My 2003 Home Use Only (HUO) had two owners previously and both were involved professionally in the pinball maintenance and service industry, so some quality MODs were done already including:
- Color DMD
- Battery replacement (NVRAM)
- Updated flipper coils
- LED lighting
- Larger Palantir
All tasteful modifications (MODS), indeed. But after seeing the available Pinsound community remixes for Lord of the Rings, I knew a sound upgrade was needed.
Besides, this machine is never leaving my collection, so I ordered the Pinsound Plus soundboard from Timothée and Nicolas aka “The PinSound Brothers” https://www.pinsound.org/pinsound-plus/
Note: the PinSound Plus is reversible if you decided to switch it to another machine. As it was, I saw evidence that my LOTR pinball machine had a PinSound installed at one time in it’s past. The guy who sold it to me probably switched it out to keep the cost of the machine down.
The Pinsound Plus board improves the sound of your pinball with the onboard high efficiency 2.1 stereo Class-D amplifiers, 4 bands digital tone control equalizer, sub booster control, line out, headphone out and accessory ports.
Besides great sound, you can load enhanced original soundtracks and community created soundtracks or make your own mixes with the free software.
- play with original or custom sounds
- up to 7 simultaneous tracks
- multiple different sound packages on the same flash drive
- switch sound package on-the-fly
Installation is rather easy. Just be careful not to zap the components with static electricity (touch metal to discharge) and be very careful with the CPU removal and installation as the little pins are fragile.
How to install a Pinsound on a Stern Lord of the Rings pinball machine (Whitestar)
I also purchased the Headphone station. The Headphone station provides a convenient spot to plug in your headphones, change the volume and change soundscapes. It also can be set to automatically mute the sound. Perfect for when my son is home from college.
Here are the headphones I got for the PinSound HeadPhone Station on Lord of the Rings:
How to load a Pinsound Package
Mono to Stereo
Stern Whitestar pinball machines like Lord of the Rings were originally mono. There are two backbox 8 ohms tweeter speakers wired in parallel and one woofer in the bottom of the cabinet.
The PinSound board adds stereo capability but you still have to change your speakers around. Right out of the box the PinSound installation kit will hook everything up to the existing mono wired speakers but the sound mixes won’t sound very balanced. For example, on some of them, the callouts might be very soft compared to the music because you are only listening to one channel.
NOTE: DataEast pinball machines were stereo but all others at the time – Bally/Williams/Gottlieb/Stern were all mono.
You can plug in some headphones to the board or to the PinSound HeadPhone Station to hear the sound mixes in glorious stereo.
To hook up your existing speakers to the PinSound board you can purchase a wired connector from PinSound for $20 + shipping from France but you might already have the cable.
I was looking at my installed PinSound thinking about having to purchase the 2.1 stereo harness (Molex connector + wires) when it dawned on me that I already had what I need! I just needed to cut off one of the connectors and wire the three speakers directly.
To keep things neat and easier to reverse for any reason in the future, I purchased these wire connectors from Amazon and some 18 gauge speaker wire.
Upgraded Speakers
After spending $400 on a soundboard upgrade, it seems silly to pump the sound through the cheap nearly twenty-year-old factory-installed speakers.
I ordered some 4 inch, 4-ohm speakers to replace the 8-ohm speakers that were wired in parallel.
I also got some “bass blockers”. These go on the positive leads and prevent the tweeters from being blown out by the bass. This is an inexpensive and easy way to protect the tweeters compared to installing a crossover.
Fitting the New Speakers
The cheapie, factory-installed Stern speakers are flat up against the metal grill mesh. The new speakers protrude about a 1/2 inch so some modifications have to be made.
You could mount them without the mesh in place but that doesn’t look too professional. Some kind of spacers needs to be used. My father-in-law recommended rubber grommets from the plumbing department at Home Depot. Another option would be some plastic spacers from Amazon. These little pieces of plastic cost about the same as one of the speakers. Plus they most likely have to be trimmed to fit. You could make something out of MDF if you have any laying around.
But looking at the supplied grills that came with the Pyle speakers, I figured I could pop off the round grills and use the plastic frames. I just had to cut off a bit with a Xacto razor saw.
I added a little depth with some foam tape but everything fit back in. I even managed to use the same screws (we’ll see if they give way in the future – might need to replace them with longer ones).
Now for some low end bass…
I also upgraded the cabinet’s eight-inch woofer.
External Subwoofer
For even more low-end kick, the PinSound board has a subwoofer out port. Just run the subwoofer cable outside the back of the cabinet and hook up a subwoofer. A popular and inexpensive subwoofer among the pinball community is the Polk 10 inch subwoofer.
Stereo Out Option.
Another option for stereo would be to use the PinSound’s left and right line out ports to a stereo receiver or home theater set up, or even the headphone out to a splitter and then into an external amp. The PinSound provides a lot of options.
