LED bulb upgrade on a Yamaha CR-420

Yamaha CR 640 replacement lamp source needed

Can anyone provide me with contact info to a lamp supplier for a Yamaha CR 640 and instructions on how to replace the lamps? Do they pop out and pop in or is soldering needed and an electrical engineering background required? I'm a novice and I own a soldering iron.
 
Here is the contact info for the AK member who can supply lamps.

d haywood <deh12110@yahoo.com>

The lamps do not pop in & out, but the installation is quite simple--two wires for each lamp. Clip off the old lamps and attach the wire leads to the new lamps. The important thing is to "dry fit" the lamps first to make sure you've got the wiring correct. If they don't light, just reverse the wires until they do. Then solder the wire connections. I'm not an electronics expert by any means, but I was able to do it. Good luck.
 
I love the blue led lights you put on the Yamaha. I just picked up a Yamaha CR-420 for five bucks. The lights are burnt out and the pots need to be cleaned, but everything else looks great. Can you please send me the contact info for the light man. Or even better if its ok with him just post it for all to see. Thanks
 
Here is the AK member that was the source of my LEDs. I assume he's still selling them but I haven't contacted him in a couple of years. If you can't reach him, try searching AK forums for LED replacement lamps. There is at least one other thread that lists a source. The Yamaha lamps are quite easy to replace yourself and require a little soldering, but I'm no electronic pro and my results were great. Good luck!
 
I ended up going to radio shack and buying some LED bulbs and resistors. Whole project cost 10 dollars. I will post some pics and more detailed product information later. I just want to say that the bulb on the tuner is very dim if you don't mount it on top of the tuner pointer itself.
 
Hi all, can't tell you how thankful I am for this site. Learning lots. Need to re lamp a Yamaha ca-610ii. If you would be so kind and forward, this to that AK contact, who manufactures said bulbs and see if he is interested. Original color yet L.E.D.

Take care and great pics of your projects!
Appreciated

HyFry
 
I thought I would document the LED upgrade on a vintage Yamaha CR-420 receiver in case anyone should be wondering how it can be done. It really was a very easy and straight forward procedure. The hardest part is getting the replacement lamps, but I have two contacts who have been able to provide me with direct replacement lamps as well as LED lamps. For vintage replacement lamps I went here: http://www.dgwojo.com/ . For the peimar lighting lamps below, I contacted an individual who makes them. If you are interested, I can forward you the contact information.

I have found the 70's Yamaha gear suffers from very dim peimar lighting displays, compared to other gear. Here's how the original lamps looked on this Yamaha 70's receiver (CR-420). Very dim, I think partly due to the age.
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Here's two pics of the original lamps exposed from their seats.
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Here's how the LEDs look
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First step is to cut the original lamps, making sure you leave yourself enough slack.
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Here you can see the new LED wires (to the left) spliced to the original wires. Notice the shrink wrap ready to be moved over the connection.
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Here's a pic of the connections soldered together. Again notice the shrink wrap ready to be moved into position.
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And here are the shrink wraps in place. I used a hair-dryer set on High to shrink the wraps into place.
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Finally, here are two shots of the finished product. In the dark and in the light. Much brighter and very unique.

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I am thinking about doing the same with my Yamaha Amp and Tuner combo, but I think I will go with the White LEDs. I love the Blue, but I think I want to try the whites simply to keep the original look as much as possible, but much brighter. The project cost me about $10.

Please let me know if you have any questions or comments. :thmbsp:
Great job done really like these led lights
 
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If anyone still has a good contact for LED replacements, I'm looking for a set for my cr-420. I'd appreciate any leads. Thanks.
 
I used White LEDs this time. I really like this better than the Blue one's. I got this unique subtle gray/light blue color, which is not too radical and really brightened-up the receiver. At first i panicked, because I ended up with BLUE lights again and then realized that I had to remove the plastic blue colored "lenses" which is what originally gives the Yamaha displays that weird green/amber color. I also decided not to insert the LEDs inside the pointer tuner display enclosure and instead placed the LED on top of the pointer enclosure secured with a strip of duct tape. The effect was a much brighter tuner illumination which spills to the left and right. IMO this is how these things should have been designed in the first place. :)

I know this is an old post, but I just did this for my Yamaha CR 400. It is very blue although I used white LEDs. Can you explain how to remove the lenses? Thanks!
 
Hello, I just joined AK as I've been getting into restoring and light mods on these old receivers. Recently I picked up a CR 420 and I'm interested in doing the LED upgrade you all speak of. Anyone who has the contact info for the LEDs for the CR 420, please PM. Thanks. (I see that dwojo69@msn.com has bulbs for the CR 820, anyone know if these are the same as the CR 420?)
 
Just wanted to chime in with a recent LED project I did...with tri-colored LED's. RGB(Red-Green-Blue) LED's are available for a variety of uses and in lots of sizes. One can replace a bank of backlighting lamps with a set of these and use four potentiometers, one for each color, connected together by each of the leads such as this: With Common Anode types: All anodes to a trimmer wiper lead, the others to the backlight B+ and backlight ground. Then each of the three color cathode leads into their own trimmers. Each cathode trimmer wired with the leads to the wiper, the other leads to ground(one could be left open for a higher range). The anode trimmer controls the overall brightness, the cathode trimmers control the intensity of each color. This way you can adjust your back lighting to any color or brightness you desire. A good precaution is to set all of the cathode trimmers to full on and the anode trimmer to full off. Slowly bring the anode level up until you reach max brightness(going too high will burn out the LED's or reduce their life considerably). Measure the resistance of the anode trimmer and install a regular resistor of that value(or slightly higher) in series with the trimmer as a limiter. Trimmer values depend on the quantity and type of LED's you use.
 
No mention of polarity?

If there's AC on those leads, the LEDs are going to go poof without a blocking diode in place.

Nice looking, but I'd go with Green for Yamaha. Leave the Blue to Mac and Sui.

The Yamaha CR-420 bulbs are run on DC via bridge rectifier and a very small cap, they won't go poof in this case, but they are clearly an ill thought out colour.
 

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