The light fixture is 4 feet over the puzzle table and is the lower section of a ceiling fan with 3 bulbs in a roughly 10 inch circle. Currently there are 3 high CRI LED bulbs at 2700K with 1600 lumen and 17.5watt. They are only OK and don't do well on reds and purples. I don't know what the R9 value is.
There has to be ones that do much better at color rendering. They don't need to be LED. Brighter would be better too. Older eyes seem to need more light. We had an excellent desk light which is lost somewhere in the house and I can't remember what light it had in it. I know there is better out there but I have not been impressed with anything I have found so far. The prepper side of me stocked some 100 watt soft white incandescent ones but they didn't seem noticably different than the current LEDs.
My mother is like a jigsaw master and has assembled well over 200,000 pieces in the last year and nearly 400,000 since 12-25-18. She just did a 6000 piece one in 5 1/2 days from start to finish. I did assist using my D4S at times. She spends so much time there I would like to get her the best light. It is a pasttime where good lighting is essential but she wouldn't complain with one 40 watt bulb.
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
I would recommend http://sunlikelamp.com/ bulbs with SOL emitters as these seem to have the best colour rendering available.
But I find it worrying that you don’t find incan bulbs significantly different yet you claim colour rendering issues. It suggests to me that the problem may lay elsewhere.
A source which is actually neutral might be way better for distinguishing between colors even if its paper CRI rating is lower than an orange high CRI source.