Patto's Decals

Has anybody any experience with Patto's decals? I'm thinking about ordering some and wondering if it would be a good thing.

I've heard he uses an ALPS and can be a bit slap happy. Any other opinions? He does have what he calls a "Super Quality Option" that might be worthwile. It would be awesome if his stuff was of acceptable quality, because he has an enormous range.

Never heard of them.
Link?

www.pattosplace.com
His main stock in trade appears to be slot cars, so I don't know if his stuff is accurate and clear enough for our needs :dunno:

He's certainly got some interesting (and potentially useful) stuff.

Prices don't seem terrible either.

Feel like being the guinea pig? ;)

I'll let you know tomorrow, I'm picking up a bunch of decals I ordered from a friend then. Kurz

Cool, what stuff?

Yes guys, I used his stuff for my build of the '92 Peugeot 905 LeMans Winner. These are custom printed decals made by an ALPS printer, not very high resolution (I guess mostly made for slotcars)...

Some pics of my 905:
http://hueb.home.t-link.de/mb/905/905-front.jpg
Front view

http://hueb.home.t-link.de/mb/905/905-overall2.jpg
Overall view

http://hueb.home.t-link.de/mb/905/905-rearwing.jpg
CF'd rear wing

http://hueb.home.t-link.de/mb/905/905-side.jpg
Detail view of the side

Also, I ordered the decal sheets for the 93 and 94 Lotus Esprit Sport 300 LeMans contenders, which I intend to build from the Monogram kit.

Overall, I was really pleased with the decals, besides the low printing resolution it's very useful stuff.

Steffen

Thanks for that Steffen. They look to be somewhat on the rough side to say the least. I emailed Bruce of Patto's Place and asked him a few questions. He was evasive when I asked him how his decals compared to Cartograf and the like. He referred me to the gallery on his website. Since there are several decent looking examples in the gallery (amongst some shockers as well) I decided to go ahead and ordered some of his “Super Quality” decals.

I kept it simple just some Wyer Gulf sheets and a 1/20th R4 Jaguar (conversion/kitbash of Ferrari F2001 and Williams FW24?). I think the latter will be a complete waste of money but you never know until you try :) He said he'll post them this Thursday so it will be a week and a half till I can give a verdict.

Phil,

I'd be very interested to see what you think to these decals when you receive them.
I see he does a decal sheet for the Panoz 2002 Spirit of America car. Now that could go nicely with Le Mans Miniatures Sebring kit.

Keep us posted.

Thanks

Steve

As handy as an ALPS printer can be to a modeler for creating custom decals, you are quite limited to what you can acheive with them. Solid colours of red, blue, yellow, black, white and metalic colours turn out fine but any other colours turn out very poor resulting with the fine dots seen above. This guy hasn't even done a good job of printing the red, yellow and blue stripes on that Peugeot either so I think you will be dissapointed with these Phil.

Any plans for some sponsor decal sheets Chris???? (just sparco and the like)

I got my Pattos' decals and well, I'm not impressed. I have an ALPS and know the limitations but these he's just not trying with these. The basic black is fuzzy, looks like the decals are just scans and reprints in some cases. If it's all you can get go for it otherwise, avaoid. Kurz

looks like the decals are just scans and reprints in some cases.

I fully agree, the 1/24 Lotus decals I got are exact copies of the 1/43 Starter kits decal, simply scale to size.

Damn, I was not hoping for much but the simple blacks and whites looked okay in hueb_s pictures and some others I've seen. Oh well, the deed is done, the order placed and the credit card charged - can only wait and see if the "super quality" is any better than standard. I guess by expecting the worst one can't be dissapointed can one? :)

Damn, I was not hoping for much but the simple blacks and whites looked okay in hueb_s pictures and some others I've seen. Oh well, the deed is done, the order placed and the credit card charged - can only wait and see if the "super quality" is any better than standard. I guess by expecting the worst one can't be dissapointed can one? :)

You might be lucky mate. I ordered a couple of different sets last year i 1/24 scale to suit the Bathurst Nissan Skylines of the early 1990's. One set (1992 version) was a bit rough and had poor res however the other (1991 version) was quite acceptable. Fingers crossed.

You might be lucky mate. I ordered a couple of different sets last year i 1/24 scale to suit the Bathurst Nissan Skylines of the early 1990's. One set (1992 version) was a bit rough and had poor res however the other (1991 version) was quite acceptable. Fingers crossed.

I think thats the "super quality" option he offers, the decals will be printed in higher resolution and with separate sheets for white and colors. I ordered my decal some time back, so there was no "super quality" option yet.

You have to play with ALPS to get rid of the pattern and print a solid color. Not all intermdeiate colors can be printed so well with the ALPS. Other than white and chrome, color lasers do a better job.

Well, I agree... I destroyed the red stripes of the engine cowl of the pattos decal sheet because of a paint mistake (clear paint was yellowing), so I decided to scan the decal sheet and print my own stripes on a color laser printer. This turned out very well, I guess the key was the white layer of color under the decal. I tried this again with a red base color and blue decals over, which is not really good. You don't see much of the blue ;-)

Phil,
I have used decals from here a few times. The first for Skaife's GTR from 1992. You can see photo's in my Gallery. The resolution is quite poor but hey! who else makes decals of Australian cars. I also have a set for Bob Janes 1971 Camaro that I am working on at the moment. Let us know what the 'Super Quality' decals are like? I might have to order another set.
Thanks

I've bought both the standard ALPS style decals and just received a set of the Super Quality decals yesterday for the Automotion Celica. Whilst the standard quality decals are not really good enough for static models, the super quality ones look much better. My only criticism would be that the colours look a bit flat. definitely no 'spots' of fuzzy edges though (on the Super Quality ones that is).

The Celica decals I got came on four sheets, one coloured, one white, one metallic silver and one red.

I haven't used them yet, but it looks like laying the coloured decals over the white and silver ones will bring out the colours a bit more.

I'll post the body once it's decalled and you can decide for yourself!

Thanks for the feedback damiane. Welcome to AF :wave: good to see another Aussie here!
You are making me get my hopes up about the "Super Quality" decals damn you :)
I should get mine early next week. I mainly hope the whites are crisp and opaque.

Rob are those Patto's Decals on the Winfield GTR in your sig?

My Patto's decals arrived today. Bit of a mixed bag, as expected.

The Jaguar sheet is rubbish. The resolution of the printer Bruce uses doesn't have a hope of reproducing the fine detail of the Beck’s and other intricate logos. Even the white areas have a 'jaggy' edge and are useless. Also the colours of the orange and similar on the Gulf sheets are nowhere near close to correct. You can get away with it on the smaller decals but on any large areas of colour it looks awful.

That’s the bad news. Surprisingly there is some good new as well. The basic numbers and white roundels are very acceptable, a bit fuzzy in places but quite okay. I mainly wanted the Gulf decals to replace the translucent roundels on Fujimi's GT40 kit. That job they will do admirably. I tested a small white rectangle of decal out, applying it to a red spray can lid. It went on just fine, showing only a small amount of bleed thorough. The decal is nice and thin so doubling up will be no problem. Verdict, quite acceptable.

Best news though is the third sheet I ordered. It's for a Salzburg Porsche 917k (think Le Mans 1970 winner). I wanted to do the 1970 Watkins Glen blue and white CANAM car, but was missing the right number (31) and two small decals. Both the numbers and the logos I needed will be perfect. Very, very happy with that.

So that is my experience with Patto’s decals. Apart from the Jaguar decals (which I pretty much knew would be crap looking at the scan on his site) they are useful, within limitations. For basic stuff they will work well, fancy stuff, forget it!

my experience with them was when I did the bathurst GTR. THey tended to be very thin and weak, care is needed when putting them on

I kept it simple just some Wyer Gulf sheets and a 1/20th R4 Jaguar (conversion/kitbash of Ferrari F2001 and Williams FW24?).

Sorry, a bit off topic but this is the conversion that won 1:20 Formula car at TamiyaCon, there is a write up on the car on this months www.modelersite.com

Back on topic, I've seen ALPS printed decals in high resolution and they look great on the sheet, I would have thought the 'Super Quality' sheets should be acceptable. The only problems with the sheet I saw were when colours were faded, as it's a dot matrix printer you do get dots and a slight jagged edge, I suppose it all depends on how you manipulate the images before you print them.

Sorry, a bit off topic but this is the conversion that won 1:20 Formula car at TamiyaCon, there is a write up on the car on this months www.modelersite.com.

Yikes, that is exactly what I was thinking of doing! Guess I won't be now that the decals didn't work out. Been thinking about such a conversion for a while, I saw a guy convert a MP4/13 into an R1 a few years ago. How did he cut the BMF out to form the leaping jaguar? Incredible.

Back on topic, I've seen ALPS printed decals in high resolution and they look great on the sheet, I would have thought the 'Super Quality' sheets should be acceptable. The only problems with the sheet I saw were when colours were faded, as it's a dot matrix printer you do get dots and a slight jagged edge, I suppose it all depends on how you manipulate the images before you print them.

Funny thing is the Jag sheet is really bad for the jagged edge while the other sheets are quite good. With some care the Jag sheet could probably be made to work. Gets back to one of the criticisms of Patto's Decals that he doesn't take the time to do a good job.