Dimming gear LED's

I am probably not alone in despising bright LED's. I have electrical tape covering all the various power ON LED's around the house, like TV's and cable boxes, mostly things that you would be staring in the direction of for awhile.

When it comes to music gear though it's generally not cool to stick gobs of black tape over things but its even less cool to be burning bright close up red dots into your retina's for extended periods of time .

Anyone have tips or tricks for taming the belligerent glow?

Psycho-acoustics

use a nail file or sandpaper, and run it over the LED to 'frost' it up.

my keyboard is damn bright

  On 12/15/2011 at 8:42 AM, oscillik said:

use a nail file or sandpaper, and run it over the LED to 'frost' it up.

That sounds like it could end in tragedy. If it was old gear I probably wouldn't hesitate to give it a shot.

  On 12/15/2011 at 8:46 AM, RadarJammer said:

  On 12/15/2011 at 8:42 AM, oscillik said:

use a nail file or sandpaper, and run it over the LED to 'frost' it up.

 

That sounds like it could end in tragedy. If it was old gear I probably wouldn't hesitate to give it a shot.

use black electrical tape then

Looks like red Lithographers tape might be a good bet

how can LED's be too bright?

  On 12/15/2011 at 10:09 AM, soundwave said:

how can LED's be too bright?

maybe the picture of my keyboard doesn't show it, but the LEDs on my keyboard are fucking eye searing

Play with shades on like Vangelis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRO8BT6o8Us

  On 12/15/2011 at 4:55 PM, vasio said:

Play with shades on like Vangelis.

That was one of my first thoughts but then you can't read labels as good and also you're almost never looking straight on at your gear, your looking with your eyes focused down below the lens level most of the time, unless you crane your neck like some sort of elephant man.

  Quote

how can LED's be too bright?

Its not so bright that it's going to blast my future grandchildren back to the paleolithic age but it doesn't seem logical to allow beady red pinpoints of lights to your pupils for hours.

I have a 606 that someone modded with retina-burning blue LEDs, they are like lasers.

My crappy behringer mixer has a blue led that lights up my entire studio. I'm taping over that shit as soon as I start using it again.

Yeah behringer gear seems to be notorious for superbright LEDs. I just use a little square of green gaffa tape on each offending LED. I don't give a fuck about having my equipment look all nice and neat. But I guess you could just colour each LED with a sharpie or something?

  On 12/15/2011 at 9:20 PM, modey said:

Yeah behringer gear seems to be notorious for superbright LEDs. I just use a little square of green gaffa tape on each offending LED. I don't give a fuck about having my equipment look all nice and neat. But I guess you could just colour each LED with a sharpie or something?

Yeah its the Behringer BCR2000 in my case, there are 100's of close together LEDs so it would probably look like a piece of shit I wouldn't want to look at if I try and cover the whole thing in tape.

After trying a few things I think the only way to handle this would be to find the right place to mod a potentiometer in there.

  On 12/15/2011 at 10:40 PM, RadarJammer said:

  On 12/15/2011 at 9:20 PM, modey said:

Yeah behringer gear seems to be notorious for superbright LEDs. I just use a little square of green gaffa tape on each offending LED. I don't give a fuck about having my equipment look all nice and neat. But I guess you could just colour each LED with a sharpie or something?

 

Yeah its the Behringer BCR2000 in my case, there are 100's of close together LEDs so it would probably look like a piece of shit I wouldn't want to look at if I try and cover the whole thing in tape.

 

After trying a few things I think the only way to handle this would be to find the right place to mod a potentiometer in there.

You want to be able to adjust the intensity?

Uhhhhhg, I feel your pain. My monitors and external hard drives have black duct tape over the LEDs and my interface used to. Gotta get me some more tape and hit that shit up.

I've been meaning to disconnect the LED in my computer too, as that shit lights up my room.

I have a little routine of setting things in front of the untaped LEDs every night before I go to bed so my room's not lit up blue.

Also, they're all fucking blue? Why blue? Oh wait, one of my hard drives is green. But still.

it would be simpler to just put a resistor inline with them, but I'd bet that it's all going to be surface mounted shit which means it will be impossible to mod.

  On 12/19/2011 at 6:22 PM, slightlydrybeans said:

it would be simpler to just put a resistor inline with them, but I'd bet that it's all going to be surface mounted shit which means it will be impossible to mod.

But open it up anyway and check...maybe you'll get lucky and some of it will be through-hole.

fucking LEDs everywhere. I could land a plane in my bedroom at night.

you guys are weird

  On 12/19/2011 at 7:02 PM, Fred McGriff said:

fucking LEDs everywhere. I could land a plane in my bedroom at night.

I love this about my studio. I have the room packed with christmas lights and such too. it's beautiful.

Those blue ones are the worst. It's what I'd imagine standing beside the sun would be like without any sun glasses. I've got a few pieces of equipment with the blue ones and I cover them up with a tiny but of duct tape, but apparently black nail polish works pretty well, of course the chemist will laugh at you if you're not a girl when you buy that.

The worst offender I owned was the Sherman Filterbank. Whatever blue LED he used could have also doubled as a make shift light for a lighthouse. I gave me a bit of a laugh when I watched that Slices DVD episode which had a tech talk with the inventor of the Sherman Filterbank and showed him in his workshop and guess what, he had also covered up his own blue LED!

I ended up selling the Sherman Filterbank as I didn't really like it, I got a SchippmannEbbe unt Flut to replace it and this also has an eyeball melting blue LED for the LFO. What's with filters and blue LEDs!?

did that just happen?

  On 12/20/2011 at 1:03 PM, Rbrmyofr said:

Those blue ones are the worst. It's what I'd imagine standing beside the sun would be like without any sun glasses. I've got a few pieces of equipment with the blue ones and I cover them up with a tiny but of duct tape, but apparently black nail polish works pretty well, of course the chemist will laugh at you if you're not a girl when you buy that.

lol, I was once a goth and nobody ever laughed at me for buying black nail polish!

  On 12/20/2011 at 5:58 PM, Fred McGriff said:

did that just happen?

haha I know I felt like the connection had just gotten bad or something.