Greetings,
I wanted to post some of my (humble) work here since I purchased my AC/DC about 1 year ago, then got swamped in Darth Real Life and my Xenon restoration and my interactive topper (dedicated topic already opened).
My mods and upgrade are nothing crazy new, some are sold as upgrades and I decided to craft them myself rather than buying them, no offense meant to the original builders / designers !

It all started by an install in my basement, next to my man cave. I started my mods by changing the fluo tube and replacing it by a LED tube from Philips. As it's not an electronic ballast that is installed in the pinball, there's still a capacitor used but it doesn't age like a vintage starter, so it's a permanent and durable mod, and the led tube is brighter than the original fluo (plus light is directed only toward the translite, no loss). The stock fluo was dying anyways (they hate being turned on and off), the leds are insensitive to this.

I also got a color DMD which I find just awesome.

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I then followed the many tutorials regarding the sound upgrades. I kept the woofer but added a filter and replaced the front speakers by pyle ones (ebay). The amp is a 18W 4ohm under used with front speakers wired in series -16 ohm total, watt-a-mess :-/
I cut some plywood spacers to leave some space for the pyle cones (those would need a coat of black paint, on the todo list).
To be noted that my schematics were wrong compared to how the speakers were actually wired (colored wires didn't match) and I had a swapped phase between the sub and the front speakers, sound was muddy. Once this got corrected, the pinball started to sound much better (the sub is so powerful once you filter it that being reversed phased destroys the front speakers sound)

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I then moved to a shaker upgrade. I was given an industrial shaker / rumbler (like the one that run tumblers or vibrating part sorters, or conveyors belts). I adapted it by drilling 2 additional holes where the original shaker is supposed to land and added a reinforced plate to avoid wood stress. The motor is driven by a SSR (MOS) from the AC triggered via the provided brown wire

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Then I moved to toys. A great opportunity to test our 3D printer at the lab (day job) in 50µm resolution, I printed a SG guitar, then cleaned it, painted it (airbrush), even added strings + clear coat (this helps holding the strings too)

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I also like cutting vinyl a lot to make signs and I use my cutter a lot for paint jobs to produce masks and stencils. As I got a refurbished color laser printer from work (for free) I thought it was the right moment to print durable decals to craft the (R)ailroad sign and the highway 666 sign. Templates printed on paper to then cut plasticard as the support / sign material, with a decal (water slide) overlay, and clear coat as a finish (2 coats). Some bleeding on the decals (just in case the cutting doesn't look accurate) as the sign was trimmed after the decal got seated and dried.

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I then added some train model rails on top of the left ramp. I literally over engineered this as I wanted to find something correctly scaled, so I researched all the existing train model scaled to end selecting a O scale based on the track width. Then I recalled my Faller train I had as a kid (E-train) and which is still in the attic and some little research shows that the track width could be compatible but the overall scale is confusion. Finally, I understand that the scale is messy and that the wagon size is oversized to fit the toy figures in, but who cares, the track width is spot on and the plastic has faux wood grain / texture on it, so cool.

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I also wanted a custom launcher and everything I saw for sale was quite ugly or coarse. So I brushed up my machine skills and decided to add a metal bell.
I machined the bell a bit to add some of the grooves you see on the album cover.

The original launcher rod was machined to fit the inside of the bell, including a small taper so that would spouse the inside as much as possible, then it all got JB welded. A plate closes the the bell and a knurled brass thumb screw holds it in place and looks a bit like the clapper.

I finally cut Vinyl to produce some masks with the AC/DC font and media blasted the bell to give an antique look while the band's name is preserved with a satin / brushed look. The same was done on the bell cover plate.

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Finally, at that point, I started looking for a topper idea, as I posted in the other thread here
https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/interactive-acdc-topper-guitar

I asked if anyone had some info about a legit topper from stern for the AC/DC but it seems it never got done (shame). I tested the wires from the cabinet that are said to to to an eventual topper and the firmware doesn't output anything there and regardless, I wouldn't expect the firmware to animate the topper with specific light information and fx during special events of the game, which is what I was after.

I then started playing a bit with the firmware explorer pinball-browser (thumbs up) and tried to see how I could grab specific information from the game interaction to realize that stern really locks thing up, that would be so cool to have pinball events exported on the serial port to play with. The possibility is to play with color palettes from the DMD to "spy" what's happening in the game but I have a more generic idea regarding this (future project) that avoids altering the firmware graphic resources. As it will take me ages to develop this (if I ever commit to play with this) I decided to build a topper that would just be interacting with the ambient sound (pinball or players) which will provide quite a bit of fun already.

As for future plans, I really dream about a topper or pinball accessories that can truly interact with the game, and without the need to hookup alligator clips on the solenoids or relays to grab info. I purchased some graphic display similar to what that seller does to produce an interactive concert screen (awesome mod) and I would like to do the same at some point, if I can end up with a working solution for my event grabbing system. Future will tell !

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thanks !
here's the link to the filter I purchased. It's a subwoofer cross filter.
https://www.amazon.fr/Zisaline-Subwoofer-croisement-CR-202/dp/B0037N64PW/

I can't remember what the exact scale of the FALLER brand is because it's a toy (and not a model train per say). The scale is awkward, I just happened to have the tracks and the width was quite perfect. AFAIR, O scale looked fine for the toy locomotive but the best is to first measure the toy track width between the wheels and look on wikipedia for the existing scales. Keep in mind that in europe, there are also different track width, 1m and 1.42m IIRC.

LED tubes come in 2 flavors, traditional ballast compatible or electronic ballast compatible. Electronic ballast use no starter. Traditional ones like in the pinball (using a transformer / coil) still use a capacitor that replaces the existing ballast. It's provided with the led tube.

Topper finished. Minor bug found in the interrupt code, fixed. Still need to enable the actual (ramping) boot sequence which doesn't show in the video.

More work done on my topper which got an additional flight case to store the power supplies. The initial design had a long wire with DC voltage (and high current) in it, not ideal with the losses, so I moved the AC/DC stuff (pun intended) in a small box that looks like a flight case and I installed the current regulators for the light / stage projectors as well. Quick stencil job on it to give it a concert gear look (airbrushed)

I also added a pinduino to control ledstrips. The pinduino hardware is really neat, however as a ledstrip programmer (props electronics) I regret the really linear programming and the blocking API (expected, as based on adafruit lib and 8 bit arduino hardware). My topper effects are programmed a lot differently to allow sound and light fx to keep going without blocking each other. I initially wanted to have a left and right side fx but I would need to reprogram the whole API to do that and I just can't afford the time for this, so be it. No point neither in using 2 pinduinos which I would need to synchronize, load of hassles when a teensy could do it all. I'm actually going that route this afternoon for the tube Fx on my xenon, as the arduino prooved itself to be also very limited to grab all the tube events in real time, without loosing anything.

Still, pinduino was GREAT to quickly prototype ideas and bring more fun and interactivity to the pinball. I think that's the end of my mods with that

In the video below, I tried to capture most of the effects I could detect on J6 and J7. The attract / idle mode was modified to switch between a fire effect for 30 seconds then red and orange chasing / blaster bolts. Bottom arch flashers generate a bunch of whitish random explosions, canon motor does some white / cyan / blue spreading. Overall a bunch of scrolls with specfic colors, blue/cyan for the left ramp (train) and red/orange for the right ramp (highway to hell) to stay in the fire / electricity theme and colors of the pinball. The top eject (jukebox) brings a bit of white and purple as a reminiscence of the whole a lotta rosie thing.

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