Welcome to the Pinsetter Channel! After returning to bowling a few years ago and being allowed a tour behind the scenes of a bowling center I developed a fascination for the pinsetting machines that are the backbone of any bowling center, so I decided to create this channel, with a shout out to all of the mechanics at centers everywhere who make it possible for us to bowl.
Our local alley has 14 lanes and gsx setters with plastic twister pins. Bowling all by yourself, the gsx setter us fairly loud, you can clearly hear the 8 pins dropping into the setting table and the sweep wagon moving back and forth, interesting stuff 😊
Both the AMF 82/30 and the Brunswick A are good machines. I do understand the issues of the underfloor returns. They can be a hassle unless they are maintained correctly to reduce the chance of stuck balls.
I can understand from a cost and profit perspective as to why the owners possibly ditched the 96 in favour of stringpin. Its a wise business choice that only anyone operating in the industry can truly appreciate. Its tough out there! Mechanic of 20 years here, both on GS-10-GSX, managed them all, seen it all. But they can be quite a pain to keep running especially as many parts are obsolete and require additional resourcing and the costs required to get said parts. And getting the mechanics in to keep them running. Electricals are another issue - our gamesetter and HV boxes won't last forever and require a fair bit of work to rework if they end up frying. It takes time as brunswick doesnt offer repairs on older GS model electricals anymore, so us older centres have to take this up.
Lazy techs not doing their job. Part of their work is cleaning the pin decks properly and that doesn't appear to have been done here. They need to be given a warning and if it continues, sacking.
I understand businesses not wanting to keep these machines going as the recent service parts catalog updates is putting a lot of the old hardware as N/A - sourcing the parts is harder and more costly as a result. My own centre is surviving on parts from a closed down centre near us, and a lot of assembly/frame parts we don't have, we build from scrap metal sheeting.
Our local alley has 14 lanes with Gsx machines and the twister 🌀 plastic pins, when your bowling by yourself and the place is completely empty, you can hear the machine cycling away, loading pins, hearing the 8 pins drop into the setting table (the 2 corners load first) the noisy sweep assembly and the ball returning back 😊
Seeing mixed pins in a machine and you know there is going to be mechanical issues. In a sanction league or tournament that is illegal. This house most likely doesn’t have much league play therefore very little up keep on the machines.
For being 50+ year old machines, they appear to well-maintained and running smoothly. I see they have newer electronics on them to interface with the auto-scoring system. Good mechanics for these older machines are becoming scarce.
Fine for open bowlers who care more about their $15 drink and $25 quesadillas. Or a kids birthday party. This should never be a thing in sanctioned leagues! I know 5-pin and duckpin use strings in most of their houses but I'm not a fan of it for those variants either!
The only thing missing is the 82/70 sign attached to the front of the pinsetter table. And it's really cool that the center kept the sweeps with the original bars. There was an AMF stand-alone center here in Vegas years ago that had this same equipment and Magic Triangle masking units (except in green). I remember that after a ball was rolled and the sweep came down, the table would "idle" a few seconds to give any wobbly or messenger pins a chance to fall. I also remember that as soon as the table returned standing pins back to the deck (spare and full rack), the sweep would instantly go up, leaving the table exposed briefly. Weird the things you remember as a kid.....
That's wild, PinDom went to a 60 lane center in Green Bay with the same setters & maskings, same color and everything. The midwest rocks for vintage bowling.
Well, the bowling wasn't that good, but thanks anyway! It's a great place, I just wished they had oiled the lanes. For a very average bowler such as myself, it was a little tough.
Table looks like it's a whole tooth out on the right and off-level, probably why the 10-pin wound up with 2 pins instead of one. Really miss working on these things.
Cool video! I honestly thought their string-pinsetters were decent, but the whole conversion was still such a downgrade. I remember the first time I bowled there (before string-pins was approved), I was talking with one of the employees. They were thinking about converting to GS-X or the GS-Nxt. I kinda wish they followed through with that.
I am a technician of 24 gsx lane house The 17 years old are And I do a lot of work that we don’t get string machines Better to repair the machine with spare parts instead of switching to string pinsetter And as a league bowler, String Pin is no longer a real bowling
String pins are such a downgrade. Im a technician at our local bowling alley. They were going to go to string pins but im stoked recently to hear they are not now. I feel string pins take away from the bowling experience
Thanks for the comment and for watching! Just out of curiosity, why did the center reconsider installing string pins? Either way, I'm glad for you that they are keeping freefall.
@@thepinsetterchannel2943 I actually don't know the reason. Our centre is own by an overseas corporate so i don't really know what goes on behind the scenes. Either way I got no interest in working with string machines and that probably would have meant the end of my job there
I was just at Twisted Pin since the conversion for the first time last Tuesday. It’s a real shame they got rid of the GS-96 Machines for the strings. I had never bowled on strings until I went here, and it was such a downgrade from free fall. Nice Video!
Thanks for the kind words...glad you liked the video. I'm truly torn about the arrival of string machines. I think the ones at Twisted Pin conform to USBC standards, which (I think) means longer strings that create a more freefall-like pin action. My experience at Twisted Pin was fine, and as others have mentioned, the pinfall seems to mimic freefall. That said, there's something about the freefall machines that add to the experience. I like seeing the sweep come down and also the sound of the machines themselves, especially the unique sound of the pins being organized on an A-2!
@@thepinsetterchannel2943My dad bowls league at Twisted pin (started before the change in equipment) and says that it’s definitely not the same. A lot of the times the machines don’t respot pins in the right spot if it slides, or counts pins as standing or fallen that should’ve been counted the opposite way. I work in a center with 82-70s and do everything I can to keep them maintained and running so they don’t get replaced with strings.
