I have a bunch of questions for Mr. Trudeau as I am restoring a prototype CFTBL at the moment and am finding subtle differences in a few areas.
I'm still not sold entirely on LEDs in general. I'm not digging how some of the ones on the lamp matrix cause other ones to light at wrong times, and I don't like how they don't dim with the game. I think there are a lot of collectors stateside who just throw everything they can at every game, and assume it automatically looks good. I guess I can't fault this, anything they can do that will help them enjoy the game is good in my eyes, especially when it's reversible, because I've learned that we tend to pass games around in this hobby a bit - and you won't like what I like every single time, etc.
Regarding the 'it's dark in here' line, it is meant to be a comment about being in a trunk, correct. Of course, the pops are a swamp, which is probably a dark area anyways. So I dig the interpretation there. I'm of the opinion that they were removed because it would be difficult to change them when the playfield is populated. I added sockets to mine and have them tied to GI at the moment, but it wouldn't be difficult to remove them.
The pops is the 1 area of the game where I installed LEDs in mine, I used some Cointaker 4+1 LEDs in red colored tint. This is the closest LED I've ever found to incandescent appearance.