Quoted from jagroo:Thanks Tux ! I'm a fan of Comet's lights as well. I used their warm white and pink suggestions for yellow and orange on my Checkpoint, and I was really happy! I used frosted 2SMD on the inserts on that game and am going to change to the clear lens 1SMD for the inserts on the CJ and see how that goes.
I really appreciate the tip about the cool white for the transparent inserts for Cactus Jack's. I wondered if it would be too bright. Did you use frosted or clear lenses on those transparent inserts? After reading Comet's comment about cool white I had ruled that out for GI with Red/yellow/orange plastics but wasn't sure if I should go sunlight or warm. Which did you choose? I don't have the game in my possession yet- but I figured I'd try one of each and judge before ordering. I can't wait to get started!
jagroo I tried warm white in the transparent inserts and it just looked strange for some reason. Sunlight might look even better than cool white, but I don't have any of those to test with at the moment. I'm fairly sure all of the inserts in my game are two-SMD Comets. If you go with one-SMD ones for the inserts, I'd still recommend putting the brightest Comets you can find in the yellow "throw" inserts. Those inserts very brightly and rapidly flashing are a large part of the excitement of multiball on this game in my opinion. The inserts in my game already had LEDs when I got it and I haven't felt the need to change much. If I recall, all of them are frosted except for the flex head bulbs used in some of the drop target lights and the purple inserts.
I also used cool white for all flashers to make use of the illusion that a cool white light appears brighter than a warm white light of the same actual intensity. I recommend using either cool white or warm white Comet eight-SMD flex head flashers for the ones underneath the diffuser in front of the dancing cacti, as well as flex head warm white one-SMD bulbs for the dancing cacti GI. The flashers will not appear to be significantly brighter than two-SMD GI bulbs there, while the one-SMD bulbs will allow the flashers to retain their effect. You might need to put a small dab of hot glue on (not in) the base of the light sockets there in order to keep the directional flex head bulbs from rotating. Note that the issue is not that the bulbs themselves rotate in or fall out of the sockets, but that the top of the socket (which holds the bulb) rotates relative to the base of the socket. If you put hot glue on the socket, plan to keep the infamous fine strings of hot glue from getting everywhere or you'll regret it. I'm going to add the dab of hot glue the next time I have my game open. I used Comet's 12-chip flashers for all of the ones under inserts, but they wouldn't fit in the backbox light board holes, so I used the eight-SMD flashers there.
The one place I do recommend using yellow or orange bulbs is in the pop bumpers. I tried warm white in them, but yellow looks better with the transparent caps in my opinion. I might change my mind on that later.
For the GI, I prefer warm white on most games, but especially on Cactus Jack's. It's set in a tavern with oil lanterns on the chandelier! Sunlight might also look good, but I suspect warm white will still look better. In fact, Comet's retro bulbs might even be the best here, though I've never used them and therefore wouldn't recommend doing the whole GI with them without doing small scale testing. In the backbox, I recommend making everything frosted and warm white except for the fruit (egg, banana, tomato, pumpkin, watermelon) lights, which I decided to use clear lens warm white bulbs for after finding that I preferred the bright, crisp circle of light that they gave to the fruits as opposed to the diffuse, dimmer circle that the frosted bulbs provided. If you don't like the backbox to be as bright as the playfield, you might want to use one-SMD bulbs in its GI and two-SMD bulbs in the playfield GI.
Penultimately, the insert lights do have some ghosting issues without non-ghosting LEDs, so be warned if that will bother you. Finally, be forewarned that removing the little metal "speed nut" acorn nuts that hold the playfield plastics to the posts is likely to be a huge pain. Some even remove the sockets from the bottom of the playfield to replace the bulbs in order to avoid dealing with them!
I hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions!