Should you buy a NEW Stern Pinball Machine? - Pinball Expert and Chief Creative Officer George Gomez 

"Should you buy a NEW Stern Pinball Machine?" Hmm... I'm so interested to see what Stern Pinball has to say about this.

Thank you so much Stern. As a stern owner I would also love an official stern video about how an official stern pin is supposed to be cleaned and stern maintained. STERN!!!!!

Thank you George for directly addressing questions people have raised about the design choices and keeping it at a technical level, not just marketing!

I own 12 machines and not one is a stern. Just too expensive IMO. Maybe I will get a used one someday. Love my Bally/Williams 1990’s machines!

Genuinely interesting explanation of the Spike-2 system. Thanks George.

George, first off, great video. I think this is a great idea for Stern to educate their customers on how the system works why its was made and the ability it has for expansion. Easily the greatest idea I’ve seen from a manufacturing company to help the user understand their product! This is such great information and a great idea you guys had to share it. These are the kinds of things Stern should continue to do. Bravo. Thanks!

Super interesting and insightful. Thank you George and Stern for taking the time to make these and addressing feedback you've heard from customers. Nice editing Jack. Looking forward to seeing more.

Great to see videos like this! George has always been one of my favorite people to listen to! Great work!

Not sure what the title of the video has to do with the explanation of node board architecture, but it was fascinating to learn none the less.

Great video George and Stern. Cant wait to see more videos and as well more of your great pins!

This is what pinball needed!!! videos of how it all trully comes together!!! well done Stern and GG

As an aspiring pinball tech, and an enthusiast, I love these kinds of videos. It's great to get a better idea how all this stuff works. Awesome stuff, can't wait for the next one!

George, this was an excellent overview of the system, thank you. Visually amazing machines too! What strikes me first off about this architecture is the trade-offs involved. Older generation machines congregated all the control functionality in boards crammed into the head unit. However, in those days very few individual components contained the density of functionality that is now possible and so diagnosing and repairing boards was possible for a lot more people. The advent of surface mount devices, stored program components (microcontrollers) as peripherals of the exec controller add another barrier to maintainability by anyone who does not have a full-on electronics workshop/fab shop. From a wiring simplification perspective it's great that you can distribute switching to happen far closer to the lamps and coils with node boards of various kinds and concentrate so much of it on two or maybe three boards. However, taken with the difficulty of repairing modern boards, that does mean that ANY problem that develops with a board necessitates board repair/replacement. In short, you go from (in the old world) replacing a TIP102 transistor to (in the new world) replacing a node board or returning one for repair. Unless you find a way to de-blackbox those as far as the home repairer is concerned, I think that the tech-savy and cost-of-ownership sensitive segments of your potential audience will continue to have reservations about investing in these products. I was expecting to hear that you guys were using CAN bus in some way for node intercommunication. For just one example, CAN is now fairly widely used by electronic enthusiasts in some layers of modern model railway/road systems for complex control and monitoring, which is conceptually not too different to pinball in functional terms (motors, solenoids, lamps, sensors etc). Also, I was left wondering why you are using serial lighting control boards and dumb LEDs rather than using RGB Leds with built in serial comms and memory (such as WS2812 and it's friends AKA NeoPixels). I'd have been very interested to see a segment on lampholders (surely one of the most problematic pinball components since time began!) and how you may have improved on those? Anyway, very impressed with what you have done and - reservations notwithstanding - I think it delivers some great looking stuff with sophistication which befits a C21 product - and I look forward to further developments and hope to be able to afford one of your machines one day! Best wishes Alan T

Very well done George, extremely concise and professional. Respect sir. -Mitch Mitchell

Fascinating deep dive into the Spike 2 architecture by George! Looking forward to more.

I like this. Please keep making these videos about Pinball. It is nice to know how things work in the machines.

Change the title of this video, the topic was "An Overview of Spike II." Thanks for the tour of a pin 30 years newer than any I have owned. That backbox looks so clean! Regarding Wi-Fi, that evolution is as overdue as was the migration from dots to LCD.

This really was an awesome high-level explanation of a number of the choices and design considerations you guys went through on the platform. Thanks!

Great video! Thanks Stern Pinball and George Gomez!

Thanks George!! I appreciate all your brilliance and contributions to the arcade /pinball legacy.

Thanks for taking time time to do these videos, I like it.

Thanks for explaining the switch location in the backbox and how it related to safety and UL testing/approval George.

Great Stuff George. Really appreciate you doing this - unsung hero as mentioned. Love Stern!

Keep posting these how to and learning videos , greatly appreciated

Thats just awesome, waited for this so hard, can't wait for upcoming episodes. One day i will build my own Spike2 machine!

Awesome and informative vid. Super interesting learning the how’s and under the hood things going on with modern games. Please keep videos like these coming.

Great video and George sure seems like a great guy. Keep up the good work!

Thank you for the in-depth overview. Very useful as we build our collections. Patiently waiting for my T.M.N.T pro.

Great video George 👏🏻 we definitely need more videos like this ✅

Thanks, George. Much higher level of integration than my LOTR and TSPP, making the wiring much cleaner.

Thanks for the video George. Keep them coming!

Very interesting. This is a neat idea. I love the technical side of the pinballs, it is just as interesting as playing them. Impressive evolution that you never see unless you operate the machine or have one of your own. I look forward to the next video. Congratulations.

Very informative and helpful. Please address the continued playfield issues on past and current Stern pinball machines.

This was very informative and I'm looking forward to future videos, great idea guys!

Great video guys. I hope this will become a regular series.

It's fascinating to look at the evolution of solid state pinball machine. The first games from the late 1970s had just a few small circuit boards in them. In the early 90s the head of the system 11 games were totally packed to the gills with PCBS and the huge fluorescent tube light bulb. Now they have just the single tiny board in the big empty cabinet head.

Great video - More of this please!

The title is different to what the actual video is about. It's George talking about the Spike System . Minus that it's a fantastic video

Great video George!!!

More videos like this please! This was very interesting.

Love it! I look forward to those future videos!

Bravo! Looking forward to more of these.

Great video, I look forward to seeing more!

While I finally get why the switch is where it is, I would love to see some innovation and have a remote switch accessible in the "normal" spot. Having a lineup of machines side-by-side makes it impossible for shorter folks to reach the power switch. Plugging the games into a power bar is an ok work-around but really should be addressed in the design. Love the video BTW keep'em coming GG :D

Thanks George for doing this video! You guys really have a well thought out and extensible platform in Spike 2! Would be cool to have an add-on board for WiFi and a software update to allow owners to access the play metadata captured. I’m really interested in analyzing and trending my play over time... ok, so I’m a data nerd. Thanks again George!

Awesome video! Thanks and please keep em coming. 🧡💕

Love your games! This was really cool to see. Will you be selling the node boards so modders can use them to more safely add lighting and mods?

Thank you George, this type of insight is really cool.

Great video! Cheers George!

Love it! Can’t wait for more of those videos

Superb Video , Very informative , many thanks

Amazing man. Keepem coming!

So I love this video, I do have some feedback that you are welcome to take or leave :) - Um is a filler word that people use when they are afraid of being interrupted while thinking. You said it a lot ... teleprompters help a lot and there are a few cheaper solutions to this ... actually think you might have been looking at your notes under the camera ... - This being a stern channel, with the tittle you should by our games undermine the message you are in the end trying to convey which is look our brains and control innovation gives us a edge over the old way we were doing it! Maybe a better tittle would have been Spike2 demystified Love the behind the scenes!

Excellent video!

Thanks George. Very informative

I loved this video and I've been hoping the series would continue as George mentioned to cover prototyping and things like that. Any plans to do those eventually?

Super interesting stuff. Thanks for putting this together.

@George Gomez Do you have any recommendations of what dongles / harnesses to build or acquire, when troubleshooting or bypassing smart boards when troubleshooting? In other words, if one of the smart boards is causing certain features not to work further downstream, what do you recommend to use to bypass the potentially bad smart board?

Very insightful 👍

Thanks for the video, it's very informative. Yet I have really mixed feelings regarding this modern, multiplexed architecture. I'm an arcade operator in central, rural France, and raised in a family of operators since 1968. We've seen everything from EMs so Spike-2. I've been doing this professionnally for 7 years but I've been tinkering w/ pinball machines for as long as I remember. I do enjoy those Spike titles, they don't break down often, but when they do ... Boy. First one : Ghostbusters Pro, one flasher had the infamous short to ground. Two fried node boards, under warranty. How is this even possible? I thought there were protections? To be honest, the only protection that did its job was the power-supply itself, which was continuously power-cycling because of the high, abnormal load of the short circuit - those MeanWell units are indeed super good. Service bulletin : install a piece of insulator material between the flasher pcb and the metal rail. Our vendor (SFA , Paris) covered the costs, but still. Last winter : Star Wars Pro, on location. "Node board 8 not found". Found a badly burnt node board with fried traces. Culprit : the flimsy D9 diode. One of the legs broke off (due to flipper vibrations I guess) and 48 V wreaked havoc not only on the node board, but also the "smart" led boards. FIVE BOARDS were fried. Considering all of these boards have SMDs, it's getting super complicated to replace the components. It cost me 540 € to fix, no warranty (Avranches Automatic). This is completely unacceptable. Service bulletin : a ziptie and a plastic stud to secure the diode to a nearby transistor. Since the profits have plummeted over the years, that pill is especially hard to swallow. I do understand that modern platform need to be built around current components, but the future scares me. As primitive as they are by today's standards, WPC platforms were probably the most repairable, most logical, and pleasant to work with. Components are super cheap, easy to procure, and most of the initial flaws (general illumination, LM323Ks, etc.) are easily fixed - the only exception being the CPU ASIC. In contrast, I'm bitter to see that I have to replace entire and expensive modules when something breaks badly. It's not only not cost-effective, it's also not very sustainable. Hell, your SAM platform was probably the most reliable. Not a single CPU failure in all the titles I had, and only a few power transistors on the driver boards, once again, readily available and easily replaceable. I'm no engineer, just a simple technician, but instead of "more CPU cores for video" , more board REPAIRABILITY would actually come before more bells and whistles ...

I looking forward to seeing the videos!

Brilliant ... thank you for that !

Nice Video George. The center area of my Munsters Pro playfield is rather dark (shame, given the great artwork). I added a couple of spot lights (2 LED) to brighten things up a bit, but as an electrical engineer, I realize I really need to be careful of overloading the transistor (MOSFET?) that I tapped into (using a Comet Matrix light) for the lights. Is there a better way to add spotlights, etc. to a Spike or Spike 2 eco system? While my question is about Munsters, it really is intended to be more generic. Is there anyway Stern can allow for the end user to safely add accessory lighting that is controlled somewhat by the CPU (as opposed to lighting that would always be on)? I see mods that tap into this and that circuit, and I always cringe a bit since I realize no one likely took the time to think about max currents and transistor junction temperature (sorry about the techie talk).

@George Gomez, Thanks for the great explanation of Spike 2 system. It kills me that even after this excellent informative video, punks still have to chime in with "Stern So Cheap" LOL. Stern makes a fantastic product at a fair price. Not everyone wants to pay 9K+ for a base model pin.

You are the man George👍🏻

I see many unique parts that anyone working a route of machines won't be able to fix without total replacement.

I love pinball (playing them since I was a kid in the 80s). My first NIB machine was a Stern Ghostbusters premium. I've never had so many air balls and balls jumping over the wire forms and flippers in a machine. It was sold a few months later. I wish Stern the best. But as the phrase goes, Fool me once. . .

Cool video. I have a new Munsters on the way. Can't wait! I would love to see a video on adding a subwoofer.

Nice work!👍

I bought a brand new Elvira just 2 months ago after Stern released more machines into Australia. Have you had any issues with spike system crashing and restarting? Sometimes it happens during game play, sometimes after game just scrolling through high scores. I posted the last dropout on my RU-vid just now. Its really annoying getting a crash with 590 million points on the board.

It would be really cool if we could get a spike system which is blank + programmable :) I've always wanted to make a pin from scratch. Having a system like that would change my dream, from dream to 'very possible'

Very Helpful

Great video improper title. Pretty cool system

Interesting! Thanks!

This was a great video and helps dispel some of the FUD around the SPIKE system.

Sorry to change subjects. I ordered a premium godzilla through betson. This was back in December 2021. They said there still waiting to get them. It's June now. Is there a production issue?

wifi? will you also do e-net? and with on line updates the OS needs to have updates faster then the game code.

You know, it's just so cool Stern is still making pinball machines; Everyone else has...disappeared; Williams, Ball, Gottlieb, Chicago Coin. All...gone! So...kudos to Stern, & all they put into their products!

LOVED this! Thanks for sharing, George!

What does the acronym SPIKE stand for?

Love ya stern. Ghostbusters is still my favorite.

Great video!! when are the next episode with Gomez coming! ?

I would love to see you guys reproduce some of the classics from the early 1980's, such as Meteor, Flight 2000 and Galaxy but with updated sounds. They would be way less expensive to make and would sell like mad. No R+D really required.

Would love to see some of the followup videos George mentioned. I don't think they ever got made?

Awesome video...thanks for doing this! I am greatly looking forward to future installments.

George, how are the playfields? Holding up?

I'd like to see a video on fault finding concerning sound issues. The sub in our Star Wars Premium has this crackling sounds. It's been like that since we got the game. But we have not really gotten any help solving it.

Awesome freakin explanation

Really interesting presentation. What programming language is used to drive the actual games inside Spike?

The aftermarket sales in parts are going through the roof on this architecture. Reminds me of timing belts instead of chains in cars. Less cost for us to build, more expensive for you later on. Can hardly blame them as most consumers are concerned heavily with upfront cost instead of long term repairs.

Love this! Heyy George, what are your thoughts on the aftermarket quite power supply fans? Are they safe?

Some manufacturer schematics etc on how to diagnose and repair nodes would go a long way. I don't like the swap-tronics approach to diagnosing and repairing. Just thinking down the line when you need spares.

Is the name and thumbnail a reference to an older pinball video from three years ago?

Considering many 90's tables easily go for about half of a brand new Premium LE table, I'd say it might be worth it to get a new one if everything clicks with regards to theme, audio, gameplay, difficulty etc. Only table I've seen in recent years that fulfills those criteria for me, is Dialed In. I wish more original tables were made, that aren't tied to some IP.

Yup @10:00 very common but very reliable HAPP power supply.

Not possible to repair a CPU Spike 1 for Wrestlemania Pro. Nobody has the part. The pinball is out many months ago.

This video completely changed my opinion of Spike - for the better.

Can you do a talk about how the software works?

But George Gomez.. when will there be an updated version of GORGAR?

So a USB wifi dongle by the end of 2020? @16:30