I am disgusted with the flimsy 50/100 light sets.
Each year, at least two strings that worked the year before quit working and I waste time using a neon lamp to probe the lamp holders for the 1 in 50 culprit.
The LED sets are an improvement of sorts, but nothing says holidays like an incandescent filament glowing inside an American made lamp, especially a vintage GE C-7 Lamp.
There is no reason you cannot use vintage lights safely and without adding hard-burn hours to your unobtanium lamps.
The first series-strings of 8 lamps, only 14 volts each with screw-in mini-candelabra base.
If you apply the full 120 volts, these are obscenely bright and get pretty hot as well.
These sets are from the 30s and 40s. I got some Westinghouse lamps at some "closeout stores" pretty cheap becuase they had no idea what used them.
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The bottom lampholder/end cap shown here are from the mid 1960s and have been faithfully working every year, and must be wound around a coffee can then stored very gently. The metal branch hooks are perfect for using the Raylite and Paramount Bubble lights. The top one is from the late 80s, sadly probably the last USA-made ones, also still fully intact. The all-plastic construction was not an improvement though.
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The photo below is a 3-gang blue plastic outlet box with the ears sawed off. If you are going to use the older lights and stay out of trouble
, you need to have a good safety plan. This includes a common 600-watt dimmer to reduce voltage and greatly extend lamp life, a GFCI receptacle and a 10-amp type W Edison-base fuse. This was especially important to me because of the 20-amp circuit breaker feeding the receptacle in the dining room. I plan to add a breaker with a CAFCI (combination arc-fault circuit interrupter) when the price of those becomes reasonable. For now, this is more precaution than anybody ever used before.
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