I decided to break out the scope and take some measurements relating to this issue. You can see my findings and hopefully a solution to the issue here: https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-spike-2-pdb-click-fix-board#post-8133737

Is this what you're talking about ?

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Thanks,I've been following this thread in hopes that they finally come up with a fix. Until then,I won't be buying any Sterns made in 2023 or thereafter .

Because the clicking a few times before it turns on is a deal breaker lol

And you know that it will never get any worse? Lol Some owners have reported as many a 30 clicks per startup,I wouldn't call that a few. And who's to say this problem won't eventually end up with an expensive repair down the road? Even if it's not an expensive repair, it'll still be a nuisance to fix.

I'm one of them. 30 clicks is still like 50 seconds. Just saying it's not a reason, to me, to write off every game after 2023 or whatever....

Sorry sent that before I was done.... The caps are cheap, the power supplies are reasonable and super easy to get to and get into and so far I don't think anyone has had a failure... But I've not kept up on it as it's really not a big deal, it's something we know isn't right and it sucks but things still work.

Thanks again to PinMonk for getting to the bottom of this, you're a great asset to this community! I'm happy to announce that FlipMods has developed a plug and play fix for this issue. Here is our thread about it https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-spike-2-pdb-click-fix-board

Here is the product https://pinside.com/pinball/shops/shop/1378-flipmods/10736-spike-2-click-fix-board

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Whats the danger of these clicks? other than being annoying at startup is it really that bad? my 2023 build GZ Premium had this issue, I received a new PDB from my distributor which reduced the frequency and number of clicks but it still happens. I kind of dropped it with the distributor since i had to pay a fair amount to ship the old one back and it didn't seem to be too bad. Am I being silly about letting this fester?

Thanks, yea I'm tempted to buy the fix mentioned earlier but I also worry about unintended consequences and/or just my general lack of in depth knowledge on the subject.

And yes, I was a little turned off by the way the distributor handled it. He had me ship it back to him, for him to then use the prepaid label to get it back to Stern... Why I couldn't ship it back directly makes no sense to me!? That and other minor issue makes me think ill be on the lookout for a new distributor for my next NIB

Here is the thermal info for the click fix board. Max temperature was ~45 C (113F), so it doesn't get very warm at all.

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/stern-spike-2-pdb-click-fix-board#post-8148369