LED's in my CFTBL - I am the pinball pimp ! - Pics

[Wotto]

Hey all,

I am still trying to find a good way to photograph LED's once installed - as they look WAY different ( richer in colour and not so 'glowy' ) in real life than they do in these pics. Once i discover that I will show some nice pics of all my games with LED's....

This is the only image I have available of the game before the LED's went in.






I started the CFTBL - LED pimping tonight - check it out so far...



From the top down....


Yellow LED's under PAID lane inserts
Green LED's under the green lane guides ( looks MAD in real life )
I have Orange LED's under the 3 lightning bolt inserts near the bumpers that U cant see in these pics - I suggest it highly for any CFTBL owners.
Green LED's under the Menu Target inserts that make the bluey inserts a NICE aqua shade and much brighter than normal.
White LED's under the main KISS lips insert ( look at them big ole lips standing out now ! ) , the centre 'Move your car' insert, the FILM inserts near the flippers as well as in the top of each stand up 'card with a white globe cover over them - they stand out a LOT more than standard bulbs in this location and DONT look blue in real life.
RED LED"s under the K-I-S-S inserts as well as in the coin door slots that now look blood red and very nice.

I still have to order the kits for the ramp and the bowl - doing that shortly.
I will also be doing the DMD surround tail - light mods to this game soon.



Like them black rubbers Marco 

[ddstoys]

Looking good wotto cant wait to do mine

[Strangeways]

Looks Awesome, Wotto..

 

[ktm450]

Looks fantastic Wotto!

[v8racefan]

Awesome work wotto

[beaky]

leds are the way to go 
it looks great wotto

[Wotto]

leds are the way to go 
it looks great wotto

Cheers.

I have found that LED's suit a few games but do little to others - its a LOT of trial and error.
It really is a matter of grabbing the colours/ styles you initially 'think' will do the machine justice AND having a second colour/style choice available for some inserts and buying some extra globes to experiment with in order to get the game looking it's best ( or how U want it to look ).

I literally spend hours on the games moving globes around and trying different colours in different spots to see what effect it gives the game, I often try 'similar colours' in some area's - eg under the GREEN lane guides I might try green ( obviously ) as well as white, yellow or blue to see what that looks like - I do that all over the game before finally settling on the end colour. Thi smay sound crazy , but in some games LED's do really cool things if you experiment a bit.

In some CLEAR inserts a white LED looks good ( like the lips on CFTBL ) - yet on others it doesnt look as good
- eg on the SLIDE 'arrow' insert on CFTBL the whit eglobe didnt look good for some reason, so I placed a purple one in there which looks better and MAY try a pink to match the playfiled in that section - but for now it's purple and looks good.

In the MAIN you will match the insert to the LED colour though.
I have not had ONE game where I like the look of ANY style of LED behind the translite but

[Pinfan]

 

The creech looks awesome mate...

BUT.....

I still don't fancy the black rubbers......

[Extra Ball]

sweeeet wotto!

[pinball god]

I'm a LED man through and through, but agree that you need to pick the right game. When talking to Silverball I now follow his trend in enhancing areas of a game where it needs it with leds and leaving other areas standard. Sometime you can get a led overload effect IMO. So my games have leds but not full kits.

I do like the colour changing ones in the right place too.  

[Wotto]

Took this shot especially for Pinfan.
I tried some various globes in the 3 x bumpers today , Ablaze3 green, 90 degree soft greens & normal incandescents - didnt like ANY of them - so they will be remaining 'dark'.

While I had the area a little more 'open' I took a better image of what the Orange lightning inserts look like with Ablaze3 LEDS under them... they look SO much better than the incandescent globes in this location.




I totally agree with Pinball God, I have LEDS in a lot of places in my games BUT a few area's remain standard globes as LED's dont suit some area's.
Apart from one or two globes on FH and WH20 I dont use LED's for GI anywhere.
I also dont use LED's in ANY backbox lighting.
An example of this is in the snack bar shot below where I am discussing 'bleeding' - I have left the large Mega Menu insert as normal bulb while all others around it are LED's - it didnt look good with an  LED under it.



For other CFTBL owners thinking of LED'ing this game....

I had a bit of 'bleeding' and also some bad shadowing in the 2 x RIGHT snack bar target lights with the LEDs because of thier proximity to the subway ramps - so I built a little black cardboard 'fence' that sits between the globes and screws in under one of the target screws under the playfield - worked a charm.......





GREEN Cliffy's anyone 

[Strangeways]

I think Marco pointed out that when lighting the "P-A-I-D" lights, and in certain game modes with the ball flying around the pops, you can hear the speech"Let me out ! Its DARK in here!"

Maybe they were meant NOT to have lights in the pops anyway 

[Pinfan]

Thanks Wotto ....  REALLY appreciate it !

I have the 5 in ones ( super bright ) leds ready for the mega menu insert, the 3 lightning bolts inserts around the pops and the snack bar is open red dome.

When i get around to it i will let you know how it all turns out....

Each to their own i guess.... I absolutely love the leds in the bb except where there is faces, tones just don't look right....

Nino, you are correct about the pops... They were meant to be unlit whilst creating a dark area and as far as i know he is in a dark place ( boot of a car ??? I think i read this somewhere...could be wrong ! ) and screams "Let me out ! Its DARK in here!"

The 3 lightning bolt inserts are supposed to cover for the darkness of the pops....

Maybe John can shed some light on us ! ?

[johnwartjr]

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.