The Lamp Room

I like switch start for reliability cost and the cool start up but I am using more and more ESF600s these days Mainly to protect the chokes that are now becoming rare and hard to get as well as no flickering at lamp EOL and due to meddeling Eu regulations the new Lamps have so little mercury in now they are getting ever harder to start on switch start 2Ds especially and outside use always get esf now.

I’ve not seen any for about 10 years now tbh. I tend to use those LEL multipulse over EFS600’s now too.
Oh and Vivatronic lol, the cat 2 surface fittings in my man cave have those in them now lol, I got a load of them off eBay a while ago.

If modern starters were in any way reliable, I'd use them still, but they're so shit now, it takes nothing to get them to stick. You have to wonder almost if it's a ploy by some of the lighting manufacturers to kill off the remaining fluorescent stocks and force everyone over to LED....?

If modern starters were in any way reliable, I'd use them still, but they're so shit now, it takes nothing to get them to stick. You have to wonder almost if it's a ploy by some of the lighting manufacturers to kill off the remaining fluorescent stocks and force everyone over to LED....?

I think the main reason is manufactures who still do fluorescent products have LED products and they would rather spend the most money on the LED products rather than fluorescent. That's if they even still have fluorescent lights available.

those Saftey cut out starters Is common
here in the USA. metal can ones too
the popular branded ones were the watchdog
GE starter. and Sylvania COP starters
they had to be invented. cause Stuck starters
can over heat Tar potted ballast, catching
them on fire. these were use in out of reach
places, as well protecting ballast, I like these
cause starter domt become stuck and the last
much longer than glow bottles type

I haven't seen any problems with current Philips starters. Am i doing something wrong ?

Old stocks there still? I don't know of a single brand that still make reliable starters any more

How old is old ?

Anything over a year or 2 seems ok, it's just the Chinese ones that have flooded the market since then. All the big names are now branding these crap Chinese ones as their own.

The Philips and Osram i know are made in Holland and Germany respectively. Have they moved ? (I am not about the Osram "BASIC" starters that have been made in China for years, and are identical to Thorn 155/500/X with the Orange etch)

With the rest of Chinese starters - Some of them last very well, the one problem that really affects all Chinese starters is the quality of the Plastic that makes the casing