Fire in the disco
Fire in the Taco Bell
Fire in the disco
Fire in the gates of hell
Morning folks - I'm not sure whether any of you have heard of The Electric Six, but you should immediately go to Y'Tube and seek out 'Danger! High Voltage' . . . oh go on and 'Dance Commander' too. Much fun and great music, and appropriately for once, relevant to my next tale (well 'Dance Commander' isn't, being more of a wonderfully noisy take on The Fast Show's Channel 9, but I like it anyway) . . . so.
Anyway this is just an interim post just to provide a warning for all of you with DeVere enlargers contemplating your navels and wondering where your next bulb is going to come from.
The bulb in question . . . the equivalent of 3 megatons of course! - the 250Watt 240 Volt ELC.
It's bright, hot and er, potentially dangerous if not handled correctly.
Well, the replacements might well be.
You see in our urge to get even more for our pennies, safety and quality seem to have been utterly thrown out the window.
Take as a good example, my new replacement bulb, the FXLab 250W 24V GX 5.3. It was very reasonable I thought, so I ordered one.
Now for a start that should have got the alarm bells ringing, but reading around it seemed OK and decently reviewed in a number of places (damn . . should have checked Amazon).
It arrived quickly, looked decent in the box, so I rushed to the 504, unscrewed the lamp compartment and pushed it into the holder . . . it was all too easy, except the pins hadn't engaged at all, the lamp fell off the socket and I realised that the pins had disappeared!
WTF were my mental words. I looked at the bulb and the whole sorry tale of woe unfolded. They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here's some pictures.
The white 'ceramic' appeared to have the consistency of a very soft Minto . . you know the sort you see melting on a hot pavement, all chalk and squidgieness - it actually turned out to be softer than chalk!
Now can you imagine if the pins hadn't disappeared and I'd fitted it and then the 'Minto' had decided to give?
One exceptionally hot, ie 'Ooo ya!', third degree burns hot, bulb, just hanging about unsupported and ready to cause chaos.
DANGEROUS.
Very very dangerous.
So, the moral?
Well, this may have been a one off, but more reading and I discovered that it was 'a thing' with this make, so, my hard won advice?
Buy something from a 'known' manufacturer like GE or Osram or Philips or even some NOS ones on eBay, i.e. something that was made/is made, where the old (and currently very much neglected in this world) QC (Quality Control) reins supreme.
Over and out . . . now, where's my 'tache?
