I made a lighted shooter rod last fall, so have gone through this process. First let me say, you now have options. When I did it a year ago, it's because Stern was hopelessly out of stock and I didn't want to wait. I purchased the Modfather's shooter rod, with the Amber part already mounted. I had seen paperweights like you have found at Amazon but the scale was always a bit too big for me. The Stern amber is about 2-inches long, and all the other types are 3 or larger. Not a big deal, but I decided to go with the Modfather's for that reason. It was $99. As far as the shooter plate drilling goes, it was easy and I even posted a schematic of what is required in this thread last year. Basically drill two holes in the aluminum for 3mm or 5mm LEDs, about 8 feet of wire, (red and black), two resistors (I used 150ohm 1/4 watt) and a node board connector shell. Reminder that you also need to cut a slot into the backplate, to allow the wires to exist the area without being crushed. At the end of the work, your LEDs are integrated into the software, so that they interact visually with the game play itself. This is because you plug into the specific cabinet node board that Stern's was designed for.

Last note: carefully mark your cabinet with blue painter's tape BEFORE you remove the old shooter plate, so that you can align the new shooter plate in the exact same place. This will save you significant time getting your manual shots adjusted correctly and the tip of the shooter rub dead-center as shipped from factory.

Refer to my pictorial:

https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/jurassic-park-stern-2019-owners-club-welcome-to-jurassic-park/page/142#post-5872922

There are three wires because each LED is controlled in software separately. One VCC and two LED feeds (technically these are Ground). During game play, there are subtle changes and dimming on both LEDs. Stern uses a 4-pin MOLEX in the middle to prevent any confusion with the more common 3-pin POWER-ONLY type connectors used by other modders. Schematic is attached

Stern-Shooter-schematic3 (resized).jpg

A reminder that cabinet board CN15 supplies 5V and Grounds to two individual lines controlled by the game software. So each of the LEDs pulse and dim and have other effects which are controlled individually by the JP software when wired to CN15 as shown above. If you wire to any other point, the LEDs are just "ON" all the time. Not a big deal, but the LEDs look very cool pulsing with gameplay.

LEDs ALWAYS need resistors to limit the current drawn. It's the nature of an LED. Yes, lowering the LED resistor is a good idea. With a 5V power source, the LED will draw 2.5volts and the resistor will need to have 2.5volts across it. The LED may take 20mA. Back of the napkin says 2.5volts / .02amps equals 125 ohms. And the Wattage is low so 1/4Watt part should work.