DugFreez said:

...or double down:

http://www.pinballcenter.eu/catalog/ba9s-noflix-plus-blue-superflux-p-2687.html?language=english

yeah, i'm a big fan of noflix and pinballcenter in general. superior products and staff who is able to count and read an order sheet.
I also got a small sample of the ghostbusters lately along with other stuff. they work really well.
Pinball life and Pinballcenter is my choice of suppliers

Terry Rocks. I ordered 6 of each of these yesterday. Going to try them on JM. Nothing seems to brighten this game enough. I will report back next week.

Jim

JM dims at the end of every game and flickers very bad with leds. You may want to try leds that don't flicker and see how that works out, like CT premiums.

Here are some shots of these new LEDs from Pinball Life. I like them alot as they sit flush with the playfield. They are just as bright as super brights from Cointaker in my opinion, plus they are about 20 cents cheaper

Honestly, they look like superbrites x 4 in one bulb. Can you take a shot that compares pbl and ct side by side?

TunaSled said:

6S3NC3 said:I have an LED question. On my tron I did orange on one side and blue on the other. The blue tends to be a bit more brighter then the orange. There both CT's super brights. Any suggestions on replacing the orange with a brighter orange? They are 44's. Does any1 know if Pinballlife's double or tripple or even the quad be brighter? My guess is the quad might be overkill. Or i could just try out the quad in both colors. Yes im an LED whore myself.
Try these mothers on the orange side.
http://shop.cointaker.com/category.sc;jsessionid=DF4F149990BBB3475735C4B58CB54284.qscstrfrnt01?categoryId=46

I bought some of those and would not again. Way too expensive and were not a ton brighter. Also fragile as one burned out a few days later.

For any collector with several machines each with 100+ lamps it gets very expensive to outfit.
I love Coins Flex but think all leds should be under a dollar. Way to go Terry. will def pick up some of those.

I used them in spotlights in ID4 and TAF and only where they face away from the player. I wouldn't use them in GI or lamps as it would be pretty harsh on the eyes.

I put them in the spotlights on SM and they looked great.

TunaSled said:

Of course this doesn't work if you're counting bulbs/inserts and ordering exactly what you need.

That is usually a mistake, because out of 100+ bulbs, you always get a bad one or two.

I've got about 25 bad LEDs, different brands and styles, over the last few years.

Get a bunch of extra frosted whites, they look good under almost any color insert, so you don't have to worry about matching colors.

vid1900 said:

That is usually a mistake, because out of 100+ bulbs, you always get a bad one or two.
I've got about 25 bad LEDs, different brands and styles, over the last few years.
Get a bunch of extra frosted whites, they look good under almost any color insert, so you don't have to worry about matching colors.

Very true. Also, I always color match inserts with brights, but the clear inserts get frosted white like you mentioned to cut the blinding factor and better match the intensity of the colors.

With a camera it's Impossible to compare Led's , Noth-n like see'ing it in Person ,, But those in DM ,, Man they lOOk Bright -- Blinding .. Sometime's To Bright is Too much !! Like to Try 1 tho .

BLACK_ROSE said:

With a camera it's Impossible to compare Led's , Noth-n like see'ing it in Person ,, But those in DM ,, Man they lOOk Bright -- Blinding .. Sometime's To Bright is Too much !! Like to Try 1 tho .

We will see once I have all ramps and stuff put back in

Here's my TZ with the new 4 leds from PBL:

In this pic the left sling has a CT super white and the right sling has the PBL 4 led:

Ablaze 3 led:

PBL 4 led:

The Hitch-hiker insert has an Ablaze orange single concave, The camera has an orange 4 led, and the greed has an Ablaze orange 3 led:

Legion you have a smoked Upper Rt-ramp too ( Stock ) Shanetastic installed a Clear 1 ,, Huge Diff- . You could see and Read the plastic under the ramp .. Kinda miss my TZ a Lil- ..

BLACK_ROSE said:

Legion you have a smoked Upper Rt-ramp too ( Stock )

Besides a few reversible mods, mines all stock and HUO.

I bought a clear reproduction TZ ramp a couple years ago to replace my smoked one, but just wondered if it was worth the trouble to switch. Ramp is in great condition, but just doesn't have the clear plastic. May give it a whirl one day to compare. Have any of you guys switched the ramp just to have the clear one in there?

Michael

RobT said:

turbo20lbs said:The whites are too friggin bright, colors should be good though. As a GI in white, they are brighter than cointakers supers.
How do they compare in brightness to Cointakers Ultra's?

I have not seen ultras, but the are brighter than the supers.

I did compare the heat of these to a ct super and standard incandescent, theses things get super hot!

Here's a crappy comparison shot. The top left is CT Super, top right is CT Ultra, and bottom is new PBL F'n Bright. They are F'n bright, he's correct in every way. Just wish it was more white and less blue. I bought a few of each color and base, price is definitely right at $.89. Ultras are $2.49! Both companies are awesome though, love them both.

From the pictures of the actual bulb it looks like they are the style that only work if inserted the correct direction like previous 555 PBL leds...can anyone confirm?

That is one of the biggest reasons CT leds are nice...throw in the 555 with the machine off and know it will work, not so much with the PBL ones of the past.

Pinballer22 said:

From the pictures of the actual bulb it looks like they are the style that only work if inserted the correct direction like previous 555 PBL leds...can anyone confirm?
That is one of the biggest reasons CT leds are nice...throw in the 555 with the machine off and know it will work, not so much with the PBL ones of the past.

All PBL LED lamps are AC/DC (unpolarized) except for the cheapest 1-LED lamps.

Hadn't ordered PBL led's in awhile...thanks for the info shake

Here is a picture of the orange in the left sling and left lane on my Tron.
http://www.pinballlife.com/index.php?p=product&id=2561&parent=192
Now I am going to order to blue. I thought these might to bright but they are not too bright.
I really like the orange and there are no hot spots.

Finally got some of these to try.

Holy shit! The item number is perfect. These are the brightest LED's I've seen yet. They are brighter than the CT Ultra's, so I will use these when cool white is appropriate, and will still spend the extra money for the Ultra Warm's when needed.

But man, these suckers are BRIGHT. I'd never use them under an insert, that's for sure. I don't think that they would be great for GI either, other than spots to brighten parts of a PF.

Put some in the spots on my MM pointing at the castle. The game had purple 3 LED's in there before. The new 4 LEDs were WAY brighter made a huge difference.

Brightest. LED. Ever.

I'd never use them under an insert, that's for sure.

I have used them in inserts. In my countdown the target inserts use a horizontal socket. Using the PBL new leds allowed a nice glow to these inserts. The 3 led ones didn't cut it.
On my Cleopatra right side outlanes, here too, horizontal sockets are used. (the left outs use vertical sockets) Putting the 4 led her worked great as well.

I am experimenting with making my own leds like these in the pic that will allow me to position leds better in the horizontal sockets. Use old bases and solder in my own leds on flexible buss wire leads.

And yes, as others have stated, they are very bright!

I also built a lamp/led test jig a while back. This allows me to compare different leds outside of the Pin. I have since added 555 base sockets as well. I did end up making the jig more compact and nicer looking.
Thread is here:
http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/led-and-lights-test-fixture-jig

I put the PBL brights under the purple Feed Frenzy arrows in my FT and they pop beautifully with a nice rich color.

I don't think that they would be great for GI either

I only installed them in GI on my Tron.

Looks really great!

coasterguy said:

Looks really great!

Thanks, and thank you for posting your EL wire shopping list!

They are unbelievable in a RFM. I will post pics if anyone is interested.

Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback on these. We did a lot of tweaking on these (about 10 different sample runs IIRC) but I am happy with the final result.
Terry.

ThePostmaster said:

They are unbelievable in a RFM. I will post pics if anyone is interested.

Interested.

pinballlife said:

Thanks everyone for all the positive feedback on these. We did a lot of tweaking on these (about 10 different sample runs IIRC) but I am happy with the final result.
Terry.

The fact that you can sell these so cheap is pretty impressive Terry!

Congrats on putting together a winner.

pinballlooking said:

I don't think that they would be great for GI either

I only installed them in GI on my Tron.

Attachments IMG_0078.jpg (99.1 KB, 0 downloads) 4 hours old

I'd have to see it in person, but I'd think they'd be way too bright for my taste in all the GI.

turbo20lbs said:

The whites are too friggin bright, colors should be good though. As a GI in white, they are brighter than cointakers supers.

These should NEVER be used as G.I. lamps! I saw a bunch of games at the Pinball Hall of Fame today with these, and they produce to much glare, and just don't have the right tone for a playfield / backglass.

LED's might be okay for under the playfield, or for flash lamps, but behind the back glass or out where they can be seen on the playfield, they look like CRAP!

RobT said:

I'd have to see it in person, but I'd think they'd be way too bright for my taste in all the GI.

A lot of them are under colored plastic protectors and they look good. Orange actually could be brighter. There is only one blue at the top right by the ramp that is a little bright. I only use LED’s in certain spots in my games and never replace all the lights.
I don’t even like playing a lot of game that have LED's in the inserts it hurts my eyes.

LED's (at least on older machines) are way to bright for G.I. use, produce spotty lighting, and don't have the right color.

Who want's a back-glass or trans-light to look like this?

... or a play field that looks like this?

With all due respect, glw, you couldn't have picked worse examples. All my games are fully LED'd, and none of them look anything like that. As I've said in countless other threads, you can't just randomly stick LEDs in a machine and expect it to look good. It's an art form.

gweempose said:

With all due respect, glw, you couldn't have picked worse examples. All my games are fully LED'd, and none of them look anything like that. As I've said in countless other threads, you can't just randomly stick LEDs in a machine and expect it to look good. It's an art form.

Plus a lot of it depends on what type of bulbs were used as well. What kind were used in this Playboy?

Also, lets not forget how hard it is to correctly photograph pins in the dark.

For every carefully chosen and placed LED that gweempose uses, there's another guy who just gets a kit and throws them all in there.

gweempose said:

With all due respect, glw, you couldn't have picked worse examples. All my games are fully LED'd, and none of them look anything like that. As I've said in countless other threads, you can't just randomly stick LEDs in a machine and expect it to look good. It's an art form.

Actually, I picked the BEST examples. I've never seen any pin with LED's (as G.I.s) on it that look right. Some don't look as bad, but I've seen worse. And as you pointed out, "you can't randomly stick LEDs in a machine and expect it to look good". That just kind of backs up what I said.

Now if newer machines are made to compensate for this, fine, but it really doesn't work on older machines. But LEDs by nature tend to direct light in one direction. A lamp filament is omni-directional. That's why LEDs generally work okay as inset lighting.

LEDs do not typically translate well with cheap phone cameras and junky cameras. I have frosted cool whites in my EATPM and it looks great. When I took a pic of it with my phone camera you could clearly see every led popping out like crazy. Just something to think about it when you see LED pics.

LEDs can be applied with maximum effect if you know what you are doing from experience. There is a definite set of rules to LED fitting a machine. Most people will have their own variation on those rules. I still stick with NO LEDs for p/f GI and anything that normally has any dimming effect. Everywhere else goes, although I have now switched exposed (condom) bulbs from LED to coloured incandeascent as I find them softer on the eyes when viewed directly.

Also, I find the (warm white) Cointake ultras (the ones that dont have a nipple) to be the best for backbox GI lighting for 90's machines.

I haven't had good luck with orange and yellow leds on pins. In my WH2O I used orange and yellow under the boulder garden & they were dimmer. Had to go back to incandescent bulbs for brightness. Lots of orange and yellow in the clock area in FH, once again the 2 LED bulbs didn't make any diff. One couldn't tell led's were in there. One might save money and just keep the incandescent bulbs in place. YMMV

TunaSled said:

Interested.

interested +1 in the RFM pics

dirtrider said:

I haven't had good luck with orange and yellow leds on pins.

Orange LEDs work fine under orange inserts for me (but I know others disagree), but there is simply no reason to ever buy a yellow LED in my opinion. They don't work. I put a yellow LED under a yellow insert, and a warm white LED under another yellow insert right next to it. The difference was huge. The warm white LED made the yellow insert look much more yellow (and brighter) than the yellow LED did.

girloveswaffles said:

And as you pointed out, "you can't randomly stick LEDs in a machine and expect it to look good". That just kind of backs up what I said.

Really? I don't see how.

I will post some RFM pics tonight. Side by side, normal 555, versus Ablaze 4 LEDs'. I didn't put ant in G.I. Just under inserts. I did get some for the saucers, I'll take before and after pics of them as well.

I am looking for LEDs for my TRON machine. I am debating doing Orange / Blue. I was looking at the CT kit, but not sure it's the "best". Should I order all the bulbs I need ? Which bulbs are the best for each section ? I was reading that CT seemed to be good, but these seem to be gaining interests. I just want the best looking LEDs for the money for the entire machine.

asnatlas said:

I am looking for LEDs for my TRON machine. I am debating doing Orange / Blue. I was looking at the CT kit, but not sure it's the "best". Should I order all the bulbs I need ? Which bulbs are the best for each section ? I was reading that CT seemed to be good, but these seem to be gaining interests. I just want the best looking LEDs for the money for the entire machine.

I would personally never buy a CT kit, for some reason all their kits seem to add colour to GI and colour areas of the playfield for no apparent reason, the BDK is horrible for those very reasons. I've just done my Tron and IM in LEDs and I've began the process buying 5 of each colour in each brand to allow me to experiment and compare brands side by side, once I'm certain I'm happy I'll order enough to complete each pin. Like others have said trial and error is easily the best route with LEDs, kits are often made on another persons opinion/taste and not yours so going the DiY route is definately best IMO.