Add a series resistor?
They will look pretty impressive at night with only 3ma, and should handle 20ma easy enough.
Step #2, Add a pair of fat 5W Zener and resistor in sort of a back to back crow bar arrangement.
Size the Zeners to conduct when the voltage is enough to get the LEDs to about 18ma.
"really cool if i could wire them so that more lights would begin to light up as my frequency / speed /voltage increased"
Piece of cake.
Make the next string with considerably more LEDs.
More accurately, more total forward voltage in the string of LEDs.
A string of 8 red and/or yellow LEDs will light at about 15V, because they light at about 2V each.
A string of 8 green, blue and/or white will light at about 24V, because they light at about 3V each.
It can be on another AC, or the other half of the same AC, or paralleled with the first string.
I would be inclined to do a parallel configuration.
Hopefully it would not be too difficult to get the 2nd set to light before the Zener on the 1st set starts dumping power.
That would be 4 strings of lights on an AC output.
Could even jump it up to 6 strings on an AC output.
Make sense?
I could sketch it out if it would help.
G-