LED lit gauges, North Hollywood vs bulbs Options

[Grngoat]

Does anyone have any experience with the LED lighting that North Hollywood Speedometer does? Especially, how does it compare to just buying the LED bulbs that are avaliable as replacements?

The price that they charge to convert the gauges is quite a bit more than just buying the bulbs. I'm just wondering if they do that much better of a job or not.

Anyone?

[lapuwali]

Several people swear up and down LEDs are dimmable w/o a "controller" (basically a PWM circuit). I'm not a EE, and I've not fooled around with LEDs enough to know for certain, but this MAY be true, even though it goes against what little electrical theory I know.

Some places have LED "bulbs" with lenses that are designed to spread the light "sideways", rather than just point in one direction. Some of them are fairly cheap. www.superbrightleds.com is one such place. No affiliation or even experience with them, just pointing out an option.

Somewhere, I think maybe on a 912 board, someone showed the insides of an NH Speedo modified gauge, and it looked like they used quite a few LEDs, and painted the inside of the gauge housing white to reflect the light around better.

Personally, I prefer the warmer, yellowish light of incandescent bulbs as dash lights. LED bulbs are great for taillights, brake lights, turn signals, the lights I can't see in the car. Dash lights I have to look at, so I want them to be pretty. The current draw on them is pretty small (2-3W per bulb, usually 1-2 bulbs per gauge, so on a 914, 6 normal bulbs, or 12-18W total, or a little over 1A). Blue LEDs are too blue, white LEDs are still too blue, green LEDs are just ugly, and red LEDs are usually too dim.