Problem dimming filament displays vs. LED displays

Here is a solution.

  1. Turn on the npn permanently. This keeps the "unlit" lambs at just the npn's Vce - should be 100mv or so and those "unlit" lambs should not be visibly light.
  2. reroute your pwm signal to the hs595's OE pin(s).

Some jump-wiring and some recoding (minimum though).