Upgrading to LED's... WOW what a difference

khabbi

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Just finished up upgrading my Iron Man Pinball with a full LED kit from Cointaker... and all I have to say is .. HOLY $hit what an improvement! I had always thought that the playfield could use a little more light, but the LED improvement is absolutely amazing.

I'm sure most of you that have done LED upgrades probably feel the same way, but I wouldn't have believed it until I did it. Most of the pins I've seen with LED's looked great, but to see and experience first hand the before/after has been a pleasant surprise.

Now for the problem- My LOTR LE sitting next to my IM looks like dog pooh with regular lights! It seems SO dull and underpowered, so I guess I'm going to have to save up and upgrade it, it just doesn't look right now next to the glowing IM! Damn it!
 
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I am not a real fan of major LED conversions. (Played a SM w/LEDs and the strobe effects literally hurt my eyes and made it hard to follow the ball. Unacceptable!)

That said, I would *seriously* recommend a colored bulb makeover for the LotR. I put yellow bulbs around the ring ramp and sword ramp. Used green bulbs in the slings and around the PotD. Also used yellow bulbs along the top of the backboard, except for green ones over the back of the PotD. And a color-changing bulb under the Destroy The Ring inset.

I think these mods look great: the yellow bulbs make the gold ramps pop, and the green gives a nice eerie feel to the PotD. I think the insert lights are plenty bright as-is. Overall, the bulbs give the pf a 'scenic' and warm look, rather than an overly-bright/'techy' glare. Colored bulbs are only $3 for a box of 10 at pinballlife.com, btw.

I'd also recommend the glass Palantir bulb mod. Or, at the very least, put a piece of foil behind the bulb that lights Palantir and bend it forward against the back of the clear ball. This gives it more of a textured color and lights the ball over a wider field of view.

Also, it's very easy to find a bunch of LotR figures (Armies of Middle Earth series) and affix them (with bases) to various plastics using museum putty or the like. Holds great and can be removed/rearranged with no damage to the plastics. I like my figures much better than the factory ones on the original LotR!

Last suggestion which I found really makes a difference in the LE: Add the color warming filter to the fluorescent light in the backbox. It really improves the warm look of the bg and even de-emphasizes the gold borders when lit up.

Apologies if you've already done some of these mods....
 
I completely agree with you, khabbi. Once you put LED's in one of your machines, all the others look downright drab in comparison.
 
That said, I would *seriously* recommend a colored bulb makeover for the LotR. I put yellow bulbs around the ring ramp and sword ramp. Used green bulbs in the slings and around the PotD. Also used yellow bulbs along the top of the backboard, except for green ones over the back of the PotD. And a color-changing bulb under the Destroy The Ring inset.

Seeing all the over-colored games at Expo really cemented my HATRED of uber-colored bulbs in pinballs. It usually makes games look like visual vomit.

Games have a certain color scheme in the art already a natural light brings these colors out. Colored bulbs have the effect of taking your TV and turning the hue all the way green. Green bulbs in the slings on LOTR makes the ART green when it shouldn't be. I saw an Iron Man at Expo - all the back panel bulbs were replaced with blue...WHY!?!?! It made the back plastic of Iron Man flying through the sky dark and murky!!! There were red bulbs under the plastics by the Iron Man targets...WHY!?!?!?! It turns the artwork of the explosions ALL RED rather than the ACTUAL natural colors as intended. I saw a Whitewater w/ tons of blue bulbs....again, WHHHYYYY!?! Natural light shows the blue already there in the playfield, plus the white, yellow and other colors...blue just makes it ALL BLUE. I saw a Spider-Man with a green LED on Doc Ock....WTF!?!!??

Now, I'm not against subtle, tasteful color bulb placement ...sometimes it does look cool and can enhance a spot here and there....but these full discoloration replacements are just non-sense.

Look at this...this Iron Man looks like a fucking swimming pool:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lt9pygHVGrU
 
Agree with you Greg. Have them in IM and SM - inserts only, no kit, just matched the color of the insert with the LED bulb. Will not do GI or Flashers since that is what leads to the blindings other speak of and the GI colors look whacked out since it gives off a blueish hue.

Love them - cant imagine any game without them in. In fact, the dull 44 look makes me ill at this point. Pluside too, those 44s run hot so any decrease in heat is huge.

For ordering tips - get the white colors from BCS pin (think its the W2?) and colored from Pinball life. Whites from other places (other than BCS) have that blueish flavor to it.
 
Just watched your video - looks good - but again the GI with the blue hue is why i will only do inserts.

I did LEDs on the blue inserts on IM, since they're very dim w/ 44's. ...however, I found that cool white LEDs under the blue inserts look much more "natural" than matching w/ blue LEDs. Maybe it's because I'm keeping regular incandescent bulbs in my other inserts - but blue under the blue was DEEEEEP blue...but white under the blue yielded a nice pleasant bright blue.

I also put LEDs (cointaker's 5-HP) in the spotlights on my games. Some games look better w/ warm white, some w/ cool....just have to experiment.

The reason why I haven't done full LED inserts on my games is the "flickering" effect for bulbs that have controlled levels of brightness...Spider-Man, for instance. The villain inserts have a level of brightness for each defeat. Dim on 1, medium on 2, and bright when you defeat a villain 3 times. The LEDs flicker like CRAZY unless they're on full power. Also some games have "fading" on and off rather than just on and off during some modes....Wheel of Fortune, for instance, during attract mode has a very cool fade on/off of the inserts...with LEDs it's CHOP CHOP CHOP CHOP on and off. Until someone makes a pinball LED that can handle incremental levels of power without flickering, I'm sticking to incandescent (aside from a few things like the blue IM inserts....the green inserts on Tommy...spotlights, etc)
 
I agree with you Greg, full LED conversions on some machines just look terrible. And worse yet is some games suffer due confusion/ temporary blind spots. I've seen several LOTR conversions and most of them are an eye sore to look at because they removed the color balance and forced solid colors in certain areas such as upper left all green and center top all orange.

I'm certainly not anti LED by any means - I just feel they can be over done quite easily and is typically the case sadly. :(
 
Agree with you Greg. Have them in IM and SM - inserts only, no kit, just matched the color of the insert with the LED bulb. Will not do GI or Flashers since that is what leads to the blindings other speak of and the GI colors look whacked out since it gives off a blueish hue.

Love them - cant imagine any game without them in. In fact, the dull 44 look makes me ill at this point. Pluside too, those 44s run hot so any decrease in heat is huge.

For ordering tips - get the white colors from BCS pin (think its the W2?) and colored from Pinball life. Whites from other places (other than BCS) have that blueish flavor to it.

I did the backglass on my High-Speed with cool and warm Super brights from cointaker, doing the whole backbox is highly recommended, but the playfield...ehhh.. I dont know about G.I. but my inserts pop for with LED's 47's for G.I. OH , there is a LED color called "warm-White", that dont give off "the blue hue" you mentioned. What you mentioned is cool white.
 
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I agree that changing all the Playfield GI lights to colored usually doesn't look good. Changing the Inserts usually looks better but some games don't work well with LEDs in there.
 
I am also of the anti-led crowd. The end result is just way too harsh on the eyes. Sorta like staring directly into a blacklight. Also being a computer user for the last 30 years, its hard to go back to seeing flicker. Too many years I have had to look at low refresh rates of old computer monitors. I just can't go back and look at the flicker of led's. They are popular, but I think its more from the fact that its an upgrade that pretty much anyone can do and its entirely reverse-able.

To each their own, but some people definitely get carried away with it.

At the pinball shows, I usually don't play the games with LED's, it just hurts to much.
 
I agree that adding LED's needs to be done carefully, and if so they will usually look good and not interfere with gameplay due to brightness. On mine I decided not to upgrade the top playfield flashers, after all I think they are bright enough. I stayed with "warm white" in the playfield area and tried to make the playfield look more natural and not as though it was just glowing with blue and red colors.

I will definitely be upgrading my LOTR, but I don't plan on overdoing that either. At the very least the inserts, and some warm whites in the GI's.

I played a friends pinball that was LED'ed out, and it was unbareable to play.. the flashers blinded me and made it difficult to play. He admitted that it was bright, and all I could think was how I would remove them because the gameplay is above all.. I think he liked shock factor of being blinded while playing or something :)

This was my first pinball that I've LED'd, so I guess playing it for a while without them (and I really did think the playfield could have used more light) and now with the LED's, I'm more aware of how much of an upgrade they really are.. I'm glad I didn't go overboard with crazy colors too..
 
One thing I like doing occasionally is adding color to "white" inserts. Here's an example on Iron Man...the point values that build up on the ramps were all white....but I thought it would look nice as white-yellow-orange-red. I just did this w/ colored bulb caps, not LEDs.

IMColorInserts.jpg
 
I have did up a couple of mine with LED's. I like the way they look on the ones I did. I can understand both sides of this one.

I do like doing backglass lights for sure if one can. No heat is nice. On my Flash on all the lights that were "lightining" on the backglass I made flasher's. Gave it a great animation effect.
 
I have did up a couple of mine with LED's. I like the way they look on the ones I did. I can understand both sides of this one.

I do like doing backglass lights for sure if one can. No heat is nice. On my Flash on all the lights that were "lightining" on the backglass I made flasher's. Gave it a great animation effect.

To me, the backglass LED kits are a waste for the money.. For Ironman or LOTR they are around $150-200 for the kit from cointaker, just so you can have changing colors behind the backglass? I know one of the forum members has them, and while I think they are OK, just not worth the money to me.

I suppose I can't upgrade my 1978 Bally Kiss with LED's? I'm guessing there's nothing that would fit a pin that old?
 
A customer replaced all of their EM bulbs (47 or 44's) with LED's and thought they looked cool (and they did) but their game is in the garage and during the day it really doesn't light up the playfield that much. So we suggested they go back to incandescents, and they couldn't believe how much brighter and nicer the playfield looks. Plastics were lighting up and the backglass was all lit up...
 
I am also of the anti-led crowd. The end result is just way too harsh on the eyes. Sorta like staring directly into a blacklight. Also being a computer user for the last 30 years, its hard to go back to seeing flicker. Too many years I have had to look at low refresh rates of old computer monitors. I just can't go back and look at the flicker of led's. They are popular, but I think its more from the fact that its an upgrade that pretty much anyone can do and its entirely reverse-able.

To each their own, but some people definitely get carried away with it.

At the pinball shows, I usually don't play the games with LED's, it just hurts to much.

Ditto. I cant stand the flicker and the harsh light from LED's. I lose the ball too easily with the strobe light effect too. Yuck!!
 
i'm getting my SW back tomorrow after it was professionally shopped (my christmas present from my wife). i got some LED's in the backbox and some for the GI. hopefully it will look as good as some that i've seen online...really sets off the blue color of the cab/playfield.

i'll post pics sometime after i get it back.
 
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