I could definitely live with it as it is if I was going to keep it, but I'm not. The next owner will need to live with it or make it better if I can't.
I think in person it already looks better than the original LCD. The ghosting can definitely be tweaked, but I had to return the resistor book I had. They were supposed to be 1%, but were more like 5% to 20%+. I ordered another book, and hopefully that one will be better.
I raised R3 to 100k, since that was the only higher value I had floating on my workbench, and that made everything besides the R1/R5 vertical lines basically disappear. When the new resistor book comes, I'm going to try lowering it. If I can make the general stuff darker without changing R2, then I think that may lead us somewhere better. R1/R2 definitely have a relationship that makes it impossible to tweak one area without affecting the other. I'm hopeful because the R3 change didn't appear to have any significant effect on the ghosting.
Thanks,
Josh