Hey guys, welcome back to the channel. In today's episode, we're going to look at pinball mods that I did to my Stranger Things Pro. If you know Stern, there's Pro, Premium, and Limited Edition. Obviously, Limited Edition has all of the bells and whistles. Now, Pro is still pretty well equipped, but you can get it closer to a Premium or Limited Edition by just doing some simple modifications to it. And there's a ton of companies that offer products like this, and they're really simple and easy to do. So I'm going to show you some of the ones I did to my pinball machine, and maybe they'll give you some ideas of mods you might want to do. Okay, so the first modification I did to this pinball machine is I added new speakers. These are the four-inch speakers that come with it. They're not terrible, but they're definitely just like a run-of-the-mill basic speaker. Now, they put these in the Pro and in the Premium. It's only the limited edition do you get these Kenwoods. So these are five and a quarter, and these are four-inch. They make a huge difference. I mean, these aren't like some crazy top-end Kenwood, but they make a huge difference over this. This one has a tweeter on it and sort of a woofer or mid-range and this has nothing it's just like a small little subwoofer so anyway so we're gonna open this up and I'll show you not only did modify the speakers but I also put some LED lights on it so there's an LED light kit and I'll have links in description all this stuff but the way that this works is to change the bracket so the bracket on this is a four inch hole so you actually take that bracket out the company sells you a new bracket so you can mount the five and a quarter inch speakers in here it's really cool the other thing I did to this that's kind of unique is, and this is sort of one of those sort of gray areas a little bit, but if you look in the right places, you can find companies that provide, not companies, sorry. If you look in the right places, you can find forums that provide you different code that you can load on your machine. The code I have loaded to this is not the Stern stock code. It's actually a code that has a couple of the movie clips that they didn't license and some music that they didn't license. So it's kind of one of those gray areas. I'm not going to tell you exactly where to get it. If you search enough, you can find it. And it's as simple as burning the SD card and putting it in there. Now, the LED lights actually need power. So you tap into power that's right behind the power supply. There's an extra connector. It's super simple and easy to do. And I was shocked at actually how easy it was. And we'll go inside and I'll show you some of the things I did in there. So another mod I did was the plunger. So, you know, the Stern plunger is just like a basic plunger. It's not that exciting. And there's one that's, you know, themed for the show. And this really cool so it has some LED lights in it and and you know you have the updated plunger now the only thing about this is you have to run power inside so there's a mounting plate on the back that actually allows you to run the wire through so you do have to replace the mounting plate when you do this I show you the other side of this so you can kind of see what I talking about And then there a PCB board right here that gets power for this guy It another really simple install. Once I actually take the glass off and we look inside, you'll see it's pretty simple and easy to do. So to take this off, it's pretty simple. There's two latches right here. you unlatch that you lift this up and now this is the part that freaks me out personally i i just started working on pinball machines not that long ago so it's a little nerve-wracking but you get your hands on the glass and then you push it out and you need a little bit of room i don't have a lot of room in this room so it's a little tough to get it out and you want to stand it up versus laying it down once you get it out but you can see i've been running out of space already here so this is a little tricky because i can get it out of the way up and now i'm gonna go put it and set it somewhere else safe, but you want to probably lift it and keep it upright. I'm going to go put this away and I'll be right back later. All right. So how I do this is I just kind of gently lift underneath the play field to get it up. Now, the thing you want to do is you want to get it up enough that you can get the balls out. So that probably about right there. And there's a plunger right here. So if you just, um, if you just press up on it and keep your hand right here in the lane, it'll pop them up one by one. There's two, and typically these are going to have six balls in them. There's three, four, five, and the sixth one. So that's probably the easiest way to do it. Now, when I first did this, I totally messed it up, and I didn't know what to do, right? I had never worked on a pinball machine before. I'm a little stubborn sometimes, so I like to learn on my own and I didn't know. So anyways, that's how you get them out. So if you don't do that, when you tip the play field up, they're all going to fall in. I could maybe show you what happens when that occurs. Okay, I have to re-record that. I didn't think the balls were going to fall out. Okay, so now that it's sitting up on here, you do have to kind of tug it a little bit towards you and don't be freaked out. You can manhandle it a little bit. Once you feel it go over that rail, you're free to lift it up. You'll notice there's two pieces of rubber on this back the purpose of that is so that when this is leaned up against it, it doesn't scratch the backbox. So it's also there so that when it's forward and leaned down it doesn't scratch the cabinet up. So yeah, so that's basically what it looks like inside. So the first thing you'll see is a subwoofer upgrade. This isn technically necessary I just feel like it works a lot better than the stock one You can see the stock one like a thin paper cone It not terrible but it not the best especially if you into audio you know this isn a great subwoofer So I put in this one. It's the Boom Boom 3000. It's an 8-inch subwoofer. It has a really funny saying. It says, if you wake up in the room, if you wake up in the morning in somebody else's room room, blame it on the Boom Boom. Anyway, so this is what the stock one looks like. I upgraded this. Super easy. It comes with a 3D printed mounting bracket. It actually comes with this clip right here, which plugs right into the stock harness. So there's nothing you have to do. It's literally screw it in, plug it down, and you're good to go. The other thing I did was the shaker motor. So the pros don't come with shaker motors. Premiums do and limited editions do, I think. I can't remember if premiums do. I'll have to double check. But there's a video on my channel on this. This was fairly easy to install as well. You'll notice there's some wiring that's routed out from under it. It goes right here and it plugs into this board. And since we're over here, I'll show you the back of the plunger right here. You'll see what I'm talking about, this mounting plate. This is different than the stock mounting plate because you have to run these wires through so that this guy lights up. Again, wiring comes through, it comes over, and it plugs into this PCB board right here. So it's all, like I'm saying, it's all really simple stuff. And these things take like maybe less than 30 minutes to accomplish. So one other thing I'll I'll mention before I put the glass back on is this playfield has artwork that was made to look really cool in UV light, but the pro edition, and I don't know about the other ones. I can't, I actually don't know is there's a UV light kit. That's the only thing I haven't installed yet. I was able to get it. It's actually pretty difficult to find. So, um, so I do have that, but we'll, we'll do that in another video. But the one thing I'll say is when you have it open, you know, mine, I just cleaned it, but I cleaned the playfield and waxed the playfield. There's a product I've been using that that Kerry Hardy recommended that he has a really good video on his channel of how to clean and maintain your pinball machine so definitely go check that out I'll have a link to that video but yeah so just while it's open I do want to do that so when you do when you get into the upside down the whole play field will light up UV it does have that effect a little bit without the light kit it's just not as dramatic but it's really cool that they put particular artwork on here that would glow under UV light. So anyways, I just thought I'd mention that. I'm gonna go get the pinball glass so we can button this thing up and then we'll wrap the video up. I'm putting the glass back on. This is actually the Stern HD glass, so it's supposed to block a bunch of UV light from making reflections on the playfield It does cost a little bit of money It another easy upgrade because you basically just take the old glass off and put the new glass on So once you get it sort of started, you will notice that it's going to drag a little bit. Don't be too worried about that. Sometimes it even feels a little or sounds a little crunchy. Don't worry about it. It's fine. Push it up into place and it'll actually stop. You'll feel it. You hear it hit the top. At that point you can put the lock bar back on and yeah and you're pretty much ready to turn the machine back on there is one more modification I forgot to mention that I did I keep forgetting it's a small one so up on the backbox where the badges for the game where it says if it's a pro premium or limited edition there's that red accent I actually put that on there it's just a piece of acrylic the same company that sells the speaker kit sells that as well okay so So this game was manufactured toward the second run of the Stranger Things pinball machine. So that's when Stern started implementing Insider Connected. So I didn't actually put that on here. This actually came like that. So you're just going to scan your badge and then your name will show up right there, which is really cool. There's a bunch of new Insider Connected features. At first, I thought it was going to be gimmicky, but it's actually proving to be a really cool feature. So definitely, if you have a machine that's compatible with Insider Connected, consider doing it. I'm so hooked on it now that I try to only go to barcades that have it. So anyway, and a lot of newer machines, pretty much almost all of them now have it. We'll play some real quick and I appreciate you guys watching. Hopefully you learned a little something. I know this wasn't necessarily a tutorial of how to do it, but you'll find a lot of these pinball mods aren't exactly that difficult. And I think that's the fun thing. It's a cool hobby you can get into. You can start slow. So I working on older machines is definitely a different. Cool. I swear to God, dude, anytime you film me, I cannot play pinball. Don't put that in the video. So anyways, guys, I appreciate you watching. Oh, I got it in. I got it in. That like never happens. Sweet. Anyways, I appreciate you guys watching. Hopefully you learned a little something and it gave you a little confidence to be able to do this yourself. Because honestly, it's really not that difficult. thanks so much for watching guys and we will see you on the next one