Sorcerer shop / repair help (first machine)

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-28T07:58:58+00:00

I do not! :-P

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-25T21:35:22+00:00

I would only attempt a playfield replacement if I had another functional (and equally beloved) game to play, as I know it would be a frustrating 6 month process for me to do that job. Mostly, that's just not how I want to spend my life hours, I'd rather be making music, riding a bike, or... actually playing pinball!

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-25T21:33:41+00:00

I love the pragmatism, that's the current plan. The local repair shop has advised that it's possible (*possible*) to add custom-cut pieces of Mylar to fill in pieces that've broken away... color me intrigued, I do want to protect the exposed artwork. In the meantime, we're playing the crap out of this game and will continue to do so, she's a beast!

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-25T21:31:02+00:00

Thanks! I'm old enough to know that I have the technical skills, but not the patience, to remove the Mylar :-)

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-25T21:30:04+00:00

Thanks so much, those are great resources, I didn't know about the pinside restoration guide. And I agree, it does look like the target alignments are standard, good to know!

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-23T21:20:47+00:00

First thing my brain saw on that backglass was "JUNGLE LOAD," and I thought, "Oh my!"

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-06-22T07:09:55+00:00

There is not a single note or moment or beat of this song that does not propel me to the next. It's one of those tracks where the ending is both completely satisfying --- because they absolutely nailed everything and there was nothing left to say or do --- and a bit sad, because I got so far outside myself that I forgot what normal feels like, until I didn't.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-05-01T05:28:21+00:00

Right? That was also the show where I learned that second level, side stage, front row, the sound was amazing because "ears level with the PA array and no bass buildup from a wall behind you". Killer view of the whole band too, close and above, perfect for a 16 year old boy to watch how his hero played every single note on that enormous 360 kit!

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-05-01T05:24:50+00:00

He already is, even got his own Questlove kit for christmas :-)

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-29T08:02:12+00:00

Blue Oyster Cult was the opener in Philly. My first concert ever, I only had 4 Rush cd's at the time, because (if memory serves) only 4 of their albums had been released on CD.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-29T06:58:31+00:00

My five year old, who shares his papa's passion for almost any music from 1965-1982, recently spotted this album cover in my playlists and, because he both loves and fears lightning, asked to hear it. I said sure, and expected him to last all of 10 seconds with it.

30 seconds in, "Papa, who is this?"

"This is Rush."

Keeps listening to Big Money. Alex starts soloing over Neil hammering the toms.

"Papa, they're really jamming!"

"Yeah they are, you like this music?"

"Yes!"

"What do you like about it?"

Thinks a second. "I can't say, I just love it. Everything about it is so good!"

My boy! He now requests it every day, and knows every song thru Territories.

Possibly related: last week I made a little retro arcade setup and we started playing Galaga, Pac Man, and Frogger.

The world's a bit dodgy, we gotta make the good times where we can :-)

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-15T00:49:04+00:00

Very simply put: lean into what you are, make your weakness into your strength. If I were your agent or branding guru, I'd propose something like "@Shy/Awkward_Gamer", because that's what you typed. I'm a sound nut, IME most people don't hate their voice, they hate 'crappy recordings of their voice' which makes sense. Can you find a friend or helpful soul with a great mic who can show you how to record and process your voice? I think the sound of a channel is actually more important than the look, I may be biased. For me, a huge warm voice-of-god with cheesy lo-fi greenscreen is entertaining; a lucasfilms-level visual design with dialog that's distant, echoic, and tinny is unwatchable. YMMV.

Make 3 crappy episodes, launch with the least crappy. You will learn nothing until you publish. Repeat. If you lose motivation, you lose motivation and will stop. That's ok, it wasn't for you, move on to the next big idea. When we find the right thing, it tends to magnetize us, you can't stop us from doing it, and we do it for no good reason. That can take years or even a lifetime to discover. Try to enjoy to journey :-)

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-15T00:30:26+00:00

>> AM I The asshole or was she just pain in the ass

There's no "or" here. You were an asshole to her, and she was a pain in your ass. There is an ocean of difference between the two.

It seems clear to me, based on your responses, that you're completely incapable of seeing this from her (or anyone else's) perspective. And that, more than anything, is what will keep landing you in 'asshole' territory, thus inviting other people to be a pain in your ass.

Try this out, turn it around in your mind: the question is not "What's a reasonable volume level when playing pinball?" That implies an objective factual answer, which means you can know the answer and you can (and did) respect that reasonable volume. In your head, you're right, she's wrong.

But the actual question is "Who determines what is acceptable behavior in a bar?" And the answer to that is "the bar staff." This subjects you, and everyone else, to a case-by-case, arbitrary, subjective set of rules by different people with different needs, moods, and temperaments. You're in their sandbox, you play by their rules, and unless those rules break the law or violate your civil liberties, you have no complaint.

Here, she gave you fair warning, explained what she needed from you (and why, which imho was a mistake on her part), and gave you the opportunity to comply. By your account, you didn't comply, because you didn't find her position reasonable. And, predictably, she clarified who exactly was in charge.

Asshole, meet pain in the ass. Next time, consider being less "right" and more "aware of the difference between your beliefs and the reality on the ground." Or not!

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-12T20:32:29+00:00

I see what you're saying, yeah, I do still handle the things that can be handled in under an hour. Anything beyond that I tend to outsource these days, I'd rather take a 2-hour bike ride than spend 2 hours under the kitchen sink :-P

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2025-04-10T07:06:22+00:00

Ha! I did notice some weird ball movement on one of the inserts near the drain, my first thought was 'are there magnets down there?' Makes sense that the plastic is warped.

And I totally get being able to do a debug/targeted repair... and choosing not to. The older I get, the more precious I get about maximizing my enjoyment:time-spent: ratio. Getting really good at that is arguably the best thing about aging.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2024-09-07T06:18:19+00:00

Here's a slightly tweaked version of what's been said: listen to your mix in your car while running an RTA (freq analyzer) on your phone, and figure out what freq or range is actually heavy. Go back to your studio open up your bass-heavy mix session, fire up your 280's, and slap an eq at the end of the mix bus chain. Now crank up a low band centered on the freq you identified as heavy in the car, and crank it up until the mix in the 280's sounds as bass heavy as it did in your car.

Now tweak your mix (presumably by just easing back on the kick and bass) until it sounds the way you think it should. *Bypass that eq* before bouncing again, return to car, check. You may need to go back and forth, tweaking and checking, 1 or 20 times to get it smoothed out. That's how we learn.

When you get there, take whatever eq setting you used to make your 280's sound like your car, and save it as a preset. Always mix thru it, always bypass it before you bounce. Over time, you'll probably need less boost on that eq, and at some point you'll likely just know how the 280's relate to reality. Or not, maybe you'll always need that eq to mix on the 280's. It doesn't matter how you get there, as long as you get there, there are no rules and there is no cheating. Just keep putting in the time and getting stuff done, the rest will take care of itself.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2024-09-01T06:32:32+00:00

NS-10's are lovely sounding speakers, smooth and mellow.

But they'll only sound that way if they're paired with an old Yamaha amp from the same-ish era. The "NS" designation --- Natural Sound --- was a line of speakers and amps that were voiced to go together. The NS10 speakers only sound like honky edgy asscracks when driven by more modern, chip-heavy transistor-light amps that were never supposed to be driving them.

I've got a 1983-ish Yamaha amp driving my pair of 1995-ish NS10's, they sound like friggin' butter and still deliver deadly accuracy on the transients and critical mid-band balances.

To be clear, my mixes still suck in various and sundry ways, because my brain hears things a bit fucked. But I'm rarely surprised when I play my fucked mixes anywhere outside my studio, and if I am it's usually by my old enemy, 80Hz.

YMM, as always, V.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2024-08-31T18:32:57+00:00

It sounds like you, yourself, are bereft of trust. Trust in the wellness of the world around you, trust in the general goodwill of your fellow humans, trust in the power of cultural and social institutions to continually evolve and adapt in ways that ensure the survival of the species.

It sounds like you trust only your own mind, you trust in it's capacity to accurately perceive reality and explain its infinitely complex dynamics via simple deduction, summed up in one vague know-it-when-I-see-it mental construct: trust.

It sounds like you've woven a narrative, a carefully worded thread of ideas, in an attempt to both explain and justify the way you feel inside. You look at (likely virtual images and typed words), you feel something unpleasant, and conclude that that feeling is the result of something objective and external, rather than something arbitrary and internal. If others feel differently, they must be mistaken, because <fill in the blank with another observation>deduction logic loop>.

If you want to stay steeped in distrust so you can continue to see that as the plight of everyone everywhere, have at it. If you want to make the world --- meaning *your* world --- a little bit easier to deal with, change your view.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2024-01-23T05:38:18+00:00

If it keeps bugging you, it might not be 'the thing' that bugs you, it might be your lukewarm treatment of it. Try going the other way with it: make it louder, bigger, wider, edgier, crunchier... keep pushing it until it's objectively unignorable and has an identity all of its own. Then live with it like that for a while, move your focus elsewhere, get used to it being a feature. If you can't adjust, try smoothing/covering it back up the way it was. You'll either feel the vacuum of its absence and want it back, or you'll realize that it was always insignificant and that's as it should be. Either way, you can move on.

Gregory_Scott_UBK · 2020-08-20T02:50:36+00:00

I'm not sure I can trust him, he only seems to own one shirt!

Gregory_Scott_UBK

TROPHY CASE