Played ITG briefly here last night on both sides.
The pads were great while playing 9s and 10s at least. Same issue as in the past though... The player2 safety bar is terribly wobbly, so it continuously makes a loud distracting squeak noise whenever you play no-bar or use the bar only on the player1 side.
If you play using the wobbly bar on the player2 side, the noise pretty much goes away and seems tolerable.

Also, the current theme is Chromatic and the song list is still amazingly huge, but usbs profiles still don't work for either side, despite this being a dedicab.

Played here last night, about ten games.  No pad problems, and every coin inserted was properly credited (months ago I had occasional problems with that). 

Took a look at the P2 bar and I'm not sure what they'd have to do to fix it.  Some of the sheet metal on the dance pad just behind the bar has worn or broken away, so there is a roughly crescent shaped irregular gap behind both of the poles of the P2 bar.  Not sure what they could patch that with that would hold up to people's body weight during play, but it probably would have to be filled in some fashion to keep the bar from wobbling noisily.

The bar rape is real. It leaves scars on the machine.

AFAICT the welds are broken for the pegs the bars screw onto. it's fixable if someone would remove the bracket and get it to a shop, this happened to my PIU.

http://hackmycab.com/downloads/manuals/In%20The%20Groove%202%20Dedicab%20Service%20Manual.pdf <- page 22, #5.

Played here for the first time today. Not a big fan of the theme but the pads are awesome. Didn't really notice too much noise coming from the p2 bar being loose, the p1 bar was slightly loose but not too noticeable.

Was there last night.  Played about nine games.  P2 bar status unchanged (doesn't affect me). Machine didn't eat any of my quarters.  Had three or four times when the P1 left arrow seemed to momentarily flake out on me, but it wasn't something I could create intentionally, and didn't happen frequently enough to be much of a concern.

Noticed there were a number of new folders since the last time I was there, so apparently someone is still updating the machine occasionally.  Wasn't sure that was the case.

The rating on user-created tracks always seems to be kind of a crapshoot, but there's little that can be done about that.  Some folders use the newer rating system like DDR Ace, which became clear when I saw an 11 rated song that had under 400 steps and felt trivial to someone who can't normally pass 10 rated songs (ITG rating system).  When I see a folder with everything at 10+, I'm never quite sure if it's really hard songs for advanced players, or reasonable songs that are using the DDR Ace scoring system.

Then on the other side of things, I played a 7 last night that nearly failed me.  I think that one was rated by someone who is used to playing ITG 12s and 13s and thought, "This is really easy, probably a 7 or so."

Also learned that if you play a song on Novice difficulty, it seems to force you into 1x (or possibly 0.75 or 0.5?) with the picture of the dance pad and the timing hints.  I was trying to play a song that had ratings along the lines of 9/11/13/15/17, and playing a four minute song on Novice didn't work out.  Something I'll need to remember for next time.

Yep, it forces that speed mod and background dance animations, just like you said. AFAIK, there is no way to avoid this when playing a Novice level chart.

Simply Love Version 4 for SM5(also also maybe one of the SM3.95 SL versions) has a option to remove all that stuff for novice play. I honestly never thought I'd say this but i'm loving SM5 and think this location would do well to switch over. It makes offset much easier to dial in and has a lot more options players would enjoy. Also I think Bill should look into Kyle Wards new insert kits. I think for someone like Tony that does a lot of work to the machine he would really love pads that he could modify with a laptop and not have to open up the panels any more. The panels are already counter sunk and has a simple 1 time insert to get the panels to a nice level everyone can enjoy. Sensitivity could easily be dialed in and the design is supposed to be industrial so little to no pad issues that include fixes like reboot the cab and let the pads re-calibrate.

My personal opinion on Kyle's new pads is wait and see. I'm not one who like to be an early adopter. I realize he has done "thorough testing" and I am honestly optimistic that these things will work great. However, I think waiting 6 months to a year to see how they hold up may be prudent.

Hi friends. Getting back into dance rhythm games after quite a few years. I've been playing over at round one on the DDRA machine frequently. But I want to be able to play my own beatmaps or at least more than the ones offered on DDRA. Is there a way to bring in songs on a USB or some method to play my own on the ITG2 machine?

On some ITG2 machines this is possible, but most of the modified/hacked cabinets no longer have this function for a variety of reasons. From what I recall, the ACME machine's USB ports don't work. You can try to get a hold of Tony, who does a lot of the maintenance on the machine and he might add custom charts to the machine. Try PM'ing him. He goes by Ansick on this forum, but I'm having a heck of a time locating his profile. Perhaps someone else can help?

He's still got the sticky topic in this particular forum, which should be enough, unless I'm missing something.

Yep, here's his profile. When a name is so odd, it's always hard to find it, especially when a single typo will return zero useful results.

http://www.pnwbemani.net/profile/?u=23

F,Y,I,  Acme has had it's bars welded.  Hopefully not so sloppy now.  :-)  Bar raping once again possible. 

FYI, I was at ACME last night and the machine was frozen.  Never seen it like that before, the screen wasn't off, but just stuck, and it ate one of my quarters.

I talked to one of the staff at ACME and they refunded my quarter and said they'd reach out to the owner about it (Bill I assume that would be you?).  Could someone confirm if/when it gets fixed?  I don't want to waste another trip down there if it's still going to be broken.

Actually, the machine just left Acme today.  It's on it's way to Sakuracon for the weekend.  It will be back next week Tuesday.

What happened to the couples packs? We've been enjoying them for a couple of years now, but it seems like sometime last week they were deleted?

Me and a couple friends of mine are also interested in finding out what happened to the Only One Couples packs. Those packs are one of the only reasons we play on the ACME machine.

...and now the animusic packs have disappeared too. Are we back to the dark times again?

Ask Tony Chick, he should know what is going on as he maintains his system in that cabinet.

@D0SBoots, and Cxxxx, message ancsik on the PNWBemani.net discord channel. Or chat in the #acme-itg-support channel.

I see that BluesS just deleted the ITG cabinet from Acme on the ZIV Arcade Tracker. Is this true? Did the ITG machine disappear from Acme?

Everything has gone away at Acme.  New ownership, and a lot has changed.  Mostly all ticket games now. 
The cabinet is safe, in it's masters hands that built it.  :-)

Thanks for all you've done for the community over the years. I know this was a big hit for a lot of people, and probably not enough people really realized what they had until it was gone. Rip Acme.

That's sad to hear. I remember when that was the place to play. I'm thankful for all you've done for us players. Thanks a bunch Bill.