Joined the club about 3 weeks ago with a new VE Pro. Fell in love with this pin at an arcade near me and have wanted one for over a year.

Absolutely love it and can’t get enough of the gameplay and challenge.

First night it was delivered, I modded with: shaker, pinbits thunderbolts (amazing), external powered sub, red plastic protectors, titan bands, and yellow/red led changing flipper buttons (they go great with the theme).

On order now, I have speaker LED kit, premium train, cliffys, trough light kit, guitar flipper toppers, and a red stern start button.

Only thing I’ve really had to mess with is insulating various bits in the machine with some clear rubber (i.e. where the ramp rests on a screw head and where the band card touches the horn on the jukebox card, etc.) and some foam tape behind the translight, so the shaker motor has zero vibration noise now. Super smooth and now you just feel it instead of hear it.

Other than that, out of the box, that darn SDTM preventing spring kept VERY often trapping balls. Even multiple balls during multiball (see pic)! So, using a friend’s set of hands, with two needle nose pliers, we re angled the bend of the spring so it still functions fine but only catches a ball about 0.5% of the time now.

It’s interesting that stern changed the design of the spring. In a post not too far back in this thread, there’s a picture of the spring and it’s just a straight piece of round metal wire poking out. You can see mine now has a sort of P shape on it. My theory is that the P helps stop the ball from flying over top of the wire when it’s fired hard up at it. Still mine will hop over it once in a while, but I imagine it would happen a lot more with just a plain wire vs the P little loop on the end.

One question I have is, early in this thread someone mentioned they were able to light the TNT box with a flasher. I saw a kit online for this (and electro luminescent wires from the tnt box), but it says Premium/LE only because the Pro TNT box is not hollow. In case they changed this on the Vault LED, I checked and removed the front panel of the TNT box and sure enough, it’s a solid block of wood in there. Anyone know how this TNT light mod can be done on the Pro?

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More mods to report in on. Got some stuff for my birthday!

- train
- trough light
- speaker lights
- guitar flipper toppers
- red start button

I love them all but am slightly concerned at the brightness of the blue train LED. It is BRIGHT and a bit distracting. I noticed on the Premium/LE it is very rarely lit. In fact, watching some gameplay video, it only lit at the selection of RnR Train, not even when the train ramp was hit. I realize it has its own coding and harness connection in the LE/Prem but, has anyone figured out a smarter spot than a GI connection to hook the train power to on the Pro, so it’s not on 100% of the time?

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That’s not a bad idea. Still might be on a little much, since that song gets activated on the board fairly often. Was also wondering if it might be feasible to connect to the horns on the jukebox. They don’t flash too often so it wouldn’t be too annoying.

Thanks. It does look great. Got it from Pinballlife. It’s not cheap, unfortunately.

This was one of my thoughts. How does the bulb come out? Just pull from the front of the train, or twist, or do you have to remove the whole thing from the inside of the train?

I’ve read opposing things saying that the bulb is a 555 and a 44, so not sure which to buy as a replacement.

Thanks guys. Sure looks like the bulb theoretically should pull right out without having to mess with that screw and the nut inside, but maybe the hole in the nose of the train is too small for it to fit through, so the dome just comes off?

Oh well, gonna order up a frosted 555 bulb. I like the thought of a warm white (more traditional like a real train) but hope that doesn’t look stupid with all the other LEDs of the machine being bright white.

Update: changed out the train light bulb for a 1 SMD (dimmest) frosted red LED and it is a million times better. Ordered a frosted blue, red, warm and cool whites, but the red looked the nicest and was the most subtle. The blue wasn’t bad either, though.

In addition, per the suggestion above. changed the alligator clips to go to the juke box light for Rock n Roll Train, rather than the GI light. Very nice that it now comes on only when that song is active or completed.

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I’d go with pinbits. Light quality and color is amazing and perfect. Options for the color films and lights are nice too but I am happy with the “white” (more of a nice medium warm color) with no filter.

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Awesome. If that blue light ends up blinding you like it did to me, scroll up a bit for my post #248 where I show it with a frosted red LED and tied in to the Rock n Roll Train song light. Way way better, IMHO.

Oh man. A little lock-tite couldn’t hurt when you put it back in.

I have that in my black knight SOR. On my AC⚡️DC I have stock speakers with an external powered 8”. The AC⚡️DC sounds better, IMHO. Definitely a ton more bass available too.

I would just suggest using double sided stick on Velcro to attach the train. Makes it way easier to remove when you need to get to something and the train is in the way. You can’t see it at all if it’s placed under the main train section and they make it in clear.

Also I prefer the alligator clips on the GI bulb for Rock n Roll Train, on the jukebox. That way it interacts nicely with the game.

Just connect it to the rock and roll train jukebox light. Its the bulb that blinks for rock and roll train.

There’s a hole that you took the screw out of. I just use that to hold the LED board in.

Yeah but are there dimples!!?? Lol

Congrats on the machine. Some of the nice LED lightning bolts out there for sale now will fix those broken ones right up. I love mine. And Cliffy protect that shooter lane and it’ll help that out. Impressed that the ramp plastic look nice, but a shame about the cracked entrances. I’ve seen that a ton on the machines that didn’t come with the metal edge armor on those ramps like the vault editions do.

I assume new ramps (with the protectors) are prohibitively expensive?

Not saying it would be easy, but you could try to get some lengths of aluminum or stainless from Home Depot and bend them into a U of the correct width to maybe superglue them into the ramp side ends. Riveting would be better but obviously way harder.

Mine did. It’s a vault, but regardless, obviously the part exists.

I think that’s why I’ll never let mine go. Aside from the awesome tunes and always fun gameplay, it was my first NiB that I saved up for and wanted badly for a while until I could pull the trigger (pulled it...pulled it...pulled it.......shoot to thrill!)

Yep. One of the best mods. Two way Velcro and soldered on alligator clips. Clip it to the RnR Train song jukebox leads

I forgot the last thing...frosted led (I highly prefer red to go with the theme). The cool/ice and blinding clearness of the stock bulb was not ideal.

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What’s Lyman up to these days? How about a nice code update while we’re stuck at home! Little mini mode at 6 songs, and some Oi mania!

Somewhat normal, I think. Seems like most of us on here by now have that upper juke kick guide out of center by 1-5%, and it’s enough to mess with the super skill eject or the new song selection eject etc. Mine commonly bounces back in 2-3 times on occasion.

Yeah when I installed my Cliffy it was awful and would smack the right post 100% of the time instead of flowing around for the super skill shot, so I took it all apart again and nudged it a bit, then tightened the two screws down again. It’s a massive pain in the butt to get to them.

This is the one to get. No face. No lower field boringness, already all LED, and swinging bell.

why would you want to remove it? Guessing it’s there to ensure a straight hit on the switch behind it, and maybe also to prevent horizontal movement stress on the joint at the bell.

In case your answer is so it swings easier and doesn’t touch up against the guide...mine was manufacture or poorly from the factory. Nothing I could fix from adjusting anything. The holes were drilled in poor locations that tilted my whole mechanism so that the shaft from the bell scraped up against the guide badly. This caused the bell shaft to get maybe one swing and really have to hit it hard to even have it register the switch. The only adjustment fix would have been to drill new holes, but they would have intersected the existing holes and made some giant awful holes that wouldn’t be good to use at all.

So, what I ended up doing was taking the mechanism off and marking where the shaft was hitting the guide, then taking the shaft off and using a file on it to thin the metal away at that point. Lots of retesting and remarking and refiling. Eventually got it to where the shaft clears the guide now and it swings freely. Way easier to hit the bell switch now and the whole thing looks nicer with it swinging a lot more. Visually, you’d never notice that ~0.05” of metal was removed on that part of the shaft.

That’s correct. You’re getting stuff, not tunes.

Just make sure not to get Oi Mania or you’ll be sorely disappointed. (Oh Lyyyyyyymaaaaaaan….lyyyyyyyymaaaaaaaaaaan, hello? Bueller? Anyone?!)

Because you didn’t complete the song tasks. You just completed the 3 horns locations to activate stuff.

No, he forgot to finish coding Oi (mania)! Lol

It stops SDTM