Amber Luxeons

Do any of you have any experience with amber luxeons. I'd like to experiment with them to see if they have incandescent type punch. What other colors might be effective in more closely matching incandescent? What about green-yellow?

An amber luxeon is essentially yellow. It is MUCH more yellow than an incandescent. It's also not full spectrum. I've tried warm white luxeons, and they do match incandescent color temperatures fairly well, but definitely lean towards the low end of the color temperature scale.

As far as "punch" is concerned, if you mean brightness, both warm white and amber appear dimmer than regular white, with amber being a bit dimmer than warm white. If by punch you mean penetration through moisture, then amber and warm white both do that better than white. You also want a very narrow beam, and as litle spill as possible (and keep it away from your head).

My experience with white luxeons is that even when focused with a nice reflector like a pelican they just don't seem to make things visible the way incandescents do and I'm wondering if maybe the yellow luxeons will lean more toward the incandescents ability to do this. I'm not sure what the name for the quality I'm looking for is /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif.

It sounds like you're after full spectrum light. Unfortunately, white LEDs don't produce that. I have a TV1J, though, that does pretty well in the woods (where things lean towards brown).

I wouldn't waste your time on the pure colors, but you might try a warm white (at the expense of some brightness), or just a warmer bin. That's the best you can do with the current LED technology, but maybe we'll see RGB LEDs someday.

I have found that the amber color (LEDs only) seems to be excellent strictly for acuity, if not for other things.
Easy on the eyes too.

just got done playing with my ARC LS first run amber (only factory amber lux I'm aware of) and first run white lux.

I agree with Vcal's accessment about acuity. very nice color