A Warning for the new Stern owner

You need to be really careful raising and lowering the playfield with the slide & pivot brackets or you can scratch the siderails ! Who invented that mechanism?

Make sure the playfield is squared up before moving it. First Stern I owned, both my TZ and AFM had better solutions to that problem 15 yrs ago.

Discovered that some of the carriage bolts listed as "Gold" (Brass) in the manual, are actually Black on my LE:

• Securing the backbox light brackets (4),
• Securing the hinge to backbox (4)
• and securing the Slide & Pivot Brackets -as you know, "I hate the design of these" .
• I guess (since Elvis Gold?) Stern have saved money where they could. Not an issue, as it looks OK as is.  Just interesting. Brass is not a hard metal anyway and can strip threads.

Tried putting two "high output" 4+1 LEDs in the Helms Deep Spotlights, Left and Right. One fell out during DTR, so went back to using #555 bulbs.
     Bought the LEDs from Cointaker. Plan to revisit that mod when the AOME figures are added.

 Checking out the cool LOTR stuff at Pinball Life again I order:

• Stern Shaker Motor Kit (Rev B) $165 (wiring harness exists in the LE game). Should come free from Stern with any LE game. DE's had them from factory.
• Sword Ramp Ball Lock Guide $6.95 (the original one) and some other bits -plus postage and packing.
Remembering back to when the game first came out- the sword lock was clean looking. Not on the later games, so a good HUO mod for the price.