LE gets trim upgrades over SE - such as the Seaside bronze powder coated body armor, Premium Clear Coated Playfield, INVISIGLASS and Shaker Motor. Oh and the slings have little axes that swing when the sling fires.

the Black Arrow added black flippers and black captive ball... obviously different art on cabinet for each of the editions too.

My spider pop up does a stutter before popping up ie. pops up about a 1/4", drops down then pops all the way up - don't see any of the other pop ups do that with the exception of the goblin occasionally. Is that indicative of a coil problem?

Thanks - the update switch i see is towards the top of the mech not by the stop nut, nearer to the playfield. I adjusted the stop nut, raising the mech slightly and it seemingly helped one of the mechs after testing though (not sure if it truly did)- the other still having issues

no other loose or crimped wires to note.

This is what it’s doing - https://streamable.com/nrdw3w

Thanks for your help! I took both mechs off - adjusted the stop nut and the leaf switch - working as it should now. Appreciate the support

I saw a mod someone made for the bag end shot which adds a one way gate to help keep the ball diverting to the third flipper but the fact that it looks like a binder clip turned me off especially at $50 shipped. This cost me next to nothing to print and I used an old coat hanger. The rock look blends in a touch better in my opinion. That said if you don’t have the means to make your own the binder clip version still adds a great feature which surely should have been implemented by the factory. Way more third flipper gameplay with it on.

Sharing in case it inspires some other ideas.
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hey you're the guy - lol - thanks for the inspiration

I've only had the Hobbit for a few weeks now so I can't speak to long term maintenance issues - though if you read through the posts on this thread its pretty telling that the pop-up beasts tend to have some issues. As does Smaug - My hobbit delivered with the Goblin's hit switch wires severed, so I needed to repair that day one. (I'm the third owner)

Game play-wise - Long ball times, lots and lots of beast pop-ups - lots of modes running simultaneously with balls flying all over the place so it makes it difficult to try to complete book modes while that is going on.. you need to be very strategic when starting modes to do them efficiently. Once you understand how the modes start it does become a lot easier to plot out a successful course towards wizard modes.

I enjoy the game for what it is - if it wasn't the Hobbit - would I still enjoy it? probably not as the beasts pop-ups are constantly popping up and are the primary interactive feature on the table. Though, it is fun to blast them right in the face.. you can get them to disable during Smaug multiball by hitting the ring button after a beast super jackpot - that helps alot

I only have 2 games - Star Wars and Hobbit - ones really fast and typically shorter ball times and the other long with slower game play so it works for me... for now...

My suggestion is just buy one.. play it for a while and move on if need be... don't think you'll be able to appreciate it as much outside of a home setting