F-14 looks amazing with leds.....personally I would skip the ocd and get the larger 3led bulbs or order from pinball bulbs. Sold mine that was full led and it is on route now, and the operator says it's taking in good money.

If you factor in the electricity cost, for a machine on 24/7 it would be worth doing assuming you did GI as well. If electricity isn't part of the equation it would be hard to justify that expense other than for the sake of reducing machine wear. My son put full LEDs in a PZ for his 6th grade science project. We measured 1/10th the amount of electrical usage in attract over standard 44s/555s. YMMV.

viperrwk

For a route machine, I'm not sure I'd spend the money on a OCD, either.

I designed OCD to make LEDs look their very best, and while I tried to keep the cost low, it was not the driving design factor. I doubt you'd see a big enough increase in play to make the added cost worthwhile.

Maybe if you factor in the reduced heat on the inserts which would mean the game would look cosmetically better for much longer then the OCD with LEDs may be worth the investment.

Color matched LED's on an F-14 look amazing. The blue arrows come back to life as do the red. You can also swap all the flashers over to LED as long as you leave the incandescent in the backboard and not have to remove your warming resistors as every flasher on the PF has a mate on the backboard.

I'll post a Youtube vid in a few.

You can use LEDs and reduce heat without the OCD, though. For it to be worth the investment, you'd have to say that LEDs without the OCD would cause enough LED averse people to avoid playing the game that the lost sales would outweigh the cost of the OCD.

I guess the question is how will F-14 perform with regular cheap LEDs?
I have read several people comment on Williams games being unplayable with LEDs and no OCD.

Mine looks great with Cointaker super's....
I am fooling around now with flex's in a few of the side GI's pointing out onto the PF

Here ya go..

Oh yeah, standard CT and PBL Led's no premiums, no ghostbusters... If you get an error on the embedded vid, just click the youtube button and view it in youtube.,

Take into account location lighting and clientele.

Cointaker premiums work fantastic, no OCD. The problem is the ambient light. If my ambient light is too dim, I will lose track of the ball easily. When I am playing the game seriously, I put the room lights on. Of course this is dependent on the individual, I am in my late 40s and beginning to get vision problems anyway. If the game location is in a very dark room on location, it may be beneficial to skip on the LEDs altogether.

As to what herg said about LED adverse people avoiding to play: A lot of folks are not going to know if the machine has LEDs or incandescent and nor will they really care. The amount of people that shy away for that specific reason is likely to be counter-balanced by the ones who get attracted to shiny and flashy, making it a wash - anyway that is my opinion. I love F-14 with LEDs, extra flashers because the over the top fireworks and 3 dome lights just are not enough, and subwoofer accenting explosions.

I just spent the money to get the cointaker non ghosting supers...

No OCD board. Never even heard of that. What the heck is that. lol.

Game looks amazing, plays great.

For a home environment, you should at least check it out. Non-ghosting bulbs still have flicker, though some people don't see it.

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/altans-informal-review-of-led-ocd

Why not get the OCD board, cheapo LEDs that it can use, and then if you need to also adjust the LED brightness down a few notches for a dark room you can do that too with the LED OCD software)?

When you're done with the game, pull the OCD board and use it in another, thus salvaging some of the cost.

The arrow inserts on F-14 will look sooo much better with the fade-in/out effect that LED OCD provides than with instant on/off "flashy flash" normal LEDs.

OCD with cheaper LEDs...

You have to be aware of the difference between ghosting and flicker/strobing. Different LEDs types and manufacturers may perform differently in DC (controlled lamps) and AC (general illumination) circuits.

I'm aware...

I've been thinking about a LED OCD for my F-14, not to eliminate ghosting, but to provide some of the ramping effects you get with regular bulbs. I did switch to LEDs partly because I wanted to preserve my newly clear coated playfield. I don't need heat screwing that up, even if it would take 20 years to do so.

I am excited to try the Opti Max GI bulbs that are no-flicker as well, for some reason F-14's flicker seems more pronounced than my NASCAR did. Adding spotlights to it powered by a separate steady DC source covered up the flicker on that one.

Well, to properly answer the poll question, I would need to know the cost difference between the options.

Sounds reasonable.

That F-14 video above makes my head hurt

The OCD board would correct that, I would get the OCD board. You can always pull it and use it in another game down the road.