The Lamp Room

I've found the biggest problem with the Chinese starters to be the fact the contacts just weld together, usually long before the plastic goes brittle. Once the contacts have welded, the case then melts....

Once the contacts are welded there is no power dissipation in the glow lamp so no heat is produced. The melted starters all happen when the weld between the bimetal and stick holding it fails, and the lamp can glow continuously without being able to short out and extinguish. But i from what i seen this is rare even with Chinese starters

Also happens when theyve gone slow and are left on a eol lamp trying to fire. Change your tubes when they fail and starters will be fine

I never do that at work, GE always recommended you change both tube and starters together, our older maintenance guy, Stu, only changes tubes, but I usually find I have to re do it a few weeks later, when the old starter has then killed the new tube!
The starters I use are BG ones, their probably the last of the decent Chinese made starters left!, the latest China ones don’t even have a radio interference suppression capacitor in them!!!

Theyre just the glow bottle then??

Yeah, just a glow bottle!

I've removed many melted BG starters from fittings recently, not sure those are any better either.

Luckily though flashing tubes now get quickly reported at work, so the starters are not sat on bad tubes for months!

Most Chinese starters with cylindrical shaped glow lamp and U shaped bimetal are capable to last the lifetime of a tube. And i have not seen one without capacitor in years. The only thing all of them fail at is the quality of the Plastic

Your description reminds more of early Chinese starters from the 90s, with a handmade-looking glow lamp pinched with pliers and pulled to a long tip on the top, than of any starter i seen in the last 10 years

Where you find all those crap starters ?

Just use ordinary argon filled starters and 1x pulsestarter (circline 60W fixture in my kitchen)

I love the pinging and blinking startup, but however if I had to use a more rapid startup, I'd go pulsestarter over electronic instant start tbh because it its far more cooler with the bmmmmmzzzzzt sound!!!