Not sure if I posted this, but Ledtronics is my LED supplier. My quote for 700 was $1.08 each ($756.00 plus shipping). Not freaking bad at all. Figure buying 1 LED instead of 3 is cheaper and easier to manage. I was given a 6 week turn around but I got my orginal ones in I believe about a bit less than a month.

As for the ribbon cable ( I call it the rib ), I did a quick test wire strip on one and saw how small the gauge wire is. And it is stranded. SO I have two options here.

1.) Buy new solid core cable, if it exists, of a slightly higher gauge.
2.) Solder the ends of the cable and make wiring a multiple step process.

Since both suck and the process is already multi-stepped, why not just add on 10 additional small solders to make the stranded into "solid".