Installed an LED OCD board yesterday and I am absolutely blown away with the immediate transformation. Now I want one for Bad Cats, High Speed, Taxi, World Cup Soccer, and Tron. No worries, that's just a quick $1000

I cant get a hold of the whitestar version right now, you’re pretty lucky

Yeah the guy I traded for the machine had it, otherwise I'd be in the same boat. I've wanted to try one for quite some time now. Most of my games seem to look OKAY without but Holy hell LOTR looks dreadful without it.

What’s the overall consensus on LED vs original lighting on this title?

Love the look of LEDs but you have to have a LCD OCD board. The lighting effects are everything on this game.

I'd do a thread search, there are already tons of opinions posted for both ways. Long story short, there is not a consensus. I personally prefer the ambiance of incandescent bulbs for this title.

LEDs look fantastic but only with the LED OCD. If you can't get one.......incandescent inserts with LED GI. The LED OCD board looks so unbelievably good with my Comet 2SMDs though.

You know you're playing too much LOTR when...

...you're fully focused on completing Gandalf vs Saruman, inadvertently shoot the middle lane, Gandalf promises you to 'help you bear this burden' and you find yourself screaming out 'Don't you have something better to do?!'.

Priorities, Gandalf. Sheesh.

Comet warm white LED.

I know this is an opinion but this is the one game where LEDs do not capture the theme of the game. I tried the comet LEDs and even with an LED OCD board I still prefer the warm and the resulting atmosphere of the incads. It is the only game where I would say I absolutely prefer incads to do it complete justice. The precious will never have LEDs .

But at the end of the day, try them both and decide. All personal taste.

FYI - the wayback machine shows it was 99.95 in 2021.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200928141311/https://backalleycreations.com/collections/lord-of-the-rings-pinball-mods/products/lord-of-the-rings-anduril-sword-ramp-mod

Agree that LEDOCD board is critical. Herg makes the best ones and his site says Whitestar should be in stock early March

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Officially in the club…. I don’t want to further clog the thread with answers to questions i could go back and search, but feel free to message me to discuss recommended mods, settings or anything else that might be good to know!

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There's an Italian guy who can manufacture siderails and hinges, but raw or only a few selected colors. Just did it and powder coated to blue (waiting for them to arrive)

Costly to ship to the US though (I'm located in Europe, so it's easier for me)

You don't need LED OCD. If you can do some soldering, Afterglow is now also available for Whitestar:
https://github.com/bitfieldlabs/afterglow

Still waiting for some parts to arrive, will probably add this next week.

It's in German, but automated translation should probably work fine:
https://www.pinball-power.com/anleitungen/anleitung-eigene-siderails/

That looks like a super cool project, but there is no way I am soldering SMD parts! Yikes.

Yeah the need for special SMD equipment & solder makes it unappealing. Oh and you have to get your board printed. Probably costs more than LED-OCD in the end if only making 1.

Yeah, looks super cool but I have, in no way, the skill nor time/desire to embark down that road lol. I'll happily pay for a nicely packaged turn-key solution like OCD.

No need for SMD soldering. Just order it with SMD assembly from a supplier that can do it.
I will be able to offer a fully soldered version in the future, but right now availability of components is problematic.

I'm not a current LOTR owner, but have had 3 different machines in the past - got them all with varying degrees of LED implementation. On every single game I ended up with all incandescents above and below the playfield (make sure you clean the inserts well underneath if it was a routed game) - the only exceptions were green/blue/red LED's in the backboard. In my opinion, this setup really embraced the warm glow that was intended for this game, but threw a nice color on some of the playfield parts (like a green glow on the POTD). I never needed an LED OCD board for LOTR...

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If there is such a thing it would be cool if the author would post links. I wasn't able to find anything like that in the wiki.

I might be up for some through-hole soldering assembly if I could order a kit from one vendor, but I have enough work to do on my games that I am not going to invest time in running down all these parts myself. It's *super* cool that this project exists, but unless they add more hours to my day I'm unlikely to try it out.

Sword mod installed. I still need to install the backbox flasher mod and I'll swap out this ugly gollum shooter rod once the sword is back from being repaired. Art blades are otw. I THINK I'm done after that aside from powdercoating rails/hinges/lockbar/legs at some point.

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Looks like it’s the same idea as LedOCD, just that you’re building it yourself

Is a separate power supply advisable on this pin if doing several powered mods?

Depends on the current draw of the mods and if you’ve installed LEDs on the pin. If you’ve installed LEDs to replace the stock incandescent bulbs you have a bit more headroom in the stock power supply and boards. I can’t think of any of the popular LOTR specific mods that draw a large amount of current, even the POTD mod is only 4 extra LEDs. Now if you are talking about speaker lights, backbox lights, and especially playfield lighting rails: those are usually run thru separate power supplies..

I had to for Pinsound. The 12v was dipping to 8-9v.

I have pinsound and a bunch of mods that use lights. Did you notice any issues when it was dipping to 8-9v? Not sure if I should test my voltage if I don’t notice anything

The sound was cutting out. BTW My game is 100% incandescent. I got the voltage info from the pinsound log file.

Oh ok. Also pinsound had an issue with the sound skipping with the sjoend sound file. Their latest firmware fixed it if you are still having sound issues.

Yeah I knew that. I also had other power issues at the time so I added the external power supply. It may not be necessary. I don't care to work/fix something that isn't broken at this point.

The ColorDMD is phenomenal in this game, for anyone on the fence

Hi all - I’m looking for a right slingshot plastic, and I’m happy to pay $$ for one. Please PM me with the price if you have a spare. I’m in the metro Atlanta area.

Thanks,
John

I’ve seen games that have speaker grills with an image of the ring in them. Where do you get these?

Happy to say I am officially part of the Fellowship. Slowly but surely making my way through all the older posts to decide which mods to go with (Color DMD, palantir, etc…).

In the meantime, would anyone know which size hex nut caps the slings? Just noticed it is missing. Thanks!

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#6 washer and hex lock nut

Sometimes with the plastic protectors you wont have the length for the washer or you may need to flip the nut upside-down so the nylon actually touches the threads. I usually go without the washer and only lightly tighten the nut ensuring that the nylon is engaged on the thread.

I would highly encourage the LCD Color DMD and Pinsound board (probably even more than the DMD even though it's great). The ability to install the custom soundtracks which play at a much higher fidelity than the original and the addition of move scores is a game changer. The best part is you enjoy the audio every second of every ball. You can only enjoy the DMD when you can look away from the PF.

AUKraut Jarbyjibbo
Thanks. I would like to get the ColorDMD but am still trying to resolve an issue with one that was just put into my TSPP. The display registers and shows the correct image when a shot is made but when the ball is in play it cycles through and displays random other images. ColorDMD support says it’s a communication error from the board to the CPU and recommended the 26-pin be removed and put back in but when I did that it didn’t resolve the issue. So until I get that fixed and have confidence in the ColorDMD I’ll hold off on getting one for LOTR. I have been bookmarking posts on this thread and will need to look into Pinsound.

I don't know about color DMD but is sounds like the next step is replace/swap that cable.

I colored several titles for ColorDMD, the board doesn’t know anything about what’s happening in the game - it ‘converts’ whatever image it’s given to color. If the display works in attract mode, then the display is ok.

When you say it doesn’t work when you make some shots.
Does it switch from color to monochrome during the game? If so, it might not have the right ROM installed. I did that on accident once when I download the wrong machine ROM for a new display. If the card doesn’t recognize the image, it displays in the default color.

Yeah, I think I need to swap out ribbon cables and see if that fixes it. I wasn’t the one who actually installed the ColorDMD but when I played a game after it was in everything was fine. Then 2-3 weeks later I fired it up again, noticed the display wasn’t showing properly (in high scores “BRIAN” was showing as “BRIAJ” and was showing random messages like “49 balls are missing”). When in play it then cycled through random images but when I hit the shots the correct one displayed. I think when we initially instead it I downloaded the wrong game file from the ColorDMD before downloading/installing the right one into the display but hope that’s not causing the issue.

Nevertheless, once I get that fixed I’ll surely get one for the LOTR. I’ve cycled through most of these posts and here’s my list in order for the LOTR LE I just acquired, which has no mods:

-silly old elf art blades (currently out of stock, sent PM inquiring about next run)
-shaker motor (LE software is compatible but I still need to purchase/install, correct?)
-ColorDMD
-Palantir mod (2 versions seem available)
-NVRAM
-POTD (need to source figures, then purchase acrylic and lighting)
-Anduril sword ramp
-Arwen plastic protector
-Pinsound (lowest priority since I’d have no idea how to install)
-Custom plunger
-Carbon balls (if experienced magnetism issues)

Mine has incandescent so will leave it as is.

Ah that's interesting. It's definitely not a ColorDMD issue. We had this exact same behavior on a Simpson pinball party. Cleaned up connectors, reflow them, swap ribbon cables, nothing could fix it reliably, until we replaced the original DMD with a Pin2dmd. Can't say what was the root cause, if it was a borderline signal, power supply level, but it's definitely gone.

What's odd in your case is that you're already using a colordmd, so your fix might not be the same as ours.

Just joined the club yesterday. I’m excited to get this thing cleaned up. It’s actually got leds installed so I’m going to try and put incandescents back in, it seems to be the consensus in here. Has anyone had any issues with the incandescent lights lifting the inserts due to heat? There’s very minor separation on some of my inserts, and I’d like to avoid making it worse.

I’m sure in a home environment, when the games not on for hours everyday, this probably isn’t an issue. Thanks for any input

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I left the club last night, after owning LOTR for 17+ years. My son was 6 when we got it, now he’s 23. I swapped in a NOS playfield cleared by Ron Kruzman before I sold it. It feels good to pass the torch to my friend who’s very enthusiastic about it. I’ve got a long wait for its replacement, Rush Premium. I feel that LOTR has the most beautiful playfield Stern ever did, and I’ll miss looking at it.

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Congrats on adding such a great pin! It’s not quite 20 years old, but LOTR is already a classic. I’m on my second one and can’t see ever letting it go again. The lighting effects are a big part of the game, so incandescent lights look great on LOTR. LEDs do look good with an OCD board, paired with warm white LEDs mostly and a few colors in certain areas, like green near the potd. A gazillion cool mods and upgrades too. As far as heat affecting the inserts, it’s not a big problem for HUO pins that only get light play and aren’t left on all day. But that’s just my opinion! Enjoy your game!

And I thought I was getting long in the tooth on year 10. That’s a long time to enjoy, and great to pass it along to a friend to keep the love going!

Indeed, unless you own an arcade or leave it on 24/7 at home, you'll be just fine.

I got hold of an OCD board and plan to start the conversion to LED…I’ve been torn as to whether or not to do it, but i feel that with the warmest LED possible, and the boards ability to dim individual bulbs, it’s worth an experiment

Let us know what you think.