Hi Guys
I found a good site for cheap LEDS....CoinTaker.com
They have some really cool leds.....
Has anyone here bought from them yet?
Thanks

Yup!   They are good - they showed up to the Niagara show, too with some great deals!

Yeah, a few of us have bought a bunch from them and they are great to deal with and for the price the product is good.

D

Doug
Did you try the pop bumper or special high power ones?

I'll let rocket-man answer... (i've just toyed with them - they didn't work for the one application i wanted - which was to make an old-wedgehead's special light more visible from under a kick-out hole)...

They are pretty good but for bigger inserts, I stick with Ablaze LED's.  For flashers and smaller inserts, cointaker is just fine.

I spent almost $400 US with them between Niagara Falls and online. They are great...and they are nice people as well!

The high power ones are necessary for larger inserts for sure. Otherwise for smaller inserts and GI just frosted wide angle. If you dont want a cold look, use the warm white for you GI playfield illumination. I like the cold look for DR Who and Getaway. On HSII it kinda reminds me of xenon HD headlights with a slightly bluish tint.

Quoted from Bmwman37

Doug
Did you try the pop bumper or special high power ones?

I haven't personally tried the Cointaker stuff yet but a number of my friends have, and the LED's look good.  (I've only purchased LED's from BC's so far)  Pop's should be standard 555's, just get the wide angle in the colour of the cap and it should be fine.

I will say that if you plan on changing your GI over to LED, it's gonna be a personal preference.  I converted my whole CV over (insert / GI) and I'm not a fan of the GI.  It's not the light it emits as I like the colour, but because it's LED it flickers and causes a strobe type effect when the ball is moving around the PF.  Makes it harder to track the ball.

I did all the inserts on my TOTAN and left the GI incandescent and so far I'm liking it.

D

Same here, colored incandescent bulbs were used for GI.  For pop bumpers, I used cointaker's high powered stuff.  We'll see how the fit goes.  Typically in the past, I have used BCS's matrix bulbs for pop bumpers.

The flickering effect usually happens when you have lights that sometimes dim, as in Party Zone. Since the translight and some GI lights are supposed to dim in certain modes, I stuck with incandescent for those.

I have no idea how cointaker LED's react to dimming.  I know BCS LED's take that into account with their LED design so it doesn't flicker but some people with sensitve eyes will see them anyways no matter what.

Having taken apart both BCS and Cointaker LED's for my projects, I gotta say there's a HUGE difference in build quality of the two.  The BCS led's come apart nice and easy, but the Cointaker LED's literally crumble apart in your hand if you're not careful.  Now obviously you're not really supposed to do this anyway, so this is just an observation.  I can't see the Cointaker LED's handling too much vibration in the long term.  Since they're so cheap, take one apart and you'll see what I mean.  For general use though, I'd say they're fine.. and the warm white looks great!

Also as a FYI, I noticed that Cointaker charges the same shipping, whether you're ordering 5 or 50 LED's.. so keep that in mind when ordering.

Anyway it looks like the Cointakers use a diode and a resistor in their assembly, where as the BCS's actually have a little circuit board built in with two resistors.   Not sure what the difference would be functionally though.

Quoted from pinsRfun

I have no idea how cointaker LED's react to dimming.  I know BCS LED's take that into account with their LED design so it doesn't flicker but some people with sensitve eyes will see them anyways no matter what.

Yeah, I'm one of the "lucky ones" I guess... I bought the BC led's in hopes to avoid the flicker but no dice. (even with the game at full brightness it's still an issue)

One thing I have noticed with BC's LED's is that he must have received a bad batch of Blue 555's from the factory, as I've had 2 of them die in as many weeks.  Best part is, they are installed in the "SPIN" inserts on CV.  (And for those of you that may or may not know, probably the WORST ones to fail as they are a total b**** to get at)

D

I put the ones sold by Canada Pinball Partys and they work almost everywhere without flickering, but they are 2$ ea...

I didn't get too many, so I can only say that they dont work anywhere, GI are OK and pop bumpers look great with them,
as they are 3 lights per bulb...and the angles are super for pop bumpers, I have those on both my SS Bally machines, and
even on the 1000 points that lights on and off if your contacts are clean and brushed properly, it helps greatly with flickering.

Tomcardude  

BCS has a 1 year warranty.  Send the bad ones back for an exchange if you wish.  The ones from canadapinball are Ablaze LED's.  The brightest bulbs for pinball.

I have done most of my games(inserts) with LEDS from Cointaker.I think they look awesome
Great customer service

If you guys live close together..do a group order....free shipping if you spend $500.
That what I did here

Lol, shipping costs like $25 or less.  That's not much of a discount for the amount of dollars spent.  Better than nothing but $500 is a lot of LED's.

I also dissected a Cointaker LED, in this case a single, bayonet socket type. There was what appeared to be just a small reststor inside. I installed maybe 200+ of their lamps and only had one fault, which was probably due to my clumsiness handling a difficult to twist bayonet. That was the one I dissected.

Perhaps fror dimming GI's it is best to use BC's. But for everything else, dollar for dollar you cant beat Cointaker. Also, I seem to remember that they refunded me back $5 to Paypal (I guess due to lower shipping cost).

Quoted from pinsRfun

BCS has a 1 year warranty.  Send the bad ones back for an exchange if you wish.  The ones from canadapinball are Ablaze LED's.  The brightest bulbs for pinball.

Oh yeah, Bruce has been great about replacements on the dead LED's.  Even gave me 15% off my second order for the hassle.

D

Quoted from Menace

Yeah, I'm one of the "lucky ones" I guess... I bought the BC led's in hopes to avoid the flicker but no dice. (even with the game at full brightness it's still an issue)

One thing I have noticed with BC's LED's is that he must have received a bad batch of Blue 555's from the factory, as I've had 2 of them die in as many weeks.  Best part is, they are installed in the "SPIN" inserts on CV.  (And for those of you that may or may not know, probably the WORST ones to fail as they are a total b**** to get at)

D

For some reason blue LEDs seem to have the highest defect rate all around in my electronic travels.

Quoted from pinsRfun

Lol, shipping costs like $25 or less.  That's not much of a discount for the amount of dollars spent.  Better than nothing but $500 is a lot of LED's.

The last order I did was around 1400 LEDS....shipping was over $40..every little bit helps

Quoted from websherpa

For some reason blue LEDs seem to have the highest defect rate all around in my electronic travels.

Yeah, but once you have an appliance that has a working "Blue" LED, you know you have quality....

I have used cointaker LEDs well. He did overcharge for shipping, but made up for it BIG TIME with extra LEDS (more than 2X the value of the overcharge)

Cointaker has been good.  No complaints.  I'll continue to buy more from them but their LED's do have a limit before it starts to look weak.  If their bulbs only have a resistor in them, it won't be doing a thing about flicker.  It needs a capacitor to reduce flickering.  This might be where BCS LED's have an advantage and hence higher cost but I can't confirm cuz I'm too lazy to take one apart to see.

I must admit I have been quite discouraged by price and selection of LEDs. If you look at BCS's site, you have NO idea what to take... there are many types of white LEDs. I personally find it excessive.

Price doesn't help either. I can get a box of 10 standard #44-47 lamps for 85 cents. In some cases it's half the price of a single LED.

The NOFLIX anti-flicker LEDs I looked at came up to well over 2.50$ a lamp!!! That's 67.50$ just to do the card inserts on Big Game!!

No thanks. I rather just use incandescent lamps, and leave the DMD collectors their LEDs.

Quoted from Sparky

No thanks. I rather just use incandescent lamps, and leave the DMD collectors their LEDs.

Don't lump us all in with that lot, I really like the look but I can't justify the price.  $100 - $200 to do an entire machine in LED's  $20 or less for regular old light bulbs, the choice seems pretty easy to me.  

The only time I can justify LED's is in pop bumpers since LEDS will last forever the impossible the change pop bumper lights make sense.  

LED's are expensive but to me, they make the game so much more enjoyable.  It's no different than people who redo their cabinet decals once it's wrinkled under the legs.  I could care less about the cab decal.  To each their own but I'm hooked on LED's.  Anyone who has seen my games really do notice a big difference from the LED's.

I use Original GE 555's in my Pop's, they sSeem to last real well. I bought a whole bunch a couple of times from Steve at Pinball Resource. I think in a Home game, they will last a long time!

I do like LED's in certain aplications. They work very well in "Painted" inserts, the faces and Instruments on Monster Bash for example. I play in Bright light in my place so lighting the hard to see inserts is important.

Dave