talk to me about GOOD LEDS

[ulysses]

hey guys

just a quick survey on your experience with LED brands

im looking for a good brand, build quality, build consistency, power efficiency -- but most of all brand reliability.

is there a rolls royce of LEDS?

anyone got any good advice on brands, and sources for those brands?

cheers, ulysses

[PRR]

> is there a rolls royce of LEDS?

Why? Are you building a Rolls Royce? Even so, I suspect RR uses pretty generic LEDs.

Have you identified all other parts of similar "high quality"? I got a snowblower with a great engine, but spoiled by the chute controls freezing up when it is cold (when it snows!).

What troubles have you had? My LEDs serve me flawlessly. (Except the $2 "LED flashlights", where the LEDs may work, but the switch and battery contacts are crap.)

CREE is a well known (much promoted?) brand for BIG LED assemblies. They may sell little pedal LEDs. They may buy those from low-bid factories just to puff-up their catalog.

[ulysses]

> is there a rolls royce of LEDS?

Why? Are you building a Rolls Royce? Even so, I suspect RR uses pretty generic LEDs.

Have you identified all other parts of similar "high quality"? I got a snowblower with a great engine, but spoiled by the chute controls freezing up when it is cold (when it snows!).

henry rolls was well known for his obsessive perfectionism, building cars of very high reliability. while i am not building a rolls royce, i can afford to have LEDS that don't die (i've had plenty that burn out), i can afford LEDS that are always the same size (i've had some that don't fit), ive even had leds with the anode cathode round the wrong way

regarding other parts -- i always buy switchcraft, davies knobs, alpha pots etc -- because i have never had any that dont fit, they dont die prematurely -- where i have had plenty of other parts in the same category that die. basically i want to pay so i don't have trouble. my time is worth more than cost of the parts.

you never know where your leds have come from on ebay or smallbear or others -- so it's always a gamble -- i want to avoid that gamble.

thx for the tip on CREE. there are so many different kinds with so many variables -- i'm looking at these ones
https://au.mouser.com/productdetail/cree-inc/c503b-bcn-cv0z0461?qs=sGAEpiMZZMuCm2JlHBGefrcINkf5ZrI4HyOKnejs9Ss%3D

cheers

[anotherjim]

Kingbright. This brand may have been named by somebody who did, or did not, think it through.
Don't know if they are available on Mt Olympus.

[PRR]

> you never know where your leds have come from on ebay

I offer that Henry didn't buy on eBay.

Have you had trouble with Small Bear? Knock on the cave. He will either growl, or make it good. My impression of his business is that he has customers who can't afford odd-size or backward LEDs.

[merlinb]

I can't remember the last time I had an LED fail, outside of a mains LED lamp that is.

[Mark Hammer]

I've posted before about making an LED tester.  Get yourself a 12-position switch, and use it to select between a dozen strategically-chosen resistor values from 22k to 1k.  Using a 9v battery to power the socketed LED, you can start at 22k current-limiting resistance and work your way down to a value that provides suitable illumination without frying your eyes or the LED.  It's also a good way to determine if the LED is still good or was accidentally placed back in the parts drawer after being fried, as well as the orientation of the LED, and usability of its potential brightness

And, like Merlin, I may have fried LEDs before, but I've never had a bad one.

[greaser_au]

The last time I had real problems with LEDs they came out of the Tandy grab bag...   that was 1979...   those reject LEDs smelled REALLY bad when they exploded 

Down under, if you must have 'absolute consistency' from order to order in small (i.e. less than, say, 10000) quantities, I'd suggest you might have a look at what RS or Farnell/element14 carry. They generally do not sell junk, and they buy millions at a time.   Not cheap, but should fit your 'RR consistency' criterion...

Best of luck with your project.

david.     greetings from (VERY hot and) sunny Adelaide... 

[antonis]

Don't know if they are available on Mt Olympus.

Hermes is always quite attentive to generous tippers... 

[garcho]

Not to rant, but bright LEDs are the dumbest of dumb things I see on many pedals, including from big name makers. Why tho? I don't need to have an LED lightsaber disembowel my retinas just so I know the phaser is on.

When you fry out LEDs, what's the situation? Breadboarding, and poof? Or you engage a pedal you've built but the LED indicator craps out? Have you been measuring current and all that jazz? Are your LEDs in bezels, or sockets of some kind?
I routinely see the guts of top of the line studio gear, from consoles to rack units to tape machines, and those LEDs are often bent into place, have corroded leads, are just ugly, dumb RYG semi opaque 3mm LEDs with no socket or bezel or heat shrink or anything and I can't remember the last time I replaced one (except for those I mangled trying to get the PCB out of a tight spot). Are all of these bad LEDs from the same seller?

[Mark Hammer]

Not to rant, but bright LEDs are the dumbest of dumb things I see on many pedals, including from big name makers. Why tho? I don't need to have an LED lightsaber disembowel my retinas just so I know the phaser is on.

This is why I recommend the LED tester, described above.  I imagine many builders will just default to the current-limiting resistor value shown in the schematic they are following.  But will the LED be bright enough? TOO bright?  Hard to tell in advance, even IF one has all the math down pat, simply because eyes respond with different sensitivity to different wavelegths.  If you have a jig with known resistance presets, you can work your way down from some maximum value until you hit a brightness that you find suitable for the specific LED, colour, and application (e.g.,  yellow may need to be brighter to stand out against a light bacground, but red is fine at low illumination against a black chassis).  If 15k current-limiting seems too dim, but 10k is too bright, then you know that 12k is going to be a pretty reasonable guess, despite what the schematic says.

[stallik]

I also like high quality items but to me, quality is conformance to requirements.

I want them to illuminate, be 3mm wide and be dirt cheap. So I buy packs of 100 for £1 from China in every colour I can find. I vary the resistor value so that all colours look visually the same to satisfy my OCD. None have failed me yet and they all stay put in a 3mm hole

I therefore consider that I have the highest quality led's that I can buy.

[amptramp]

If you have a problem with LED's being too bright or too dark under various amounts of ambient light (dark stage vs. outdoor daytime gig), just add a CdSe or CdS photoresistor in series with it.  High resistance in the dark and low resistance in the light.  You may have to add series and parallel resistors to calibrate it so you get the correct light output for every ambient.

The City of Mississauga (where I live, just west of Toronto) has converted most of its streetlighting to LED and they use CREE lamp assemblies.

[yanng45]

I also like high quality items but to me, quality is conformance to requirements.

Please someone sticky this, like make it a bright flashing wall of text that appears randomly across the board.

I mean seriously, the "rolls type" component is not always the best one for any given situation. I also buy my LEDs by the hundred on aliexpress and that stuff just work for what it's supposed to do, as stallik said, there's not much surprises when it comes to LEDs. Do you need to spend more than that ? That's highly doubtful for that kind of component but it's up to you.

Useless rant incoming, sorry about that, but i came across that ludicrous description the other day that walks along that line :

"Premium audio components, including 2% polypropylene capacitors,1% metal film resistors and a pro audio grade opamp (our signal path opamp alone costs 8 to 10 times what the industry norm uses)."

That's just marketing i know, you're free to use tight tolerance components if you like i don't care, but... "Our opamp is ultra expensive so it's obviously the best one dude, the other stuff suck!". Come on... worded like that it doesn't mean a TL072 wouldn't do it as well.

[smallbearelec]

just a quick survey on your experience with LED brands

I have been happy with Kingbright for years for the usual diffused types. For high-brightness clear types, I have long bought in bulk from this company:

http://www.luckylight.cn/

Good service, and I have never had a complaint about the parts.

[Mark Hammer]

The City of Mississauga (where I live, just west of Toronto) has converted most of its streetlighting to LED and they use CREE lamp assemblies.

They can work well for streetlights that point down and can be supplemented by other lights.  Just don't use them for traffic lights in northern climes.  As many municipalities have found, LEDs don't generate enough heat to melt any snow or ice buildup on them, the way that traditional incandescents do.  And since traffic lights have to face sideways, you can't really use covers to shield them from any winter-related buildup.

But enough about that.  Back to the thread topic, already in progress.

[deadastronaut]

''So I buy packs of 100 for £1 from China in every colour''


yep...me too, no issues ever...


as for retina destroying, i go up to 22k on the resistor to stop blindness.

[duck_arse]

superbrites make sense in old-fashioned battery powered builds, because you can choke the current down w/ the large clr and still get your bright jollies. why provide the LED with more current than the rest of the circuit draws?

[edit :] bright jollies, nobody gets bright happies do they?

[garcho]

speaking of "good" LEDs:

Wouldn't it be cool if you could dial in the wavelength with a rheostat? 400-700nM, hardwire it in once you get the shade you're after. In my imagination it's a clear, 5mm, 3-lead package, one resistor for brightness, one for wavelength. I guess until we have those quantum resistors everyone's been talking about it might be left to my imagination. The colors of LEDs are produced by the materials making the P-N juntion, yeah? Guess it would be hard to alter that with a 10K pot.

[anotherjim]

bright jollies, nobody gets bright happies do they?

Because when you say it, it sounds like "bright herpes"?