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| Cointaker LED's |
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Cointaker LED's are run by Chris and Melissa Marquette, out of Sunbury, Pennsylvania. They offer possibly the largest overall selection of LED types, covering just about any incandescent bulb you will find in a pinball machine. This monster selection also includes a dizzying array of lensing and power options. If you can't get a cointaker LED that fits your application, you probably won't find anything for it anywhere. They offer a number of unique LED choices not available anywhere else, and I haven't even listed all their oddball style LED's here. If anything, I think cointaker would be well served by simplifying their lineup a bit. A nice feature is that cointaker offers both a Cool White and a Warm White in pretty much the entire line. The difference between the two colors is that Warm White has a touch of a yellow/orange tone to them, while Cool White has a touch of a blue tone. Depending on your machine, it can make a very big difference. Most LED's are available in a fairly standard color menu of Warm and Cool White, Yellow, Red, Blue, Orange, and Green. Many are also available in pink and purple, with a couple of Mini and Super Bright's in UV black light. Generally the color choices are duplicated between the #44 and #555 style bases. Color changers are available in the Super Bright lineup. I have a lot of work to do here to fill out the specs of these LED's, as not all of the information is consistent on their website. You only get a general description, which may or may not answer your questions. Their website is at www.cointaker.com Great customer service too, top notch folks. |
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| Ultra Bright, Super Bright, Mini Bright and Retro. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
   NOTE: The Ultra-Bright wedges are polarized, not rectified. All others in this lineup are rectified. These are some of the newer LED's that Cointaker offers, which are a dramatic shift in design. Rather than a traditional wire lead LED, these feature an exposed SMD chip style LED's without any lensing. Likely they will be about the same as a flat-topped traditional LED, which would be in the 110 degree range. I would like to find out the amperage draw and the output wattage on these, as they are advertised as being very bright in comparison to standard LED's. The main differentiation between the types is the size of the LED, going from Mini to Super to Ultra in size. Upon initial inspection, these appear to all be fully rectified with a new style rectifier board inside the housings, including the wedge style 555's. This rectifier board design is unique to cointaker, featuring four individual SMD diodes instead of a single chip bridge, or the two transistor style used by Ablaze. It would be nice if they could apply this rectifier board design to their wedge style standard lineup as well. Retro's are an interesting addition to the lineup, advertised as appearing very similar to a traditional 555 or 44 incandescent bulb in appearance. The design is actually a super-bright LED with a clear dome housing installed on top. A quick test of these very quickly proved that they are extremely bright. They are so bright, in fact, that it limits their usability considerably. My opinion is that this lineup from Cointaker simply cannot be used anywhere that you will have direct sight of the LED's. This includes the Retro's. They just generate too intense of a point light source, particularly the Ultra-Bright's which are flat out painful to look at when turned on. For insert use, you have to be careful to choose the correct design. Due to the lighting pattern, the standard housing is only useful in inserts that it can be installed facing directly at the insert. For situations where light out the side is required, you'll need to use the "Flex" style (which utilize the Super-Bright chip size). Though I do have to warn you the super, retro and ultra brights may easily be too much for insert use. The Super's and Retro's however I must say are excellent choices for behind a translight or backglass, Mini's aren't bright enough and Ultra's are too bright. Though again, it's all a matter of personal taste and some people may prefer the more subdued look of the mini's. Color identification is standard, with colored lower housings on the wedge based bulbs, and a color coded identifier ring on the bayonet base style. 
As is typical, the most powerful readings were the GI circuits with the fully rectified lamps. Matrix outputs dropped off due to the lower duty cycle of the matrix than seen in a rectified GI circuit. The ultra-bright in particular lost a lot of juice across the board as compared to its highest reading in the GI circuit with the bayonet based version, and the lack of rectifier in the wedge based version hit it particularly hard. It is interesting as well to notice the changes in the readings between the Super Bright and Retros, as they appear to have the same components other than the clear domed cover, but across the board it showed higher outputs. |
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| Frosted, Narrow, 90, and 170 degree | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
    These are what you would look at as the standard lineup from cointaker, though they have since been supplanted by the newer Mini/Super/Ultra Bright series. These models are what can be most easily compared to the rest of the LED's on the market from other manufacturers, with single 10mm LED units on top of standard housings. Color identification is standard, with colored lower housings on the wedge based bulbs, and a color coded identifier ring on the bayonet base style. However, as this is Cointaker, they still managed to break out of the pack even with their basic LED's with some excellent choice in lens types. The lens types available are a 90 degree spherical topped lens, a 170 degree concave cylinder, a narrow 40 degree domed lens, and a frosted domed lens. The 90 degree and 40 degree lenses aren't available anywhere else that I am aware of. As shown below, the bayonet base style is fully rectified, featuing a MB6S bridge rectifier and voltage drop resistor attached directly to the LED leads. Housing is standard with a color matched ring. I have yet to get hold of a wedge based LED to disassemble, but they are advertised as polarized, so they will not feature a rectifier.  The frosted lenses offer a very soft and even light pattern that is both brighter and easier on the eyes than standard #44 bulbs when used for GI lighting. Testing with a lux meter found the #44 style to be almost identical in output to a #44 incandescent bulb. I find their frosted lenses to be among the best on the market for GI lighting, with only Pinball Center offering a similar domed frosted design. The 90 degree lenses make great insert pieces, as they give good fill to the insert. Again, these lenses are not found many other places other than Cointaker. 170 degree concave lenses have a wide dispersion pattern, which would make them excellent for GI lighting but sub-optimal for inserts. The 40 degree narrow beams are exactly as advertised, a very tight beam offering extra brightness where the light does show. Very powerful direct light for their size, but rapid droppoff as you get off to the side. They may not be the brightest, or the most advanced, but bverall these are a solid lineup of LED's at a good price that I wouldn't hestitate to recommend if you are careful about the choices made. The bayonet based LED's, with their internal rectifiers and a proper lens, can be used pretty much anywhere. The wedge based style make excellent LED's for controlled inserts, but really should be avoided in AC powered GI circuits due to the lack of internal rectifier.
A couple surprises here. Most interesting is how well some of the readings match that of an incandescent bulb. For your bayonet GI circuit, a domed frosted by cointaker is a perfect match, as is the 90 degree bayonet for your inserts. I was also surprised at how little light the concave 170 degree versions put out, though that may have to be more to the lighting pattern as they seem to shed more light down around the base of the LED which is facing away from the sensor, and next to nothing up or to the sides. This will be difficult to quantify in the long term. Note 1: This reading seems way off from what it should be, and will be re-done to confirm it. |
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| Pop Bumper 4+1's and High Power 4+1's | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Essentially 5 separate LED's arranged on the top of the housing, 1 facing up, and the other four in a radial pattern. The top "+1" LED is a high powered square unit in both designs, the difference is in the side LED's. Standard 2.5mm LED's are used in the regular 4+1, while the High Power 4+1's use the larger square LED for all 5 locations. I'm currently running a standard 4+1 cool white in my Black Knight pop bumper. It illuminates the bumper cap nicely, but is not as bright shining through the body, and I may upgrade to the High Power version. eventually. At first glance the high-power appears to have the same LED's as the standard #89 and #906 flasher LED's, but that is yet unconfurmed. Color identification is standard, with colored lower housings on the wedge based bulbs, and a color coded identifier ring on the bayonet base style. |
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| 4-Led | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Essentially four basic LED's in a single housing, without any unifying type lens. While not really pushed much on Cointakers website, and really hidden in the mix, they are surprisingly powerful LED's. Lux meter readings actually put these appreciably brighter than the ultra-bright design. A real hidden gem that I will hands-down recommend over the ultra-bright for every application. Hard to judge the light patterno n these, but they seem to be about equivilent to a 90 degree or flat topped LED in pattern. Color identification is standard, with colored lower housings on the wedge based bulbs, and a color coded identifier ring on the bayonet base style.
Really a surprise here to see such a high reading on the #44 GI test, the highest of any LED I've tested so far. As expected, it dropped off about 50% in the 555 GI test due to the lack of rectifier. A bit surprising at the big drop-off though between the two versions in the matrix testing, and I may re-run that test again to confirm it. |
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| Double LED | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
 Similar to the 4-LED design, these feature a pair of 2.5mm LED's on a single housing, but in this case adding a clear domed cover like the retro's. Surprisingly powerful, they actually tested as brighter than the "Super-Brights", and not far behind the Ultra-Bright's. Also very limited in color selection compared to the rest of cointaker's lineup. 44's are available in the standard colors, but the #555's are only listed in blue and thus aren't tested here. Color identification is standard, with colored lower housings on the wedge based bulbs, and a color coded identifier ring on the bayonet base style.
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| Flashers | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
Available in a few variation. Most feature a 5 LED style arrangement similar to the 4+1 and high power 4+1. 5 versions are offered. Standard #89 and #906 flashers in the standard cointaker color lineup. Also offered are Super 906 and Super 89, featuring SMD chip style LED's, but not available in all colors. Particularly huge are the Super13 906 style, which feature 13 chip mounted LED's. I have tried the standard flashers in the #89 style, and have so far found the color and light patterns excellent, but the brightness not up to par with incandescent flashers. This warrants future testing of actual outputs. #906 wedge based style appear to all be polarized, with the #89 bayonet bases being rectified. But this is just from the cointaker website, and not yet confirmed in person. |