There is a sticky thread on LED's with a lot of that info. Did you read it yet? There are many options like you mentioned. Trial and errror is the best.

I put a few LEDs in my FT in locations that needed a bit more brightness (captive ball inserts) or color (purple fish). I had ghosting issues, and did get patched ROMs. This helped a bit, but it was still there if you looked hard enough. Trial and error to the rescue. In this case, I had some LEDs laying around from BCs Pinball that worked out nicely.

I also have some Cointaker premium in my Getaway stoplight, but they are too bright in inserts for my taste. They did fix the ghosting issue I had there with other LEDs.

I don't do any GI because I like the warm glow of incandescent, and I don't do backboxes because I'm yet to find LEDs that don't create hot spots.

I've seen flicker when playing around with LEDs in GI, but unless the bulbs were dimming, it didn't really bother me.

Yeah, the patch just fixes a bug in the lamp timing, so it's fine for a mix. If you fix the connector correctly, incandescents won't be an issue.

try non ghostings

Backboxes is probably the most important thing you can do because it lowers the temp for the boards so significantly. To avoid hot spots, use cointaker frosted bulbs. They radiate light much better than other leds and are much less hot.

If the ball looks like it is under a strobe light near the flippers, swap a few incan bulbs to even the illumination out. Just a few makes all the difference in the world.

Obviously, put the incandescent bulbs in the sockets that are the easiest to replace.

That is where I started, like mike said that is the most important place for LEDs

You need to use the Super Brights for the backbox application, as there is no "Hot spots" like you mention. You must be referring to the Ablaze 3-LED's, those are horrible for the backbox with the hot spots (direct beam.)

I've tried Cointaker frosted, super brights, minis, Ablaze singles, BCS frosted, etc., and I don't like any of them. Hot spots, too bright and reflecting off the PF glass, whatever, I just can't be happy with them.

I settled on incandescents with only about half of them populated.

CT Superbrights are quite bright in a backglass i have found. Pretty sure I used CT wides or frosted for my TZ and it's much more subtle.

huh, well for my HS the Super Brights give a nice spread of light with no direct beam. It really looks as if there incadescents in there. Maybe because its a mirrored backglass and not a translite, who knows. What machine(s) did you try?

Trial n error.

The Super Brights are a great LED, I believe there the best behind a backglass and with the TZ its a translite, so maybe that plays a factor. I have tried the wide and frosted on my HS and got direct beam with the frosted, and very dim with the wides.

Well said John, I totally agree with a lot of what you said. I hate how the attract mode looks like it's in fast forward because of the instant on/off. It totally ruins the effect.

Most people just don't get it. LED LED LED LED, that's all I read about ...

I use some in my machines, they do have their place, but I use them VERY sparingly...

People just need to figure it out themselves I guess, people are sheeple haha

I don't know if premiums or ghostbusters are made for clearing up "flickering" though?
I've heard ghosting is cleared up.

Maybe if you just got some warms for the GI, and only put them in way back areas that arent so visable it could help.

The warms are definitely better looking and can blend with real bulbs. Keeping warm GI LEDs in the back areas as you suggest and in the backbox will remove stress on the GI connectors while minimizing the strobing effect. Use real bulbs on the lower playfield and especially spotlights.

For inserts, just remove all the light boards and clean all of the black dust out of the insert lenses. Also, wipe the dirt off all of the bulbs before putting them back. This will make the insert lights plenty bright with very few exceptions. The last game I de-LEDed had so much dirt in the lenses it actually needed the super brights to shine through it. The LEDs were a recent install, so the (newbie) owner didn't even bother to try to clean up (or fix switch errors, rebuild flippers, etc, etc). Once I cleaned everything up and put in real bulbs in place of the LEDs it looked great.

John

I don't think it is fair to say that warm white LEDs are "definitely better looking". Better looking than what? The normal cool white LEDs? How can you make a generalization like that? Doesn't it depend on the application?

Also, in my experience, a lot of so called warm white LEDs look terrible. Instead of looking similar to an incandescent bulb, they look more like a florescent bulb....which looks more out of place than the bluer light of the cool white LED in my opinion.

The Cointaker Ultra Brights (that I only use in spots) come in cool and warm, and the warm white on those look very nice, with a golden hue that is very appealing to me. These are the exception though. The Super Warm Whites do not have this same look.

Good catch. I have only seen the warm whites from Cointaker. I thought they looked pretty good even though I am obviously not an LED guy. I wasn't aware of other sellers/brands that had a similar warm white LED.

John