My experience.

Slight loss of sound quality. When not using headphones, the sound quality was even of less quality (assuming due to the splitter used in installation)

I found the mechanical noises to be the bigger contributing factor. Removing the audio just made the other mechanical pinball sounds more obvious.

I guess it could be worth it in some instances, but for me it was an easy decision to remove shortly after installation.

Works for me.

You will focus more on your play. You will hear sounds u didn't even notice before, you can crank our models up louder levels then you would want to your factory speakers with out getting yelled at by the wife. U still have the mechanical sounds but if you go with the headphone the mechanical sounds don't seem like they will matter much for your room location. If I close the door in my room the rooms upstairs at my house are not effected by the clicking.. You can blast it in your ears and no one has a clue how loud you are... Try Metallica, iron man, tron they all sound amazing... I can't speak for the other brand but our kits have a stronger volume pot for more power handling, we have a adjustable potentiometer on the back of our plate to adjust more highs or more lows in the headphones, we have a mute button built into the plate to kill the game sound or liven it at any time during play, our upgraded stern kit has built in game volume buttons to adjust the sound with out opening the coin door and losing a ball in play, our headphones are always live with the system volume on or off, one cad cable front to back, stronger volume pot allows us to use higher resistors allowing the headphones to be louder and cleaner at loud levels, factory embossed plates, clean factory look... Our new stern headphone kits also come with a audio out for a powered subwoofer right from the factory sound board. A decent set of over ear headphones is recommended, we use dr Dre beats pro with great results.

Any question let me know
Thanks,
Lorenzo
Pinnovators.com

I got these headphones^^^^^^

They are awesome. Highly recommend them. Just get one kit, try it on your favorite game and decide for yourself. It's not that much of a commitment monetarily.

I have been using headphones for a year now, and this mod is great, I can concentrate better on the game and I no longer bother people around me....including neighbors....

Put it on your ACDC.

Lorenzo at pinnovators will hook you up. All my games have head phone kits. I like to play late at nt when everyone else is asleep. When I play I like to crank up my games.

Lorenzo is rt you can hear things much better aspecually on music pins. I don't play my acdc and metallica with out head phones now. Those two games are a must have.

Lol forgot that one.. Acdc is killer with headphones... While the new sterns dominate audio compared to the older Wms Bally titles. I find call outs and concentrating more with the older titles and my kits.

Sup Geck!?

I saw the thread title and I HAD to come in and confirm what I knew others would be saying about Lorenzo's headphone kit.

Without exaggeration, the Pinnovators kit will BLOW YOU AWAY! I was playing the METLE and the bible they had set up in Allentown. WOW! I swear, I thought I was at a rock concert! It was AWESOME!

What was also cool is, it's not just about playing them loud, but it also cancels out all the noise around you.

Now Allentown was rocking. It was really loud with games going all over the place and all the talking and stuff, but when you put the headphones on, you couldn't hear anything else but the game you were playing. It really helped you to focus on what you were doing, even with the kit turned down low.

Anyway, the guys at Pinnovators are top notch all the way bro. If you get there kit, you won't regret it. And BTW, Lorenzo doesn't even know who I am. I shook his hand and talked to all the guys for a little while and bought stuff, but if you were going to give him a billion dollars, he couldn't tell you who I was. SO this is NOT just some shameless plug for my buddy. This is an honest, straight up review from my personal experience in Allentown.

Thanks Lorenzo for the Bass expander kits. Being able to hook up 4 machines to one bass cube doesn't just save you a ton of money, it makes everything so much cleaner and easier to deal with. Can't wait to see what else you mad scientists come up with next!

Yeah Lorenzo showed me his set up on ACDC at Allentown and blew me away. I have a kit on my STTNG and it's awesome! I'd love to do the rest of my collection but I can't stop buying pins.

Been thinking about headphones on my pins also. I have an amazing pair of high quality open side headphones (like these sennheiser ones http://en-au.sennheiser.com/dynamic-headphones-high-end-around-ear-hd-800). Reckon they would be ideal because they are open backed and you would still get the mechanical sounds of the pinball which add so much to the game IMO. Best of both worlds.

Best $100 I spent on a pin. My gameroom is open to the living room so it's nice to put headphones on and blast away. Although, if you're having a great game and scream 'oh yea!'; you will feel the awkwardness from the silent observers outside your little realm of pinball

As for headphones; I started with a $300 pair of over the ear phones (forgot the brand), but they were built for bass and they sounded AMAZING! But after 5 mins, my head was hot and ears sweating, so I returned them and got a $200 pair of sennheiser open backed phones. The quality of sound effects was great and the sound quality overall is crisp clear and true, but they lack A LOT of bass which is what is needed to bring a pin to life. However, I can play for hours without a drop of sweat and that's the deciding factor for me. Perhaps I'll try the dre beats pro so I can recapture the missing bass that's lacking with the senheiser.

EDIT: I have Lorenzo's pin pac system and I highly recommend his. Awesome to control the volume and cut off the outside speakers. And despite the 12-page installation instructions, they were SIMPLE to install. 3 steps - install new board on coin door (4 screws), 2. Run cat5e wire from coin door to backbox. 3. Put sound adapter board in the main sound board and connect the cat5 and stern sound pin connector. (That's for modern sterns - don't know how difficult older machines are).