Quoted from sulli10:Let me give you another way to think SE versus LE. How many games do you buy and put 1000 dollars worth of mods in? The real difference SE to LE IS mods. Invi glass, shaker, topper, starlight panel, and powder coat. Any other game that you load this type of stuff in ,every buyer, provides minimal value at resale. I have owned a bunch of games , never bought invi glass, bought a total of one topper ( at resale it was a nice throw in, added little value) have bought a few shakers (but no value for them at resale), never powder coated the trim of a game (I think the brushed stainless is much nicer then the powder anyway ) . I like the starlight panel. Maybe I would buy that if priced right. So bottom line, as after market on this game if the SE was the only offering from Jjp, would I pay an extra 1K for a discounted mod package of the 5 items. Nah!
I might buy a shaker and if I could a starlight panel. So after thinking it over. The real value is the SE .
There are two other differences. LE provides RBG GI - SE only has white GI. I don't mind that, because the white provides better visibility IMHO. But that is not easily added as a mod; I did look into it out of curiosity. JJP uses tiny printed circuit boards with LEDs for the GI, and for the RGB ones, there are 4 wires (power + RGB signal) from the node boards, per LED. For the white, only two (power only). To add RGB GI you would need the PCBs for them - JJP doesn't sell them presently, AFAIK - and you would need to wire the extra two wires per light to the node boards. No interest in doing that.
The other, of course, is the motorized spinning bumper. This is the one feature from the LE that I want on my SE, and I am currently investigating how to do this. I ordered a Jack Sparrow series 1 figure ($20 ebay score) and a pop bumper cap ($20) from The Mod Couple (picked up the monkey and a second cap too), which I will make into the barrel cover top. I machined a small bracket to hold the figure on the barrel cover. But I need to find a cheap hobby motor I can piggyback off the pop bumper - since JJP doesn't sell this motor either. It will take some time to find, but if I do it I will document it for other SE owners. If I can do it for less than $75 altogether, it will be worth it.
Agree that the topper for the LE is "meh" (CE topper is great, but waaaaay too pricey). Don't care about invisiglass - some will disagree with me on this. Black powder coat vs. brushed stainless - I really don't care. Either is fine. My Sterns have all been powder coat, my Williams all stainless - don't care. Shaker motor is nice, but can do without. Starfield is "meh".
When I say LE is better value, I mean that you can tally up all the stuff JJP gives LE owners and it really adds up to that price difference - and then some. This is very different from Stern, where sometimes it's hard to see where the money for the Premium/LEs went. If you don't want that stuff, then SE is for you.