I have to agree that LED lamps today can have the correct color. Even my outdoor lights (All LED) look Tungsten in color.

I have to say that I am horrified by some of the 'upgrades' I've seen where the traditional bulbs have been replaced with 'ice white' or blue LEDs - they are nothing short of hideous. I always replace like with like to maintain the authenticity and original appearance.

I am not against replacing a tungsten bulb with warm white LEDs behind a colored dial plate if the original appearance is maintained, however.

I am curious though..... do the LED bulbs work in all situations? All my vintage tuners and receivers have the dial lamps running from AC straight out of the transformer. Do the LED replacement lamps have a built in bridge rectifier and smoothing / filtering capacitors? It's not unknown for a bridge rectifier to cause noise and interference and need 4 capacitors across the diodes. Worst case scenario you have half a dozen unfiltered bridge rectifiers close to the RF circuits or preamp circuits...........

AC/DC;
https://www.pinballlife.com/ablaze-4-sm ... -lamp.html
I've used them in table AA5's and console radios having power transformers with NP.

Those pinball guys have some really creative product ID names.

Pungent might be a better term, Paul. Sorry if your delicate sensibilities were offended...

this thread popped up at the right time.

a few weeks ago, I was given a beautiful vintage Onkyo TX-3000 am/fm stereo 50 watt (very conservatively rated) receiver.

the poor thing was in terrible shape as the big 12k mfd capacitors leaked white gunk all over the board, the protection circuit took about a minute to kick in, and the FM center meter off the discriminator was well off center at dead air.

after a complete replacement of every electrolytic capacitor in the entire unit, it came to life, just beautifully. after a complete am/fm precise alignment, it is superb on the receiving end as well.

this unit took five of the solder style fuse lamps, a wheat light in the dial pointer, and three larger wheat lights for "stereo", "tuned", and "locked".

I replaced the dial pointer wheat light with a 6 volt one I had here in series with a 22 ohm resistor to take the edge off the voltage. I replaced the "stereo", "tuned", and "locked" lamps with the appropriate colored LEDs and a 330 ohm series resistor so they see about 2.5 volts.

I was not going to pay for the tubular fuse lamps with leads so I decided to order the 6-8 volt LED retrofits from Parts Express.

https://www.parts-express.com/green-3-l ... k--070-146

after just finishing the project with the new LED lamps, I must say that I am impressed.

although a slight edge is taken off from the vintage glow of the original filament lamps, this turned out much better, nicer, and further original looking than I anticipated.

I would post pics, but that would be a moot point and effort.

now the big question some may be wondering: would I do this to some of my bigger high-end top line $$$ vintage receivers ?

ABSOLUTELY NOT,

but for a nice vintage receiver that does not warrant paying the price of original style leaded tubular lamps, I absolutely would do LEDs again in a heartbeat.

this receiver's LED replacement total cost was about 7 bucks with the new LEDs and the singles I had here.

compared to 30-some for original replacements, the was a great deal, but I would never LED my Sansui G-8000

edit: as I can easily see and be extremely annoyed by the "shimmer" and "pulsing" of cheap Christmas light LEDs, I do not see any shimmer on these LED replacements. they see 6 volts AC from the transformer.

steve

Not sure how the Parts Express LEDs do it, but I too used their fuse style lamps for my Fisher I posted a picture of in this topic and did not see any flicker.

I'm thinking maybe there is a bridge rectifier using separate diodes as when modifying a couple I saw what looked like one three terminal device at both ends of the lamp so that would make for 1/2 wave DC with a frequency of 120Hz.

I eventually converted to regulated 9V DC for all the lamps as I had to use some of the surface mount LEDs from the fuse lamps to keep the shade of the indicator lights the same exact shade of blue as the dial and didn't want to use a bridge rectifier for each lamp assembly and wanted to be sure the brightness didn't change based on line voltage.

Would I do LED conversions to other receivers?

Yes, IF I can get the shade of color to be exactly like the original bulbs or if the shade is slightly different but to me looks better than the original shade.

An example is my Yamaha R-300 receiver I had where the original bulb burnt out. I used one of the Parts Express LED fuse bulbs, removed the end caps as they were not needed and soldered wires to the terminals. I took the original green bulb cover and cut a piece out to put in front of the LED strip so the dial still lit green. The green was a slightly lighter shade, but in my opinion actually matched the silver face better than the original shade of green did. Unfortunately I have no pictures of the dial lit up.

I hooked this up to my mach ones (original series) and heard absolutely no noise.

for good measure, I paralleled a .01 disc across the AC lamp bus that powers 5 LED retrofit dial lamps.

I am really impressed with the looks of the LED replacements.

steve

^ That lighting looks terrific!

thanks.

i am very satisfied. i expected it to be "too cool" of a white, but it is not.

compared to the one bulb that lit the dial, the color temp is dang close.

steve

Very nice.

thanks,

steve

You're welcome.

The ones I see here look very nice. I think it's the younger kids that put blue LEDs in place of the white (clear) lamps that are off-putting to me. But in the long run, do what you like.
RW

Agreed.

Only place in my opinion where blue LEDs should be used is if it is the only way to get the original shade of blue.

I do have a set of LED Christmas lights where the LEDs look very near the same exact color as the equivalent incandescent colored Christmas lights.

So LEDs are becoming even closer to perfectly imitating colored incandescent bulbs.

some clown put hot blue in a marantz 22xx receiver that i recently saw. it looked so "blue" and bloomed so vividly that it gave me an afterimage in the retina for about 60 seconds.

I hate those bright blue LEDs.