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White LEDs to amber

JSMATT

JSMATT

AK Subscriber
Subscriber
I am working to match a white LED to the color of the fluoroscan meters found on a B-2101, etc.

I ordered some 3 mm bulb covers for model trains. The yellow cover looks - well - really yellow.

This evening I will double a yellow and red cover to see what color is created, though I am skeptical in advance of its results.

Has anyone already made the grade in terms of coloring a white LED to match the amber in the 2101s and the like?

Thanks,
 
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Have you tried amber LED? I used this 5mm for the pilot light. Has a nice glow to it when adjusted for brightness.

Scott Muni

Thread 'Pilot Light LED conversion on Sansui AU555-A'

The incandescent pilot light bulb burned out on my AU555-A. Decided to change to LED and try to get it to look original.
Mounted a small bridge rectifier, 470 ohm resistor, 100K ohm trimmer and 100uF cap. I wanted to be able to fine tune the brightness, and the cap is to have the light fade when turned off.
I tried warm white, yellow, and settled on this amber LED. It is a close match to the incandescent bulb in my AU222 and AU 101.
Total over-kill, I know. It's neat watching the light fade off, like old equipment does. So satisfying...
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@JSMATT, I thought the displays on the B-2101 and 2201 were VFD's. The B-2301 uses a backlit inverse polarized LCD. That said, one can use white LEDs with an amber or orange colored sheet gel made for theatre lighting. Similar material can also be found as color filters for VFD displays, but usually in smaller dimensions.
 
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As I see it coloured LED's are not needed for the B-2101/2102 meter backlights, the stock installation is 6 x (white) incandescent bulbs. I tried to do a LED conversion to my B-2102 and could never get the spread of illumination how I wanted it, so I renewed the bulbs and left it at that.
 
Thank you all for the input. I clearly get an 'F' for failing to do the basic lookup of an amber LED - 20 cents each on Digikey for a 10 second search. Arghh.

I ran with diffuse white LEDs for the speed and low cost of their delivery, thinking I could easily score some colored bulb covers that would make the grade. Wrong!

This made it way more complicated than necessary - yet another lesson learned and I should be too old for that!

It is important to note and I should have added that the LEDs are for a non-Sansui piece of gear (Yamaha DSP-3000), but the gear supporting that is all Sansui (including a pair of B-2101s).

Adding that Yamaha and its stark silver color to the black of the Sansui gear is killing my aesthetic. Too bad Yamaha did not make a black version of the DSP-3000. (I am currently resisting the urge to find a vendor who does black anodizing.)

Also, want to give credit where due, so a hat tip to quaddriver's Feb. 15, 2017 post on this LED-conversion topic which got me over the technical hump.

Again, thanks to all.
 
Amber LEDs might be too amber.

Also, not all white LEDs have amber light, the cheapest ones are blue LEDs with phosphor to glow white, not even close to full-spectrum light. Look for warm-white LEDs that might have enough of the amber (bi-color junctions hidden in there: blue and amber) to look good through a filter.
 
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