Have you ever noticed how something with a lighted keypad works? For example, the lighted keypad on a telephone.

I had been thinking along the same lines -- some milky translucent base, maybe with some other light-dispersing element in it (for some reason I have a memory of some glass microspheres used to bulk up epoxy in some applications...)

One thing that occurs to me, though, is that the lighting in some switches and keypads I have taken apart comes from just a little bulb (small, grain-of-wheat-type things, but non-directional) that more generally lights up the area behind the button.

I haven't lit up Brian's LEDs yet, but if they are like most I have seen, they are very directional and there will always be a limit to how much you can make them disperse, especially when they are pressed right up against the material they are illuminating.

Anyhow, yes, Brian, I got my kit and I look forward to illuminated buttons ragardless of how much more dispersed they may become. I appreciate your persistence on this and I will volunteer as guinea pig for whatever button mutations are yet to come!

Last-minute odd thought: Install the LEDs so they point back to the board, not out to the buttons. Purposefully inefficient, yes, but the LEDs would then be illuminating teh buttons/knob with reflected light. Would this even be feasible given the cramped circumstances? If it was, I would volunteer my unit for the experiment. (Of course, this may be pointless if the LEDs aren't directionally biased)...