I’m surprised so many don’t realize that balls landing in the shire off the path of the dead adds souls to your count towards Return of the King. And the amount grows every time up to 750 I believe. It’s the one multi ball that gets easier to re obtain as the game goes on. But I guess if your game came with a diverter onto the ramp, there’s no way to figure that out. My game came with the previously mentioned plastic ramp down to protect Arwen.

Is there anywhere I can buy the Arwen protector? If not I'm going to have to buy the yellow gollum cover. I'm not crazy about it, but don't really dislike it, and it looks better than broken plastic.

It's long been unavailable. I've seen them on machines being sold so I guess there's a chance someone would sell it.

U can get weather stripping from a home depot hardware type store and cut a small peice off and stick it on the bracket, Prob want something 1/4” thick. Your target looks like a total hack job.

And... I did not know that either... One more reason to remove the diverter. Provided that I can find a plastic ramp to protect below

You can cut your own clear acrylic and put over the original plastic. I scanned in the Arwen graphic if you want it to make your own.

I would welcome that indeed, will PM you

Regards

Glad ya liked it! Was just a quick temporary fix as I stated in the post you quoted, worked good though. Will check out homedepot for a foam source, thanks.

Just run up to Ace, they have better selection then HD.

Just joined the LOTR club.

Anyone have or know where to buy the path of the dead figures?

Congrats, first time owning one?

Yup! I can see what this is arguably the best stern game ever made. They packed a ton into this game. It’s my “grail pin” so he’s probably here to stay at this point.

There’s a couple small issues I need to figure out:

1. Balls get jammed up on the sword and don’t release.
2. Weird things going on in the trough where either the balls don’t pop out or it doesn’t recognize a drain. This causes issues during multiballs because the game loses count of the balls.

I ordered 4 or 5 of these. They don't have their own lights but they are translucent and work well for me.

https://www.reapermini.com/search/green%20wraith/latest/77097

Both of those sound like switch issues at the Sword and trough. Did you do a switch test using a ball to see if they trigger?

I had the exact same issues when I bought mine, the balls had magnetized.

Yup, I think you're right. They trigger when the ball rolls over them in a switch test. It looks like they "stick" sometimes during gameplay. This game sat for a while unplayed for a while so I'm hoping a thorough cleaning will help the switches register consistently.

There's also a slight buzzing sound on the flippers whenever I cradle a ball. Is this normal?

Sounds like the balls are getting magnetized then. The buzzing is normal.

My left flipper buzzes

Hello, I'm thinking of getting pinsound. I see they sell speakers as well. Should I upgrade my original speakers/sub? If so do you think I should get them from pinsound or from somewhere else? Thanks

Other people have mentioned this, but I thought I'd reiterate: those are common issues when the ball has magnetized. Get some new pinballs ASAP
not sure how quickly this happens, but I've heard magnetized balls can magnetized other things, IE your sword lock.

Try replacing the flipper coil stops

I just destroyed the ring in 39:51 and that destroyed my previous. Curious what other people's best were?

I have the original speakers, pinsound, and the pinnovators sub-woofer board to an external sub woofer and to me it sounds great.

My record is just over 24 seconds, but that included a “Free Merry”. When I hit the ring to start destroy the ring, the ball fell out of the ring and down the right orbit and triggered Merry, so I got spotted a free shot. “Free Merry” is a common saying in our home for when that happens, coming out of the pops just right to catch the switch, as it seems to be such a particular shot to register. I’ve looped that shot three times in a row before without it registering, so frustrating, especially in ROTK MB.

I’ve noticed my right orbit doesn’t register sometimes as well. Is this a common issue On LOTR machines?

Has anyone tried using a MRS switch? It was huge fix on my Shadow left diverter ramp.

My orbit registers every time

Same here.

My right orbit the switch sits on the right side of the lane rather than the center and registers about 50% of the time. Very frustrating

It might be a later run thing? My game was built in 2006. I think it’s pushed to the right side so it’s in a spot where when the ball comes out of the pops the ball misses it, most of the time. But it’s possible to shoot the orbit and have the ball miss the switch as well. Curious to see where the switch is located for those of you that the orbit registers all the time. And does it register often as well when the ball falls out of the pops? I know mine will register Pippen when shooting Merry occasionally because the merry switch isn’t activated.

I put the pinwoofer system in mine and it sounds amazing. It upgrades the speakers and adds an amplifier. Prob best mod to the game.

That is a fine time! I only recently bested that with a 27 second time (the current record on our machine) and I've had the pin for about ten years. My 10 year old kid just got 30.6 seconds last week, that is AMAZING!

I've done 39ish before and it feels damn good

I’m installing the Pinwoofer set up this weekend. This game definitely needs an upgrade.

Gotta imagine that 20 year old speakers probably don't sound as clean as they should anymore. Pinsound is a must so you can run the Hawknole sound package, especially if you are a lover of the movies. Also enables you to ditch mono and get all of its awesomeness in Stereo.

Pinsound speaker set is 15 watt x2 and 30 watt. (Factory is 10watt x2 and 10watt woofer) Plus the backsides are blue and everyone knows blue is better than red.
Other sets such as Flipperfdelity don't mention their wattage, so not sure on performance comparison there. Prices between the two are about the same if you delete the volume control knob on FF, but you may save on shipping everything at once from pinsound, if you are getting the board anyway. Also the FF do not have dual wire hookup tabs per their pics, so if you decide to run an external sub, the hookup is not quite as clean as the pinsound speakers having dual tabs. (See Pinnovators for that exsub setup cable).
You could also try your luck on a random set on Amazon for 1/2 the price as others have, but I don't have any info there.

I will be installing a Pinsound today, there are so many good mixes for LOTR. Does anyone have a favorite? Normally I would try all of them to see, but the games are so long. I was hoping to get everyone's opinion which they liked best and start with that one.

Thanks!

LOTR_Sjoend is a great one to start with, then you can modify from there to your liking or build a totally new one like I did, but is is very labor intensive as I have a good hundred or so hours invested in capturing audio from the films and chopping the files then bring then all to just about the same audio level. It's work but fun.

I’m in the club!

AAB5D993-5B15-47D0-94B0-642E4D93E660 (resized).jpeg

Posting here for a friend: he has a replacement Whitestar board in his Lotr, as the original was dead.

However... It does not boot. There isn't even the Blinking led which allows to identify the Sound OS revision

So a few questions:
- it's very likely this replacement board was from another game. Even though all Roms have been replaced, is there a specific rom/component that would be important to replace to allow the board to boot
- can the sound OS, PAL affect boot? I'm pretty sure PAL does not, but I could be wrong
- besides replacing all Roms, any suggestion to debug?

Regards

Just wanted to give a shout-out to AUKraut and his awesome Palantir mod! I feel like this is a must have for any LOTR owner, it’s amazing. The pictures don’t do it justice...

Here are some before and after pictures:

69847CD3-7D68-44E8-989D-DACE6226C77C (resized).jpeg

AEB6E9CB-96B6-4AEA-92A6-007C7EF0B971 (resized).jpeg

Are you sure all chips were seated in the correct orientation?

I am still on a quest to fix my right helms deep flasher. Was stuck on previously and board looked burnt around transistor. A jumper from ground to the tab of Q14 transistor will turn the bulb on steady, but it does not flash during diagnostics menu or game play. I have replaced the transistor and the capacitor multiple times with no resolve. All traces test good. Are there any other things to check? What else controls the flashing? If not, who is the Whitestar I/O board repair expert that I can send it to?

Anyone know where to buy this speaker panel?

LOTR Speaker Panel (resized).png

Whoops wrong link

Contact Kapsreiter

e5a2645c82b3853112a2858424224eec81ae7749 (resized).jpg

Joined the club recently and am in the process of a complete teardown to add LEDs, new rubbers, Cliffys and a bunch of mods. Can't wait to get this one back online soon and play!

Skip LED-ing the controlled inserts or plan on getting an LED OCD board.

This. I went back to incandescents for my white inserts. The LEDs flicker way too much at least for the white ones. I left my color matched LEDs in the inserts and they seem to be ok to me.

One fun thing I did and really like is a color changer on the mode start insert. Adds a little more flavor.

Yep...LED OCD board in hand. First time trying it...and know this game needs it. Warm white CT bulbs mostly for the GI...will post up some pics when done. Only thing slowing me down is waiting for the Cliffy order to arrive. That needs to go on first before I reassemble!

Looks awesome. I bought one too...can't wait to see it installed in person.