Mac 4100 - gel or no gel?
- Thread starter camaronut
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No front panel blue gels but there is a rounded and fragile amber gel though behind the meters.
Now you only need to think about every other McIntosh you have taken apart in the last year - I think this would drive me crazy. LOL
markd51
Nyuk Nyuk
Here's what I found inside my 4100. Stock Lamps throughout, 2 Gels used for the "Yellow" Dial Face Illumination, one each side, and a Yellow Gel Wrap for the 2 Meter Lamps.
It appeared to me that as the Dial Glass is installed, the yellow Gel strips are formed into an L-Shape to be retained by the Glass, and the light passes through this exposed Gel and gives the Dial Lettering a Yellow Color. The stock Lamps (both Dial Face and Meter Lamps) are of course warm white incandecsent and the Dial Glass Lettering-Numerals are White.
I'm sure you seen the results of my Dial Face Lamp change to Cool Blue 3 segment LED Lamps, which in combination with the Yellow Gels used for the Dial Face provided a nice Green appearance.
No other lighting or Gel mods were done on my 4100, the stock Meter Lamps and Yellow Gel material were unchanged.
With all that being said, and if a piece of Dial Face Gel somehow fell out, I think you would quickly notice a mismatch of Dial Face color hue.
Can you perhaps show us a picture of this Gel you found? What color was this Gel material you found?
If it's not yellow, then it didn't come from the 4100.
It appeared to me that as the Dial Glass is installed, the yellow Gel strips are formed into an L-Shape to be retained by the Glass, and the light passes through this exposed Gel and gives the Dial Lettering a Yellow Color. The stock Lamps (both Dial Face and Meter Lamps) are of course warm white incandecsent and the Dial Glass Lettering-Numerals are White.
I'm sure you seen the results of my Dial Face Lamp change to Cool Blue 3 segment LED Lamps, which in combination with the Yellow Gels used for the Dial Face provided a nice Green appearance.
No other lighting or Gel mods were done on my 4100, the stock Meter Lamps and Yellow Gel material were unchanged.
With all that being said, and if a piece of Dial Face Gel somehow fell out, I think you would quickly notice a mismatch of Dial Face color hue.
Can you perhaps show us a picture of this Gel you found? What color was this Gel material you found?
If it's not yellow, then it didn't come from the 4100.
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markd51
Nyuk Nyuk
If you still have this 1900, you can of course check and see? Is that a hard job on the 1900 to pop it open and investigate?
markd51
Nyuk Nyuk
Yep, that's a different take with the Blue Meters.
With the Dial Face Festoon Lamps, and perhaps like you did, I swapped to a Cool Blue 3 Segment LED Lamp and the stock Yellow Gels. I left the stock Meter Lamps and the Yellow Gel untouched. I loved that the LED Lamps were "Aim-able" and could fine tune light intensity for both sides to provide for an evenly lit Dial Face.
More labor intensive but an entire rainbow of colors could be had by swapping Gel Material, since there's only a limited availability of Lamp Hues-Colors. The proper Gels will be heat-fire resistant. Such gel material is something you don't want to buy from a hobby shop unless of proper spec for lighting applications.
I have a couple Swatch packs on hand. But I won't further operate on my 4100 unless I must, such as a Burnt Meter Lamp., the Gel Cocoon will have to come off first, and there will likely be no salvaging it.
Would I go to LED Meter Lamps? Possibly.
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Tinman
Super Member
I used white LED's, blue lamp "condoms" which fit nicely on the meters and for the dial glass white LED lamps with gels to fine tune the color I wanted.
I just never wanted to replace bulbs again, as I run this receiver every single day in my shop, so it racks up the hours. The blue meters look better in person and was my nod to the traditional MacIntosh blue for their giant, sexy meters.
I have thought of changing the power indicator led's, but decided to leave well enough alone. Arguably, when I first got the MAC, I never thought it would become my every day driver and workhorse. But here we are.
This is beautiful, was this achieved with simply changing to Cool Blue Segment LED lamp or did you need to add a green gel as well? If you don’t mind, specifically what would someone need to replicate what you’ve done here? Seeing this I don’t understand why MAC didn’t retain this look on this unit, very nice.
I think they just followed the trend at the time. In the late '70s, many major manufacturers had gone to backlighting in "warm white", leaving colors for individual indicators where they'd stand out better.