[Marsupial]

I have tried many in my 47-1230.

I am somewhat involved in the pinball scene around here in Montreal, and was at a pinball and coin-up dealer once around the time I first got the radio, and decided to give it a try. Its dirt cheap to experiment with...

I tried several things. Some I found "interesting" in the like of "changes the look of the radio" but its not really my cup of tea: I tried red & blue lamps. The 47-1230 have this cool feature that the needle actually blocks light pretty well, so if you place different colors on both ends of the faceplate, you actually have a separation where the needle is.

Might be interesting to some, but for a restored radio I've seen better.

They also have purer white, and "warm" white (closer to incandescent)
On some radios, I can see the colder, clearer white to be a good idea. On the 47-1230, the gold&brown faceplate looked a bit better with warm white.

I decided to keep the LED variant not for power consumption, but for heat. There are felts near the lamps, and they were partially burnt with age. I figured LED lights would prevent the damage from continuing.

I didn't think about power consumption on those radios, being that the lamps are on the low voltage side compared to tubes, but I need to agree with Ron that old power transformer could use a bit of a relief that could very easily be gained by just changing to LEDs.
Honestly, if you use warm white LEDs there's about no visual difference.

I've seen LED lamps used in pinball to reduce power usage and maintenance (LEDs last a lot longer than modern commercial incandescent bulbs)
Some do it in a way to change the look of the pinball, some do it in a way to preserve the look of the pinball. The same could be done with radios.

Something to keep in mind also with LED lamps, is that you can select the light propagation pattern. It can be narrow, focused to a forward beam, but it can also be made to spread on the sides. Depending on what you're trying make, selecting the proper bulb makes wonder.
I have a few replacement incandescent and use only the LED ones I got, even in flashlights.

To answer morzh, those bulbs are intended to be drop-in replacement to incandescent bulbs. You select the proper voltage, color, light distribution and you simply put it in the socket.

I'll try to dig if I did take pictures when I first experimented with the LEDs. [edit - I don't think I ever managed to take good pictures of the light pattern where we could see comparison; flash photography washes it away, and I couldn't manage non-flash photo that looked good. But I can tell you, the warm white is a very good replacement to keep the incandescent look, and the cold white (bluer white) could be interesting on non-colorised area that needs pure white light. Colored ones, well, to your tastes. I could see a colored pilot lamp being replaced by that same color. And repaint jobs could benefit from colored lamps. My opinion, but there's potential in those lights]


Something that just flashed in my head: I use LED lamps outside because they generate very little UV and it doesn't attract bugs as much as incandescent, its nice outside in summer. The lower UV might be interesting to preserve the glass and artwork of the radio...???
just a thought.