frosted warm white from pinballbulbs.com closely matches an incandescent under an insert or behind a backglass/translite. I'm not aware of an led bulb that physically looks like an incandescent, but maybe someone else can help with that.

Heat issue? the 1-LED Ablaze or 1-LED Comet (each under $.40) will work great and look just like a bulb unless they have fading effects.

As far as the bulb itself, the retros from Comet Pinball have the most incandescent-like appearance I think.
http://www.cometpinball.com/product-p/1retroled.htm

The clear domes from Pinballbulbs.com or retros from Cointaker look good, but the LED may be too visible for your liking.

I would get red, but considering that you're not buying that many and the cost of each, you might consider both.

I actually don't have many ghosting issues in my B/W games even with cheap LEDs, but am not sure about Dr Who.

I would think that just about any warm white non-ghosting bulb would work to come close to match the color of the incandescent. The question then would be which brightness do you want as each brand seems to differ.

I would personally avoid the Comet retros as they are noticeably dimmer than the PinballBulbs warm white frosted LEDs of choice. If you are going warm white you might as well go all the way and get an LED OCD board to completely eradicate ghosting, strobing, and bring the full fade effects to your playfield. $150 very well spent.

Hi Crash,

Perhaps you are referring to our encapsulated diode in our retro frosted, vs a single 5050 SMD in frosted.

Encapsulated diodes come in 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, Flat Top, Bullet, Dome, Concave.
These are all low light emitting bulbs, no brighter then an incandescent, in general.
The word "retro" is used by different vendors for 3 types of bulbs...An encapsulated diode, and a surface mounted diode.
A frosted encapsulated diode has even less light, and in a "retro" from us, these are used for EM games, or
in place of playfield markers that normally have a condom. To match the shape of an incandescent, depending on the sign or feature, and 8mm, and sometimes a 10mm is used Frosted.

When you reference James, at pinball bulbs frosted Warms, His are a 5050 SMD, the same diode as mine, Cointaker, Pinball Life, etc...it is a standard diode, with standard output.

In that regard, other then batch production of the PCB or diode, variations, all 505 SMD produce the same light, with all things being equal, +/- 5%.

I have had customers buy our $.39-$.49 cent retros, believing they were 5050, ($.59-$.69) and the same as other vendors who may use the word "retro" in their name.

In that regard, Cointaker carries a 6mm encapsulated diode, as I do, but James does not carry that product.

If I am mistaken in the way you interpreted my products, and that 5050 SMD vary to the extent you mention,
I apologize, but I am unsure of how that conclusion was reached, as we all have and test each others bulbs too,
(and many come from the same factories)

Star Trek, Metallica, and Mustang use a different twin SMD, that is brighter....different animal...

Art

I bought recently with comet leds and all i can say is best customer service art is a great person to deal with buy with confidence.
And great leds also go for the non-ghosting imo 

According to our LED kit sheet DR. Who doesn't ghost and takign a look at the game in person, since one is in the shed, doesn't seem to ghost in that are so I'd say you are safe not getting non-ghosting and saving yourself a few bucks

Lots of cool options here. I personally like to color match for red,green and blue. Then I'll use warm whites in the oranges since it gives a brighter color to match surrounding inserts and keeps the orange color. I do cool white in yellows too since yellow can be a dull and unfun color. If you throw in a warm white under all inserts though you can maintain a fairly decent match to the original insert color itself.