The cutout over the star is simply to keep the ball from getting stuck. Simple as that.

As for the pins, I used them to my advantage. I left them out until I got the protector in just the right place. At that point I drilled holes just big enough for the pins to fit through and pounded them back in place. Now the pins hold the protector and keep it from moving at all. When I put the protector on my Abra Ca Dabra, I noticed it could move back and forth a little, so I found a hidden spot under a plastic, drilled a tiny hole and used a small screw to secure the protector.

The fact that these protectors completely level cupped inserts makes them a God send for EMs. I really hope they do Target Alpha!

Ball guides come out and go back in easy as pie. Just takes a pry bar and a piece of thick cardboard to protect the playfield. Even pressure and it slowly but surely comes out of the playfield with no damage. Gives a chance to run them through the tumbler too.

Since there is a designer monitoring this thread, I will add a suggestion. I would change the hole size around the pop bumpers. Right now it is just barely bigger than the switch platter. If the protector is not perfectly centered the pop bumper switch can hang up. So I would either make the hole an extra few millimeters bigger or make it much smaller so the switch is on top of the protector.

I definitely don't like the cut outs for the rails. It is worth the tiny bit of effort not too have those slots there.

Will be interesting to see if the ball gets caught on the rollovers without moving them up.

As I mentioned above, I used the lack of holes for the two pins to my advantage by drilling tiny pin holes that helped hold the protector in place. This leads me to another suggestion. If I were making these, I'd have two places on each playfield where the protector has a tab that extends under a plastic and has a small hole. This would allow a small hidden wood screw to secure the protector once it is put in the exact correct position. Otherwise the protector can move when raising the playfield, etc.

It looks like they took a really wide cut around that one post on the left in the first and third picture. Based mostly on the last picture, it looks like the whole protector needs to be slid a little bit downward toward the flippers?

This brings me back to the concept of securing the protector so it can't slide around. Here is a picture of my Abra Ca Dabra. For some reason they ran the protector all the way underneath the center plastic at the top of the playfield. I used that to my advantage by drilling a small hole through the protector and securing the protector with a screw that is hidden from view from the player vantage point. Now it doesn't move when I raise and lower the playfield. All the switches stay centered.

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Can you explain what you are not happy about? Looks great in the picture.

Rollovers are always a problem as cottonm4 mentioned. They left it that way so the ball will not get stuck, so I would put some mylar down first and go with it.

You don't want the shooter lane to come all the way down because the ball can get stuck on it as it exits the trough. I cut the shooter lane section short with scissors on both of my games to prevent this from happening. I suspect the manufacturer learned this lesson and has started making them shorter to begin with. There is no artwork to protect in the shooter lane anyway.