The knowledge and experience of the community here always astounds me. I sure wish I could've collected what everybody already knew about cab building and dumped it into my own head before I started this project! :D

I'd read a suggestion of dental floss on another forum but that seemed farfetched to me lol. I do have some fishing line though so I can certainly give that a go, and since they're your rails I'm confident you know your stuff with them :D Cheers Wayne! - - - Updated - - - Great suggestion thank you, I will find something I can use and definitely do that! - - - Updated - - - So I now have a number of suggestions from everybody that I can try, and in my head I'm ranking them by the likely risk of causing noticeable damage to the cab ... heat, fishing line, jointing knife, box cutter. I'll give one or more a try tomorrow and report back on how I fare in case it's useful to anyone in the future. Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read and offer advice, you're all legends!

That would definitely tick you off!

Cheers for the suggestion steve. I'd already considered whether a hair dryer would soften the glue but I'd rejected the idea because I was worried it might also soften and stretch the decal - not sure if that's the case. I might keep it up my sleeve as a follow-up option. The idea with the sheet of paper is great though, I'll use that :)

Haven't heard of one of those so definitely don't have one lol. The decal is pretty thin though so I'd be surprised if it doesn't tear! Awesome hint, I never would have considered that! And true, because it's a new cab there was no hole but I could have marked myself one when doing the practice run. I will keep it mind, thanks newy :)

I don't have a box cutter, but I've got a craft knife with a few spare new blades (used to trim the decal when I put it on) so I might try starting with that first. If it turns out I need to get a box cutter to reach further under the rail then I can go buy one to finish the job. Good point which I hadn't considered :) True. For instance I've learned that it was a mistake to even attempt something this ambitious as a first hands-on project! :D It's rewarding to see it coming together (slowly) but every step of the way stresses me out lol. Cheers for the reply vett - great to get feedback from someone with experience!

G'day all. Been working on building a cabinet from scratch on-and-off for about 2 years now, and it's been a comedy of errors most of the time as I've never done anything of the sort before! So far I've been able to recover from each of my missteps one way or another, but now I think I've met my match. Last night I attached my side rails - regular WPC ones from Mr Pinball. Nervous that it seemed to be a "one chance to get it right" process, I did some practice runs first without removing the protective paper from the glue strip along the back of the rail. I found it seemed to work out right if I held the rail out at an angle from the cabinet and rested the top lip of the rail on the plastic glass slide, and then could rotate the rail down and press flush to the side of the cabinet. However when I removed the glue backing and did it for real it didn't go quite as I practiced. On one side of the cabinet the rail doesn't run 100% parallel to the glass slide but rises slightly so it ends 3-4 mm above the slide at the front: I thought that my stuffup hopefully wouldn't make any difference except from a cosmetic point of view, but I've found that my lockdown bar now doesn't seem to want to lock in place no matter how I try and I can only assume it's because of the additional height of the rail. :( I was glad I at least hadn't nailed the rail in place before finding out! I've tried to prise the duff rail off gently so maybe I could reposition it, but that glue strip is too bloody strong so I can't see it coming off without either bending the rail or lifting the cabinet decal or both. Any AA'ers here had any experience with this kind of thing? I'm hoping there's something I can do to rescue my situation without buying another rail and getting another decal printing and starting over :cry Any suggestions would be very welcome please!

Four players? Around one of those munchkin cabinets?! Bahahahah!! :lol

It's a no-no.