[SML] L&E mini Strips Replacement

[June Abernathy]

As someone who helps maintain a rig with about 175 of these mini strips, I can tell you that socket burnout can and will happen even if you are extremely careful to use the proper sockets and lamps, seat them well, and never reuse bad sockets or lamps. We go so far as to coat the pins of each new lamp with dielectric grease, which helps a lot, but does not totally eliminate the problem. It’s just part of life with these fixtures.

We’ve been pushing for LED replacements for years, but with two full touring show packages of hundreds of strips, it’s a lot to replace, and so far, the powers that be have not been willing. Newer production of the show have been using LED fixtures for some of the positions. So far, none of them have been domestic, and I don’t know the specific fixtures they are using.

June Abernathy
IATSE #321 (Tampa, FL)
FOH Electrician
The Lion King National Tour



> On Jul 18, 2016, at 2:00 PM, Dale Farmer <dale at cybercom.net> wrote:
> 
> Subject: Re: [SML] L&E mini Strips Replacement
> 
> 
> If you are having lots of socket burnouts, these come generally from two places. Gotta replace all the burned sockets and ruthlessly cull out any used lamps that have burned pins so they don't infect any good sockets all at the same time. ? . . . Less common cause is replacing the sockets with one of the lookalikes that are intended for a different voltage lamp.