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8bitforlife

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I live in hawaii island kauai. The island power bill is one of most expensive in usa and I'm thinking of changing the marquee bulb to led to run cheaper and cooler anyone here experienced in that?

I'm having trouble finding replacement bulbs anyways.
 
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I read all that and I'm am confused.
 
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@nem I think it's sinking in a little. I need a t8 bulb. Desolder the wires to ballest and wire hot neutral to end of bulb?

Sorry very newbie at wiring stuff
 
Well, technically you don't have to rewire anything. You just need to find a suitable LED tube and jump the starter (with or without a fuse). A led tube doesn't need a starter.

However, if you want to remove the ballast for additional (minor) power savings, you need to desolder the two leads going into it and solder them together. Technically what a ballast is it's a device placed in line with the load to limit the amount of current in an electrical circuit, basically a big resistor. A led tube will work with regular 120V AC, so you don't need it.
 
Well, technically you don't have to rewire anything. You just need to find a suitable LED tube and jump the starter (with or without a fuse). A led tube doesn't need a starter.

However, if you want to remove the ballast for additional (minor) power savings, you need to desolder the two leads going into it and solder them together. Technically what a ballast is it's a device placed in line with the load to limit the amount of current in an electrical circuit, basically a big resistor. A led tube will work with regular 120V AC, so you don't need it.
do you know what size led I need to get and how many prongs it needs? I have a friend that said would help me wire it.
 
Two prongs on either side, 60 cm long (so 24"?).
 
24" you're going to put stress on the lamp holder (it'll work though). The normal florescent tube size is 18". I was thinking of trying to LED starter with a fuse. Getting tired of the lamp interfering with the monitor on start up.
 
24" you're going to put stress on the lamp holder (it'll work though). The normal florescent tube size is 18". I was thinking of trying to LED starter with a fuse. Getting tired of the lamp interfering with the monitor on start up.
which led starter should I get and do I need to do any wiring. Any suggestions on a led bulb for marquee
 
Sorry to necro post in this thread, but I'm also considering doing this for both my blast cabs. I pretty much just need to solder a fuse of some type to the starter bulb and put in an 18" T8 LED bulb? Am I understanding that correctly?
 
I pretty much just need to solder a fuse of some type to the starter bulb and put in an 18" T8 LED bulb? Am I understanding that correctly?
A T8 LED bulb will work in place of a fluorescent bulb, so you've understood that part correctly. However, you don't need a fuse. You just need to bypass the starter. One way of bypassing the starter is to replace it with a fuse, but you could just as well remove the starter and just connect the wires together.

After you've replaced the fluorescent bulb with a LED one, the ballast has no use. So if you're happy with light output of the LED (both color and intensity), I would remove the ballast as well. It's just a dumb resistor at that point, eating up electricity. Removing it is a easy as desoldering the two wires that go into the ballast and soldering them together. Keep the ballast where it is (unconnected), and if you ever sell your cab and the new owner wants to return it to stock, it's easy enough to do.
 
Ok, I'm sure it'll make more sense when I actually look at the thing a bit closer. For the size, does a 24" bulb work? I saw you mentioned you had put one of that size in yours in the arcade otaku forum post.
 
Yeah, I have 60cm (24") LED tubes in all of my cabs. They are slightly wider than the stock ones, but they fit fine. I don't agree with this:

24" you're going to put stress on the lamp holder (it'll work though).
If I grab the tube, I can still move sideways in the holder, ie. there's still play at both ends.

However, Europe isn't the US, and metric isn't imperial, so YMMV.
 
Yeah, I have 60cm (24") LED tubes in all of my cabs. They are slightly wider than the stock ones, but they fit fine. I don't agree with this:

24" you're going to put stress on the lamp holder (it'll work though).
If I grab the tube, I can still move sideways in the holder, ie. there's still play at both ends.

However, Europe isn't the US, and metric isn't imperial, so YMMV.
All of my cabs have 24” tubes and they’re all extremely tight fits. Yes it fits (sorta) and I haven’t had any issues with it but if I had access to the metric bulbs I would definitely use those instead.
 
Ok well, 24" definitely fits, but the only option at my local hardware store was "cool white" color and was not very bright, like couldn't see it through the backlit art area dim. Any suggestions on wattage or color I should look for?

Edit: looking up lumen values online, 1100 should be plenty, but these are really really dim. Perhaps a starter or ballast is indeed required for these particular bulbs.
 
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Perhaps a starter or ballast is indeed required for these particular bulbs.
Is it a LED tube? Like I said, you don't need either the starter or the ballast for the LED tube to work. In fact, if anything the ballast could be your problem. If you have a soldering iron, remove the two wires going in to the ballast and wire them together.
 
I did do that. The starter and ballast had both been removed. The bulbs were still very dim. They were ge led bulbs. The instructions on the box for the bulb indicated that you should leave the ballast in, so I'm just guessing about why they'd be so dim. I've returned them and gotten some off Amazon that specifically reference bypassing the ballast as part of installation. I did check the voltage of the fixture and it's a stable 120vac.
 
Oh, I see.

Hopefully the Amazon ones will work OK.
 
The amazon ones worked great. They were EXTREMELY bright. So I guess the GE ones I had were either bad, or really do require some kind of current regulation.

UOIIE1b.jpg


For reference to anyone that comes along in the future, these are the ones I got from Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01C4N4876/
 
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