Hey Nino, no question the challenge of reproducing the same pattern is right up there with Fathom. So many intricate patterns for sure.
Don't shoot me for bringing this up, and I'm hoping I am wrong, but there are differences between original and the results. The 3 images below are from the original paintwork of a Fathom, and the circled areas are examples of where alignment is different. On the left hand and right hand sides of the cabinet, the first thing that drew my attention to this was the different alignment of the bolt heads with the patterns. Maybe there are slightly different patterns out there for the Fathoms produced?
First of all you need to define "original".
All four Fathom's I've owned or I've restored have all been different. As you are aware, Bally changed their color from GREEN or YELLOW on some production models. This stencil is easily the most difficult and challenging stencil produced for any Bally - Maybe Xenon would compare.
Shay or PinballPal's stencils are wrong. They are completely incorrect. There are many differences that they didn't address. One drastic difference is that the color application for the Cabinet and head are swapped around during production. This was not reflected in their stencils and that's why I wanted Gav to do them properly.
Here's a picture of one of My three Fathoms in storage that the art was used for - which is DIFFERENT from yours (gap is narrow, and much less GREEN);
Your photo of the front of the cabinet is not square. There will always be variations when the source art is not square.
Here's part of the many hours of artwork that was redrawn by Gavin, based on my original photos - that were not 100% square ;
At this point, I'd like to bring up some important differences in cabinet repainting - and this is evident in the numerous titles I have in storage.
- Cabinet dimensions are seldom exactly the same. Bally used several different suppliers to build cabinets. some are longer by 20mm. some are higher. All are the same width.
- Cabinet painting was done by holding a brass stencil over the cabinet and spraying with a paint gun. This was done by several different suppliers, on different cabinet dimensions, using different paint from different suppliers. This process took several minutes - not several DAYS.
All three of my Fathoms and the THIS Fathom were all different. Colors, finish and registration. I asked Gavin to complete this project based on an mean average of the positioning of the stencils based on my ability to provide the photos as square as possible, There were mistakes - but according to which of the four DIFFERENT cabinets / colors / finish ?
This is the ONLY stencil available at this point in time that is faithful to the original - but the problem is that no two Fathoms I've seen are EXACTLY the same. The hours Gavin has put into this solution are massive. There's not one aspect I would change, and my own personal machine will be repainted exactly the same.
