Omega 4ft 40W White T12 fluorescent tubes

Found/saved alongside a few other vintage white/warm white 5ft and 6ft T12 tubes (and a sole Thorn-Mazda 15W T8) in a small "free on collection" bundle on facebook marketplace, as they where just 20 or so miles away I thought it was more then worth the trip in the car to save em for the collection :)

in particular I am uploading these Omega 4ft 40W White T12 fluorescent tubes from that bundle to get them uploaded before the sleeves fall apart, as the sleeves on these are very crispy for some reason and it is the sleeves why I upload these, as I could not help but think and noticed, until now I am not sure I have seen an Omega T8 or T12 tube in its sleeve before now? or seen a Omega sleeve in general like this, I have seen a fair few Omega tubes show up here on LR etc, but none ever with their sleeves I dont think!

so even tho the tubes are not all that special in the grand scheme of things they are not a fancy colour or weird design or anything like that (tho still nice vintage T12 tubes which are always nice) I thought it was worth an upload to document the Omega sleeve design etc :)

File information
Filename:	IMG_1132.jpeg
Album name:	Lightbulbfun / My Lamps
Manufacturer:	Thorn under the Omega brand name
Type/Model:	MCFE 40W/35 F40T12/W
Wattage:	40W
Filesize:	3374 KiB
Date added:	09 Aug, 2026
Dimensions:	3934 x 1352 pixels
Displayed:	131 times
URL:	http://80.229.24.59:9232/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=25349
Favourites:	Add to Favourites

Comment 1 to 5 of 5

Page: 1

Slyspark

[09 Aug, 2026 at 10:56 PM]

These can definitely be hit or miss. Picked up a case of Omega 2' 40w shite a few years ago. Out of that case, pretty much every single lamp was badly contaminated, to the point they refused to strike, or gassed. I think 3 actually worked.

Ash

[10 Aug, 2026 at 10:35 AM]

Considering they are some 60 years old now, maybe if put to use back in the day they would last a normal lifetime. Of course we do want FL (or any lamp really) to just work when called upon, even if it was waiting for decades, and FL (and magnetic gear) fulfills it most of the time

Slyspark

[10 Aug, 2026 at 02:01 PM]

Yes, this is my worry... How many of the tubes we have in our collections are gradually going to fail in storage, simply down to their age? I guess that's always going to be a risk with anything old like that

Ash

[10 Aug, 2026 at 03:35 PM]

This one might be possible to predict actually. The main symptom is rising starting voltage, right ? Then we can measure how it changes over a year and draw a trend for each tube. The setup must be consistent and free from random starting triggers, so something like a reference SRS gear set brought up on a variac & measured, in same ambient temp, in same room light levels (photoelectric effect), with known radioactive sources moved out of the way etc

Beta 5

[10 Aug, 2026 at 05:15 PM]

Hopefully it won't turn out to be a major issue, also I wonder if some of this has improved over the years too, with some brands tubes notorious for ringing off or becoming contaminated was this eventually solved by the time we got to the tubes of the 90's onwards? I haven't heard too much about tubes from this era doing this, though I guess we will need to wait another 20 years for it to be a fair test age wise!

Comment 1 to 5 of 5

Page: 1