I was thinking for PF swaps where I would replace all the sockets anyway. I replaced the sockets on my FG and Viking swaps. Were these available at the time, I would have considered these for inserts and star rollovers. At $1 each, it would have saved me $.64 on the bulb/socket. Over the 2 games, it could have been $120 or more. I'm doing a Centaur swap and a Joker Poker swap within the next year, so getting a couple hundred of these might be in my future.

For games that I don't do swaps in, the yeah, I would replace the socket/bulb on a "per" basis.

You do? Seems wasteful. Did you save those old sockets? Can I buy them?

Not sure how you can use PCBs for GI unless you somehow get a cap on them for above the playfield to help disperse light.

I'm definitely a cheapie when it comes to some things and even I now replace all those old sockets with new when doing a swap.

All the 'fixes' over the years with old sockets just don't cut it for me in the long haul. I do save the ones that aren't rusty though, and re-use the bare wire between the GI sockets sometimes (when I need a short piece and I can't find my new spool....)

I do and I didn't save them. Only seems wasteful if they all worked 100% of the time. I mean some did, but some didn't and the time saved to replace them all was worth it. I think it's a pretty common practice when doing swaps. Marking the bad sockets, desoldering them all, sorting between the good ones vs the bad ones, it would take a ton of time. Plus, it's a new pf, it should get new stuff

Yeah I hear ya. I’m going to do one on my big game and seems weird to replace them all when they all work.

They all work. Haha. I mean I guess I can keep them as spares, but they all work.

dyopp21 you could set up a store here on Pinside. I have one, for just a single item for now. It was very easy, and the built in shipping label creator is awesome. You can tell it how many of an item you have and it will subtract from that as things sell. I don’t know how to do volume discounts, but maybe two items, one for the 1-99 QTY buys and one for the 100+, but just do it as $100 for 100 (and add for shipping and pinside fee as needed) and just make people buy them in batches of 100.

It’s easy to process orders and the fee is minimal. As you process your orders you have stages that the buyer gets to see as well. When you ship it, it will send a message to the buyer with their tracking info. Well worth it.

Then as new items are available you just post here and people will buy what they want. Restock, repeat.

Following

I already got a 100.

O.k. some updates:
1. I'm glad I stopped taking orders last night. I'm tapped out of everything I got in but I got lucky and didn't oversell..
2. I will have 1500 cool white sticks in next week.

3. I will work on this TODAY! Great idea.
4. I'm working on V3 of the new sticks which will include the extra resistor so they should work with both old and new lamp driver boards right out of the box. They will also feature and oblong mounting hole for a little more flexibility in positioning. They will still include a through hole spot for you modders. These also should work for classic Williams machines (Firepower, ETC)
5. COLORS. All of 'em. In the works.

I've got new stock of the WW on order. A larger order this time. I'll let everyone know when I've got the store set up and when I have the new stock in.
Thanks again for everyone's suggestions and patience.

Yopp

I'll look into this. This is cooler than warm white but not quite "cool white" correct?

Yep.

This is what I use on my older games. Yes!

I'm watching for cool whites. I prefer them in my games, especially when I'm putting on on route. This looks really cool.

Classic Stern sockets are WAY better than classic Bally, from my experience.

Following

For sure. Those 555s are the worst things to ever happen to pinball.

To everyone that ordered yesterday, they are all in the mail and on their way.

Edit: with the exception of items sent outside the US I sent them all priority mail. If you haven't seen something by midweek next week and you ordered and paid, please contact me so we can be sure I didn't overlook anything. Thanks.

I bought 100 of these to try.

Regarding old sockets... if you are adding the 470 ohm resistor to the original socket, and soldering one leg to the tit of the socket (along with moving the LDB return wire), that really fixes about 95% of all bad sockets. We use a dremel to sand the bayonette side of the original socket and run the resistor from there to the "tit" (which also gets sanded), and move the wire to the "tit" at the same time. sometimes we attach one side of the resistor to the 6volt buss wire (instead of the bayonette body.) Dealers choice...

I *never* buy an Altek lamp board. N E V E R. You have to work on the sockets anyway, why do i want some surface mount $100 thing? i don't! And hence i have to add the 470 ohm resistors... but if you're working on the sockets anyway, it's two birds with one stone type of thing.

But that all said, i think these lamp boards may be a good answer too. Hence I'm giving them a go. It's twice the cost of an LED and a resistor (on a modified stock socket), but these should increase controlled lamp reliability quite a bit.

Good, lay a couple on me. I emailed but never got a response.

I'm sorry I missed your email! In the rush I forgot to check it. I saw some emails this evening and responded. Hope I got to yours.

Edit: Just went through my emails again and not sure I see one from you. Did you send it to [email protected]?

No need we got it all worked out

This got me to thinking. I have some sunlight bulbs here and decided to compare because I went on the cooler side of the warm spectrum- I can’t tell much difference between sunlight and my bulb if any at all. I dropped the voltage down and took a pic of my bulb with it not at the “blinding” level and took a pic. Also grabbed a pic of a sunlight bulb. You can see them below-
5845582B-8763-4E48-A324-495F630B8D07 (resized).jpeg
9598BA76-C6FA-4E90-BB7E-8D2B7C63990B (resized).jpeg

I doubt I’ll make one warmer than this. Still a little bit warm but plenty of brightness. Anyone else that installs one of my warms next to a sunlight can possibly confirm if this is correct or my eyes are playing tricks on me.

Yopp

From what I've seen so far, your warms are a near-perfect match for incandescent with none of the artificially yellow (or even greenish?) tones of some warm white LEDs. I agree that sunlight is probably close enough to what you've already got that it wouldn't make sense to offer both. I bet your warm inserts would look perfect in a game with sunlight GI.

Seems like a very cool product. I'll probably put a warm white order in once you get them back in stock.

Tommy thanks for posting this information. Unfortunately I’ve already replaced most of my light sockets with traditional components. I need to take a look at a few games to see if some sockets might be worthy of replacement. Nice job David. Truly an asset to the hobby!

cool-white-yoppsicle (resized).png
For you restoration folks that prefer the chilly lights in your projects, we got a batch of cool white sticks in yesterday and shipped out all the orders for customers who were waiting on them (If I missed you and didn't get in contact, my apologies! I've held a couple hundred back just in case. Get in touch with me again. I've got messages in about 5 different places). We have about 900 left for anyone else who may want some. Shoot me a message if you are interested in some and I'll get back to you ASAP. Thanks!
Note: these are designed to be installed under playfield inserts to replace both socket and bulb in one install. They are not well suited for GI nor backbox illumination.
I'll be working on setting up a pinside store as we are able to get larger numbers of stock in. Right now they are limiting me on what I can order because I'm making small changes to the boards which keeps them in the "prototype" status. This is good, as I wouldn't want to be sitting on thousands of bulbs that didn't work correctly.

Ewwwwwww cool white

I received my order of warm whites yesterday and cant say enough good things about these lights, easy to install and looks amazing! My only regret is I only ordered 100 and dont have enough to do all my Ballys right now.

Regret not! I've got WW on the way with a new design. Check it out:
YSv31 (resized).png
ysv32 (resized).png
The mounting hole has been redesigned to accommodate those tight spots. The landing pad for the braided wire has been expanded. The resistor for original Bally boards has been added. The price remains the same.

These are on the make now (without the screen print for polarity though, that'll be the next order)

I'm questioning that polarity - is it reversed?

I don't think so. Positive is the braided wire. Negative is the control wire.

cool - I know how to connect them, just not what they actually DO lol.

I'd like to order 100 WWs with resistor. Do I just email you?

Yes, just shoot me a message on here and I'll add you to the wait list for the next order of WW. Thanks!

The good news is if you managed to connect one in reverse (in say a Firepower where there is no braided wire) it shouldn't do any damage. If you reverse polarity on the LED it will still act as a diode, so it'll just block the flow of electrons. Simply detach the wires and swap 'em.

If anyone wants to make a version 2.0 of these...

Instead of white LED, use RGBW.
Each color has its own solder tab.
Installer can use any combination to make the LED whatever color they want.
RGBW will allow pink, light green, light blue, and pure white.
Make them all with resistors, and mark the boards "B/S" and "W/G". Wiring to B/S is for Bally/Stern (which put the resistor in circuit). W/G is Williams/Gottlieb (which bypasses the resistor).

Mass producing a single board that covers all the bases will help bring cost down.

Amazing!! Will be using these on all of my Bally 6803 pins for sure!!!! Worst sockets ever made.

My High Speed is gonna love these.

I'm not sure about the RBG (for this project at least), but I like the two circuit idea for sure. I guess my question would be, with this bit of resistance (470 ohm), would a Williams lamp driver have issues with it? Also, how many people feel the need to replace Williams sockets? Mine have been pretty rock solid even in my old late 70's machines.

I have always referred to my six million dollar man as a bulb whore or the six million socket man.
I have owned it 14 years and have never turned it on once and said, " wow all the bulbs are on!"
I swear i have changed all the sockets twice.
I will be ordering these.

Funny you should mention SMDM. It was the machine that pushed me over the edge. I created the prototype of this bulb a year and a half ago using actual popsicle sticks (That's where "Yoppsicle" comes from) Here's some video of the final with all popsicle sticks.

Those popsicle sticks are STILL in my SMDM at a public location and not a one of them has failed.

Better jump on it before someone else does! The idea is out there now, someone's gonna steal it.

Actually I think it may already exist in one of the home brew kits? I’ll look into it.