Granted, I've never actually taken mine apart, but I always assumed they were single tubes illuminated by color changing LEDs.

It's just your standard fibers - cotton, hemp, wool, rayon, etc.

egyptian cotton?

Fiber optics are made with very thin strands of glass. There would have to be multiple strands in there if it's fiber optic.

That's exactly what it is, a bunch of fibres that's in a white shealth, and then you have a cap on the end holding it all together. You can't take the cap off as it's glued on there.

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Funny, I think Eli's kit is much more vibrant/noticeable than the LE kit. You should add a poll!

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Make sure the ends are all the way in the light emitters - mine were dim until I did this.

You just "happen" to catch your name on the screen in all your pics? You vain bastard...

P.S. That Tron is sexy as fugggg

Agreed. The mode integration isn't quite the same but I would say the brightness is at, or above the LE version.

I have trouble containing myself around it.

The LE has the frosted jacket and Eli's is clear, just going off that the LE kit has no chance. Wonder if they are compatible to be swapped out for each other (circumference of the fiber cable)

The diameter of the LE fiber is slightly smaller I think? That's just going by eye. Like you said, the LE is frosted so that might throw a visual anomaly in the look of the thickness.

Do you have your GI light choices documented anywhere - I quite like what you've got going on there. I'm growing tired of how 'white' mine is with the GI almost exclusively white frosted - I liked it before I put the ramp fiber on, but the white drowns out the effect of the lighted ramps a bit.

No but I can look it over real good and give you a breakdown, although I just ordered all transparent rubbers from PBL so I will be digging into it sometime soon.

Its really just a mix of blue-orange-white no ghosts from PBL

The circumference of the LE cables and the cables in Eli / Pinbits kit are close, but overall the LE cables are a bit smaller.

The problem with swapping them out for each other is the caps on the end of the LE cables. The caps end up making the LE cables 3-4 mm larger in diameter, so the problem is that if you want to put the LE cables into the metal blocks you get with Eli's kit you'd have to drill them out 3-4 mm bigger so the caps could fit in properly.

You also get the reverse problem if you wanted to put Eli's cables directly onto an LE, the holes are too big for the cables.

You can't just swap the metal blocks around because the boards attached to them won't line up properly.

When I had my Pro with Eli's kit I spent a lot of time trying to figure out if I could get a stock set of LE cables to fit (and now that I've got an LE I can see how they are different)!

Ya, I spoke with the guy who made/sold these cables to Stern and basically they're hundreds of fiber strands with a super compressed cap crimped on to make them tight.

I actually asked about possibly making some clear ones but we would need to order hundreds and it simply wasn't cost effective

When you played the LE did it have all of the regular incandescent bulbs in it, and when you played the Pro with Eli's kit did it have all LEDs in the GI?

For me I had a Pro first with Eli's kit. In the GI I had cointaker frosted and retro LEDs. I thought Eli's kit looked great, nice and bright.

I then sold my Pro and picked up an LE, which was all stock. First thing I noticed was the difference of having the incandescent bulbs in the machine. The LE fiber optic cables looked nice and bright (but overall the machine looked pretty dull).

I then put all LEDs in the GI just like I had done with my Pro. First thing I noticed was how the fiber optic cables didn't stand out nearly as much as compared to the machine when it was all stock. Basically the fiber optic cables were being drowned out by the GI brightness. On the back panel I had 6 Cointaker retro in there and I ended up changing it to 4 frosted LEDs, and I found that made a big difference (just left 2 sockets with nothing in them).

Below are 3 pictures. The first is from my Pro, the next is the stock LE, and the last one is the LE with LEDs. When you look at the 1st and 3rd pictures you don't really notice a difference in overall brightness, but when you compare it to the all stock machine you can see a different effect that you get from the incandescent bulbs.

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1) The LE cable is a glass fiber bundle in a polymer jacket. It has more even brightness than the clear cable in the kit, but the white jacket also reduces the contrast of the fiber.

2) The Stern original fiber can't be cut to length without compromising the quality of the light interface. It is cut to length at the factory, which works in automobile volumes. So you have to buy a lot. It does seem to pop up for sale occasionally - saw it on Marco's site once.

3) As Steve notes, you have to drill our blocks to install the Stern fiber because the end caps are bigger. That's not hard to do, and you can always wrap the fiber with tape to make up the diameter if necessary.

Thanks for chiming in Pam!

I was lucky enoug to have one of Elis prototype kits and its much brighter than the factory LE ones. I still feel the production models of Elis kit is outstanding and would want one in a heartbeat if I did not .

anyone tried this as a replacement? http://www.amazon.com/Light-Battery-Parties-Halloween-Decoration/dp/B00EENNGJQ/ref=pd_rhf_gw_s_cp_4_A5ZK

That's EL wire. It's a completely different technology. Plenty of people have installed EL wire on their Trons, but that's not what the LEs or Eli's kit uses.

What you're looking at there is what's called EL wire, so it's not fibre optic cable. Before Eli / Pinbits kit we put the EL wire onto our Tron Pros, and it looked great. It's just one colour though, so it doesn't change. About a year ago I posted up a step by step thread showing how to install the EL wire kit:

http://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/tron-pro-step-by-step-instructions-for-the-el-wire-mod

Good thinking though but unfortunately it wouldn't work.

Maybe some machines just look different overall in terms of brightness, hard to say. For me the best way to describe it is that the clear cables of Eli / Pinbits kit looked a little transluscent (or maybe it's transparent that I'm looking for) and a little bit uneven in some places at times, but I always thought in terms of brightness they were quite similar. Overall though I always thought it looked awesome and was very happy with the kit.

I thought about sanding the cables as well, but never tried it. At least now you can just order up a cable if you want, so if you do sand it and don't like it you can at least buy a new one. Would be interested to hear what you think of it after doing some sanding.

Oh my god, really? Two years we have been talkinga bout this mod people. TWO YEARS! COME ON!! =P

i knew they were different technologies i didn't know the fiber for trons was made to change color.

i made something similar to that back in the day, except for a baseball cap. i actually just used fishing line and an led. i think if it's not fiber, they're called light pipes or something similar