A bit of LED experimentation on Firepower

[FirePower]

I wanted to prolong my back glass life so bought some leds for the back box, not yet installed but got frosted warm white. As an experiment I thought I'd get a few others to test in coloured inserts.  As the machine is a solid state I didn't want to stray too far from the original look so the frosted colour to suit the insert seemed best. They look pretty good I think, it's hard to show in the pictures, they probably look better in the flesh.

In the first picture the bottom two rounds have been replaced with purple frosted leds, the top is just a normal globe, so they seem brighter and more uniform.  The 2X and 3X show it a bit better how the light is smoother and doesn't show the filament of a globe and the final picture sort of shows how they don't really dominate the play field. In the blue power target the right hand globe is a blue led.  I think it'll work ok, particularly with the space theme of this pin.

[goodolddays]

I reckon they look great  .
I have been thinking of putting Leds in my Firepower for a while now .
One of the guys over on AA has a resto thread on his Firepower and he decked his out in Leds ..
I agree that they suit the theme of this Pin

Cheers
Dave

[Extra Ball]

yep, good to see older machines with leds. FP really suits them 

[Strangeways]

I'm really "warming" to the idea of LEDs is selected SS machines. Looks great on DMDs and I think there is a place for them on SS - thanks for the pictures, because they do highlight the difference.

Just thinking if there are any SS machines fully decked out with LEDs ? I think this will be a "hobby" within the hobby - something that will develop over time.

[Extra Ball]

Flash would be a candidate.

[Bennyfactor]

I think if you decked out any machine with LEDs it's going to look better
well, maybe not the real oldies

plus aren't there power savings to be made with LEDs and less maintenance as the bulbs last longer?

[FirePower]

I did a bit more playing around with Firepower today, put LEDs into the back box.  In looks pretty good, you have to look reasonably hard to pick out that they are LEDs. The back glass is pretty dark so maybe that helps?  In the pictures you can see the LEDs shinning through, but in the flesh they don't show up with the same definition of the bright spots as in the picture.

I also put a few in the slingshots and once again they seem to just blend in, not as stand out as in the pictures. I'll leave them all in.

[thefasteddy69]

Very cool. Looks great. 

[FirePower]

I finally finished stuffing around with LEDs in my Firepower.  Overall I reckon it looks pretty good.

I posted a video of attract mode here;
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/shawvale/PinVids?authkey=Gv1sRgCIPxrfKC0M3xDA#5493143909425751874

It's my first video and it seems to have degraded a bit though the process of uploading to Picasa - and maybe I'm a crap videographer  

All the LEDs were Cointaker brand.

Some comments and things I noticed were;

• you need to align the LED centrally in the insert or it looks pretty bad
• used warm white frosted for the GI - they end up a lot brighter
• the bonus tree looks significantly better than incandescents , they are just so much brighter and cleaner
• used frosted colours to match the coloured inserts, seems to make the colours stronger, except orange
• the purple changed the power inserts (rh midfield) from a pinky colour to purple. This was the biggest difference
• the frosted seemed to work better on inserts with writing on them
• the orange frosted wasn't so good, too dull compared to the others, the LH target arrows are frosted warm white, the RH one frosted orange
• in the bumpers I used the bumper 4+1 hi power warm white but there wasn't that much difference to just using a single warm white
• used 89 coloured flashers in the red and blue large arc inserts, I think the flashes produced are of a slightly shorter duration
• used wide angle in the larger red insert at top - not frosted.  The larger inserts are about 28mm diameter and normals are a bit small, like the orange shoot again between the flippers, the regular inserts are about 22

Hope this helps anyone thinking about using LEDs.

[JurassicP]

Thank you for the detailed write up of your experience with LED's. Where did you purchase from? Or did I miss that part.

[Strangeways]

Thank you for the detailed write up of your experience with LED's. Where did you purchase from? Or did I miss that part.

I think it looks great - vids don't really do the LEDs justice. It is hard to capture the depth of the light. I would love to see you do a Flash pin.