Check with Pinball Resource. https://www.pbresource.com/ If not on the website contact them.

LTG : )

Take the legs to an exhaust shop or metal shop, and just tell them to remove 4 inch’s. I cut down legs all the time. It’s extremely simple if you can weld. You also might consider not modifying the stock stern legs, and just buy the cheapest set you can find on Marco, pinballlife, pbr, so on, and modify those instead. They don’t cost much.

You can get shorter legs. I used 28.5 inch new legs from pinball life if I recall for my stern to fit the game under a low section of my ceiling in basement. Black 28.5 legs

But 28.5s are only 2 inches shorter.

Marco sells some 27 3/8s for $30 each. But again, that’s only 3.

Not 100% sure on newer Sterns but it could possibly be difficult to service the pin with a low ceiling.

Maybe someone could chime in- is the playfield higher than the backbox when raised in the service position?

I have this problem with a couple my pins

Just take 4" off the top, it's made of wood and easier to cut.

IMO it won't feel right if it's too low. Raise the ceiling kidding. Maybe build a virtual pinball instead.

From time to time pinballlife has “seconds” sets of legs to play around with at a deeper discount. I personally can’t tell the difference.

I gotta lose 20lbs, I wonder if that’ll be 4” from the middle section? Unfortunately it’s a lot easier removing 4” from pinball legs than it is to lose 4” from my belly

I hope you’re not cutting down really hard to get legs, like original Classic Stern legs!

If shorter legs are in demand, someone should do a bulk order one of these days. Get a shitload of 25” legs and they’ll satisfy the market for years.

How did you determine this? The advertised height on Stern's documentation? I am unsure if that's with the leg levelers all the way up or down. Do you know? That alone is 2-3 inches difference. If the advertised height is leg levelers maxed, then maybe you can get by with some of the legs already mentioned.

Can you explain the reason for your height requirement? If you're putting it somewhere with very low ceilings, consider it's going to be very hard to set up / move around if you're expecting it to have <1" clearance

Also keep in mind that you want to be able to adjust the levelers to get the right slope. If your front legs are already bottomed out, and your head is on the ceiling, you have 0 ability to increase pitch which might be bad.

Just saying this stuff since it's your first machine, and these are things that maybe you hadn't considered.

Second this

4 inches is a lot, and as others have mentioned, you need an inch or two inches of the back leg levelers screwed out to get 6.7 degrees of playfield pitch for proper play. My Godzilla top of the backbox is 76" when properly leveled.

So, your upper boundry is 71 inches. You'll need 5" shorter legs if your floor is very level, and further adjustments don't need to be made to the screw-in leg levelers.

As others have suggested, there isn't really a pre-made solution for this much change in height.

I'd buy the unpainted legs from pinball life:

https://www.pinballlife.com/segastern-raw-legs-set-of-4.html

Because the cutting and welding is going to ruin the paint anyway.

Then have your welder spray some black paint on them. Raw legs rust insanely quickly.

Depending upon your situation, it may help to know that the machine 'leans forward', and the top of the backbox is 7 inches or so away from the wall. I had a customer with a shelf that was just a bit lower than the height of the pinball so they thought the machine had to fit under the shelf... but we pulled the machine an inch away from the wall at the leg levelers, and the top of the backbox didn't touch their shelf. It wasn't under the shelf, it was in front of the shelf, but the customer was happy.

If it helps, my GZ premium is 76" tall. Front levelers are not bottomed out so some wiggle room. Like 0.5-1". Not sure height of raised pf but will be higher. Could be a real pain to service building in the back of pf. If you look in owners thread, you will see it's somewhat common to have to make adjustments there. That said, it's not exactly difficult to just remove pf completely so that's an option.

Why?

Buy yourself a Super Mario Mushroom World.

Sometimes my customers are installing pinballs in a bonus room upstairs, and the 'A' frame of the house makes the rooms slanted walls not a good option.

In such rooms frequently there will be window cut outs, and these cut outs are short. It's a nice sized cut out, perfectly sized for a pinball to fit in there and block the window, but it's not tall enough.

Sometimes these cutouts for the windows are much taller than 72", but the builder put an arched curve going to the window, and a rectangular item (like a pinball) only has 72" clearance.

Sometimes there is shelving the customer doesn't want to disturb that is 72" from the floor, and they want the pinball to slide under the shelving.

And of course, some basements in quite old homes only had ceilings 72" tall.

I've also had heating ducts in basements restrict the height available at the wall.

There could be lots of reasons.

Congrats on having the spare 4 inches in the first place OP.

Can't believe it took 19 posts.

Anothe potential factor if the ceiling is within an inch of the head, you may need more than that just to swivel the head up and down when going from folded position. I have more clearance than that but still couldn’t get my dialed in playfield into full service position.. don’t know if that could come into play here as sterns were ok but I also have 4-6” clear.. not 1”

Unless you're unusually short or plan on playing in a chair, I'd say don't even bother getting a pin you have to lower by four inches. As much as I don't want to gatekeep or discourage anyone from buying one of the best games of all time, you simply don't have room for a pin. Good luck whatever you choose.

Oh I totally forgot about raising the playfield.
Yeah if the reason is really the ceiling, please don't plan on a pinball machine where the head touches the ceiling. not being able to lift the playfield is a non-starter for pinball ownership.

The upside is this lack of height saves you at least 2 grand on the topper

Priorities. Take another 12 inches off to make room for the topper!

I wish I could travel back in time and talk to whoever built our house... just a few small changes would make a huge difference!

Haha. The thread title made me look.