Quoted from J_Striker:

Just sold mine fully modded for 15k 2 weeks ago

Quoted from Jarbyjibbo:

Unfortunately LED's just have no subtlety even with the LCD board. The scale up and down in brightness and the half illumination levels is a pretty cool mood generating aspect of this game. I like the POP of LED flashers and have them in the game but this will literally be the only game that I have ever owned that will not have LED's in it for GI or inserts.
Maybe one day they'll advance the technology far enough for my taste but I don't really keep the game on long enough to ever be a concern with incandescent bulbs in there anyway.

Quoted from JAG94:

Where can I find a POTD mod kit? Can anyone point me in the direction of this and any other mods you like for the game? Links are appreciated. Thank you.

Quoted from ryandimx:

Bunch of links throughout this whole thread and some of their own topics. It's worth it to look around and check out all the things you can. As far as I know, because I've been looking for a few years, no one sells an assembled potd. You have to look around for the plastic and dig a little more for the figures....then figure out how you want to do the lighting.

Quoted from Medic:

Is it still possible to buy a whip for balrog?

Quoted from CashMoney:

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

Quoted from usul27:

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.

Quoted from franksisko18:

Looking to buy a path of the dead mod. If any one can put one together or has one to sell im interested. Thanks

Quoted from TheShaft:

Hope this helps.
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Quoted from AUKraut:

That’s the standard DMD connector, which is not use when a color DMD is installed.

Quoted from LOTR_breath:

That connector goes to CN2 on the display power supply board. It's in the top left corner of the backbox. This is according to the manual. I haven't physically looked on my game.

Quoted from whoknowsgoi:

anyone have any flipper toppers they recommend? and or places to get gold trim?

Quoted from Munsters:

Joining the club soon! Stern dindt bring out an topper? If not, which one is the nicest?

Quoted from red-line:

My guess would be that you have never beaten the mode and have just timed out every time prior to this. If
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Quoted from November:

Thanks morgoth00 for link video
It's a modified Wool Mix.

Yes, all by myself. The lighting is controled by the raspberry pi "pinstadium", sorry i dont remember the name of it

Quoted from wombat:

Does anyone know where these wire brackets are sold? I have a few that are broken.
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Quoted from flipper73:

Perfect. Is there a difference between standard-lord and the LE-Version? I mean is it possible to use These coils for both versions?

Quoted from LastCall420:

Hey, looking for a potd mod everywhere I look it’s either sold out or no stock, does anyone know if someone is still making them or is it easier to just source the parts myself and diy it ?
Thanks for any info

Quoted from Jarbyjibbo:

FYI Pinbits is no longer a thing, you'll have to source your mounting surface elsewhere. I just used a pig tail 555 socket and mounted a green LED into the back of the figure but I only put one in the back corner because I wanted to block as little as possible of the POTD.

Quoted from PantherCityPins:

Ok, here is a Path of the Dead mod solution if anyone is interested. This was done in partnership with Mr_Tantrum.
Basically we designed and cut an acrylic piece to sit above the path, designed a laser etch pattern of skulls and a cobblestone path which was etched onto the acrylic. Then I used Comet Matrix lighting to light the figures. Matrix Star Post lights in green were mounted to the back side of the acrylic with gorilla clear mounting tape and then the figures were attached to the top side with the same mounting tape.
I also backlit the original path with a Matrix 20 SMD strip from Comet.
Overall I’m very happy. If anyone is interested in getting the acrylic path, either laser etched or not please PM me or Mr_Tantrum.
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Quoted from PantherCityPins:

Sure, the Comet Matrix series of lamps has alligator clips that will clip onto lamp sockets. Basically I used a three way splitter and some of the matrix extensions to wire it to a nearby GI bulb under the playfield. Others have done things like wire each figure to a lamp in the path of the dead plastic on thr backboard, I chose to go with an on all the time solution. I might play around with wiring to the controlled lamps as well, we’ll see.
As for covering any of the Star post LEDs I did not. I placed the figures so that the LEDs would be covered by the figures if looking from the players perspective. I don’t think they’re too bright at all, the picture makes them look brighter than they do in real life.

Quoted from ryandimx:

https://www.pinballlife.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=abl_SP
How do you plan to set it up?

Quoted from red-line:

I hadn't heard of mamushka's light puck until I saw your comment, I looked it up and bought it immediately. WOW. this has got to be one of the best and cleanest mods I've seen, no more settling the ball and leaning forward to count my elf rings. Amazing mod.

Quoted from ShineSpark:

Hi everyone,
So I have a pinduino hooked up to the aux 12V 3-pin molex power connector inside the cabinet, right hand side. I need to unplug it to put in a splitter for more mods. Problem is, it seems to be pretty snug in that female connector, any ideas how to get it out safely? I don't see any kind of latches or grooves or anything which are facilitating a tighter connection, it's just stuck in there pretty hard. I guess I don't know my own strength.
Thanks as always for your insight.

Quoted from ryandimx:

The ad says it doesn't fit the 2003 version of the game

Quoted from ryandimx:

It's the regular game, not the le. So wouldn't that be the 2003 version?

Quoted from T2F14:

To answer ADROCK in reference to post 2446
I started with the figures and put lights and wires in them to light up interactively with the game's path of the dead lights. I did this by jumping the Molex connectors for the PoTD light board by making a y connector. Below are pictures of my connection, a rough mock up I built to make sure it was going to work, and the connectors I bought. My issue was getting the Diodes in the correct direction and on the correct lead to avoid light/power bledback.
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Quoted from ChipScott:

Sorry if I missed it, but wow, that's an amazing idea and good looking execution... I sure would love to see a short video of that in action. Excellent work, man!

Quoted from ShineSpark:

Sidebar: I'm looking to polish the wireforms and on the LE they look to be brass... any thoughts as to a safe metal polish? Was just going to use blue magic.
A sincere thank you to you all once again!

Quoted from Tommy_Pins:

I think if you try to polish the factory brass you’ll end up with chrome wire forms. I just used mild soap and tried to clean the best I could

Quoted from PinRex47:

I have it stored in my hard drive. Its hundreds of files. If there was some way to drop it to a dropbox I would say it's possible to transfer it.

Quoted from PantherCityPins:

I used Comet Matrix for the lighting. There are three green star post LEDs which are affixed to the underside of the upper clear acrylic piece with double sided tape. The wires run down underneath the laser etched path and aren't visible from above. The wires are routed out through the same slot the main connector goes through and then alligator clipped to a GI bulb under the playfield. If you wanted to link the lights to the flashers at the rear of the POTD you could do so fairly easily.
The figures are attached with the same Gorilla mounting tape to the top of the etched acrylic piece and just placed over top of the star posts below.

Quoted from flynnibus:

thx for elaborating.

Quoted from rdleifriaf:

My journey just began! I have what looks to be an almost new LOTR machine with a color DMD with what otherwise looks like a blank slate when it comes to mods. It looks like there are a lot of great options for this one, so this should be fun!
One thing I noticed is that it looks like a bulb is missing. Does anyone know where I should look to find the replacement part?
I was also wondering if there was a figurine missing where this vertical nail-like post is sticking up.
Finally, it looks like the Palantir target (which is begging for a decal of some sort) is really off-centered. Is this atypical?
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Quoted from Neal_W:

Welcome to the club!
No bulb missing. Originally there was a Red Flasher bulb there, and yours has been replaced with an LED flasher. I found a red bulb condom to cover the LED flasher installed there on mine.
No Figurine missing. That post is just there to keep balls from getting stuck.
Targets get pushed sideways sometimes. The leaning standup target can be removed from the bottom, and then you loosen up the leaf switch stack and make it straight.
Your pin looks to be in great condition. The Gimli saucer shown in your photo has no wear.

Quoted from drummermike:

I put in an 8 SMD red #906 flasher. I think it looks better.

Quoted from Medic:

Hello I have a 2006 Lotr. I’m thinking of adding nvram. Is this the right version? I see two of them at pinball life. Do I just replace it with the u212 chip? Also do I need to remove the battery holder or just removing the batteries is fine? I don’t know how to remove battery holder if necessary. Scores will still be kept with nvram right? Sorry for the multiple questions https://www.pinballlife.com/anypin-dmd-nvram-battery-eliminator.html

Quoted from Days:

Hello all you Lords out there!
Next friday i will turn into a Lord too!
Meanwhile i have some minor questions:
-What's the difference from the version from 2003 and 2009, i saw that there is two different versions but i can't find the differences.
-EDIT ( already found some photos on the forum, so it's almost like a bally / williams dot, i will just rent a bigger car ) EDIT Can someone show me a photo of the electronics in backbox, so i can see if is easy to remove the cables and unmount the backbox from the main box, to put it in my car, i do that with the new stern since there is not too much cables, but for the old bally / williams there is a bit too much cables to remove and i prefer to rent a car. EDIT
Thank you all in advance

Quoted from blazingsaddlz:

I've got an uninstalled Balrog Whip mod, and I can't find any installation instructions for it. Would anyone be able to point me to where I can find the instructions? Thanks!

Quoted from Farmboss:

Any suggestions for improving the lighting? My LOTR is so dark when I have my roo lights off and only my neon sign lighting the room. I have real trouble following the ball. My LOTR has incandecent bulbs. This one and my WOZ are pretty dark compared to my other games. Thanks

Quoted from Neal_W:

My understanding is that it can be made to work with no ghosting bulbs with the settings. I'm sure others will chime in, since many here use the LED OCD.

Quoted from TheShaft:

LED OCD states not to use “non ghosting” bulbs

Quoted from Morgoth00:

That piece is what the ball often hits when it falls back out of the ring hole. Located directly under the center ramp.
I wouldn't say any of the plastics commonly break except for Arwen. Are you splitting up your extras or just selling as a group?

Quoted from glpinball:

You can download all of them on one USB and switch between them lowering volume to 0 and back up again and it cycles through them. At least on my pinsound I have in TAF.

Quoted from glpinball:

Addendum: I think you have to double tap zero and it switches.

Quoted from Sorokyl:

working on my POTD mod. 3 figures. diy acrylic base just covering the top area over the rollovers. LEDs under/in figures.
I have seen 3 approaches for the LEDs:
1. always on
2. 4 figures with leds tied to the lights behind
3. Steve's mod which i believe has a fading circuit that turns on when the vuk is triggered and turns off when ball drains.
I am interested in if anyone has any other solutions, and/or poke holes in my plan for a new solution:
cheap arduino board.
input 1: orthanc vuk switch
input 2: the 4 roll overs, tied together with diodes.
extra inputs??
The arduino can PWM the leds to achieve different brightnesses.
The LEDs will come on, or increase in brightness, when the ball enters POTD. They'll go back to normal a few sec after the first rollover is triggered (seems weird to leave it on until drain)
When a rollover is hit, the figures will flash (to have the sense of interactivity)
Probably when the ball is not on the mini playfield, would have the figures gently glowing or pulsing slowly. Since the board has plenty of pwm outputs can have them slightly out of sync which might be nice
Any gotchas? I am still very new to pinball (this would be my first DIY electronics mod) and my hobby electronics skills are a bit rusty.
Any other inputs that would make sense for triggering the figures (when the ball is not on POTD)

Quoted from matlynch91:

This is awesome. I have all the pieces to make the mod with the exception of the wiring/lighting. Does anyone sell a solution like you’ve created? Thanks.

Quoted from lhammer610:

I am struck by inconsistencies in the bass response in my LOTR with Pinsound. Sometimes it is tinny. The odd thing is that the cabinet woofer always plays sounds, music, etc. But after a little while of use, the bass level comes way up. It is striking how much louder it gets with a lot more bass, almost like a switch has been thrown.
I redid the connections. I used trifurcon connectors.
I just noticed the same issue with Tommy too, in addition to LOTR.
I figured #18 speaker wire would be a dramatic improvement over the cabinet wiring, but all I have on hand is #16, which is way overkill.
I crimped in a short connection to the trifurcon crimp, then spliced in the #16 and ran it all the way to the cabinet speaker.
The result, so far - in both LOTR and Tommy, is consistent bass response. I can now adjust the pots and optimize the sound.
I like the Pinsound boards. I wish they had screw connections for the speakers. And some documentation as to how the three bass pots affect the sound would be nice. As far as I can tell, increasing the bass affects all three speakers. But the other two pots affect only the cabinet speaker?[quoted image][quoted image]

Quoted from KING-HENRY:

what else does it show?? link?

Quoted from F-2NIRO:

Hi everyone, not much time to hang out on the forum these days, so many late orders, new projects that are struggling to be finalized, not to mention the restoration of PF and yet, I work every day without taking any rest .
I will still answer the questions and provide some clarifications.
we made a V2 because, as you know, we are living in a period of crisis which also affects electronic components, the equipment we used for the palantir V1 was increasingly hard to find.
we have therefore migrated to a more consistent and more efficient architecture.
Of course, we had to rewrite the whole program, the card used has a higher storage capacity and we thought why not improve the mod.
this is how two sequences were considered, in addition to the eye of sauron, a sequence with gollum for the hole of the gollum and a sequence with the finger of sauron and its ring with the inscriptions which ignite.
a change of trigger was therefore programmed using the switch matrix, unfortunately, this made a considerable number of bytes and it was impossible to have 3 different sequences, the finger and its ring were planned with the capture of the ball in the ring, but the resolution had to be lowered to save storage memory and the rendering was not satisfactory.
we decided to remove the one of the ring and the finger of sauron, that's it for the story.
in summary, what changes, a LORD OF THE RINGS logo appears at startup, the sequence of the eye on fire is more fluid and of better definition and the sequence of gollum appears when the ball falls into the hole of the gollum.
we added an attrack mod that lets the LOTR logo appear then the eye on fire every 150 seconds of inactivity.
as the triggers are made by the switch matrix, there is more interaction with the lighting..
all this had a cost that I passed on to V2.
for the ring of fire, I increased by 5€ because the components increased a lot and the price had never increased for a long time despite the incessant price increases of the supplies.
the barddur tower has also had its update with a new map and a new, prettier interaction.
i add here a link with the new vidéo sequence.

Quoted from KING-HENRY:

ok, now I'm really confused on this..it's been a dog's age' since I installed the palintir globe..and I guess it had some sorta box that attached underneath the playfield...I thought the static 'EYE' was just a printed peice of paper/artwork, and NOT VIDEO...Is this not true? Because if it does acutal video, then I want to upgrade the box to the current active 'scenes' of animation that he's got going on! (Unless I bought a different variation from someone else..don't remember). Mine was the $200 big globe version with the static Eye of Sauron, btw. ANY INSIGHT ON THIS BOYZ?

Quoted from jlbintn:

How does one get the Balrog plastic off to change a bulb? Mine is working fine, but I might be upgrading to LED's soon, so I wanted to get an idea of what I will be dealing with. Looks easy enough, although I removed the two screws holding it in place and it would not come off. Didn't want to force it, so let it be for now.
Any tricks or tips?

Quoted from jlbintn:

I just need to know how to get that plastic off, to get access to the bulb. The manual says it is only held fast by two screws, utilizing two washers. Those were easy to get to and off. The plastic wouldn't budge and that's my issue.
Not sure I'm going to LED's. Sooner or later, LED's or not, that bulb is going to burn out and need replacement.
I found the service bulletin you recommended. It doesn't say anything about removing the plastic, seems to make it clear that it doesn't need to be removed to replace the lighting. Marco has that piece for sale atm, as well as the entire unit. It's expensive, both are for that matter. I'm wondering if there isn't some type of seal, that's making it difficult to remove.

Quoted from Jkush18:

I just wrapped up this project. Found a nice huo example down in Kentucky from a guy that bought it new for the grandkids. They didn’t play it much lol. I went a bit over board on this one…still need to get art blades but I was able to upgrade the sound to flipper fidelity all around. I added the pinsound package with shaker and external volume control. New glass new rubber plus fresh lolly pop rails. Led backbox light show integrated with gameplay and full non ghosting LEDs. Speaker lights and an aux 12v that runs the majority of the mods. Check out the video here I’m happy with how it came out. The custom sound package is really something to experience. Lemme know what you think in the comments. Cheers! Here’s part two

Quoted from -Gramps:

First, thanks to all of you for your helpful LOTR posts in general, & more specifically, for responding to my newbie questions. I sincerely appreciate you!
I absolutely love this pin! My wife, grandkids & friends love to play it because of the fantastic (especially for a 20+ yr old pin) mechanicals, the theme, the shots…it is definitely our favorite. We have enjoyed it daily, consequently, I haven’t yet changed the original rubber, installed a PinSound system, or many other mods I bought for it. Time to open her up & get busy with repairs, maintenance & mod installation! But…I hate to take it out of commission!
** I need to ask your help again, plz: I acquired my LOTR about 4 months ago & have aways had a problem with the spinner. It defaults to a horizontal position & consequently, seldom registers an increase in the Ring value. If I pull back the glass & spin it by hand, it does register correctly, but refuses to rest in the vertical position with the heavier “half” hanging down as a target. Do I need to replace just the spinner itself, or is it most likely the whole spinner mechanism? Any suggestions are appreciated.
Again- thanks! I have 5 pins now, & have found this owner’s club to be the most informative & supportive.

Quoted from glpinball:

My left flipper buzzes or hums when I hold it. Sounds like could be the coil. Any cause for concern?

Quoted from blizz81:

Granted I think you still want about a credit card's width of vertical play re: being able to pull the flipper up.

Quoted from blizz81:

Can anyone take a measurement and maybe send me a picture of how the clear plastic (830-6018-00 in manual) under the ring-ish is oriented? Mine was snapped when I got the machine years ago so I removed it, figured as part of my teardown I could recreate one out of lexan or something. (Also my 37 plastic below that is snapped if anyone has an extra they’d be interested in parting with)
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Quoted from Sorokyl:

I finished painting the fellowship and adding/reading.
I started with all new AOME figures except Aragorn and the Orks. Gollum I 3d printed from a free model I found. Really proud of his paint job. The other models I just added some shading and highlighting to try to bring them to live. A lot of them I created custom bases for and replaced original plastics. Also recently added the volcano, tower, and bag end from pinworlds.
Oh Gandalfs staff I made myself and am somewhat proud of. I don't know if I really did the circuit right, so maybe the led will burn out before long, we'll see!
Still to do is spruce up my path of the dead, play with my ocdled/lighting, and a couple of other ideas I have.
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Quoted from Sorokyl:

Can someone recommend me some hardware for my path of the dead? I have a laser etched acrylic piece to go on top, to put aome models on.. it has 5 mounting holes. So I guess I need to replace the posts in those 5 spots with something that has a threaded top. But also has rubber/silicon on it for the ball. As bouncy as possible so I can try to nudge the ball around. And for the posts not used for mourning, what should I use? Currently have some after market things but want to replace with maybe clear posts? With again some bouncy rings.