Quote:
Originally Posted by walterbeers
Also if your putting your light bulb in series with the AC line, the bulb will light bright as the tubes will be pulling current to light the filaments. It's best to put the bulb in series with the B+ line, right before the rectifiers (diodes) which replaced the selenium's.
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I never really considered the difference in using the 100 Watt lamp for "slow starting" a transformer-less set. The whole idea of using (normally) a 100 Watt lamp is to reduce the voltage/current available to and thus protecting a possibly expensive power transformer. This is a cheap, but effective way (for those without a variable AC source) of keeping from doing a lot of damage by introducing full line voltage to a device possibly dormant for decades. I used to do it a lot until I was lucky enough to find an old Select-a-Volt unit which is NOT an isolation transformer like a Variac, so it's not quite a safe, but just as effective. I now have an industrial size Variac, but it has some goofy plugs for input and output that I have no idea where to find, so for now I am not using the two ton monster.