Brightening NAD 502 CD player's LED display?

[JimBanville]

I'm a struggling amateur when it comes to electronics. I did successfully replace the burnt out incandescent bulbs in my NAD502 CD player with two LEDs (3V 20mA) in series with a 1K resistor.

I wanted it to be brighter (twice as bright?) and with a more even light across the display (the edges were dim). I thought of adding more LED's, so I wired SIX of these LED's in series with the same 1K resistor. The light is more even, but the brightness seemed to have dropped quite a bit.

The factory incandescent bulbs were 16V, 65mA. It appears these bulbs were wired in parallel, so there were four contact point for the two bulbs. I wired my series of LED's across just two of those points.

Advice? THANKS!

[Khron]

Re: Brightening NAD 502 CD player's LED display?

Even a single string of five-in-series should get you MUCH brighter results. But you will need a much lower value resistor (68 ohms for about 15mA through the string of LEDs).

Or a string of four in series with a 270 (or even 220) ohm resistor. If that's still not enough, go with two parallel strings of 4 or 5 in series.

[stj]

Re: Brightening NAD 502 CD player's LED display?

you would be better putting a proper led backlight optics assembly in it.
i have seen on ebay the plastic assembly's with a single white led that gives even light.
you probably need to trim the size down though.

got any photo's of the display from the rear?