Question about the Bose 901 Series II EQ light

The bulb only. Not the EQ itself.

It is like a small version of any neon light you've ever seen. As the neon in the vacuum is deleted, the light wave will start to 'flash' as it alternates on and off. Your eyes perceive it as a flicker.

Cheers,

David
 
Hi,
I'm recapping one of these series II units and thought the neon lamp was gone.
However, now I find that if line voltage is increased to 120 vac, the lamp will light.
So, i figured the lamp had a bad solder joint or maybe the resister in series with it had changed spec.
measuring the resistor gave a reading of 30K, on the money.
The Voltage coming to the lamp after the resistor was 110 VAC.
So, figuring the lamp had aged, I could extend it's life a while by dropping the resistence of the 30K resistor.
I'm finding that no matter how little parallel resistance I introduce, the lamps lighting Voltage seems to remain tied to the line voltage of about 118VAC. (a 2 V drop after I added the parallel resistor.)
It gets a lot brighter, so more current evidently, but the voltage it receives after I paralleled resistance is much higher now, maybe 115VAC.
I'm sure a new bulb will probably remedy this phenomenon, but, I'd like to understand whats going on....
This threads a bit stale, but seems relevant.
Any ideas?
Thanks, Robert
 
Well, let's see, it is about 50 years old now, right? Why not just swap it out for a nice LED-based light that runs on AC?

That's the direction I'd go.

Cheers,

David
 
New neon lamps generally "fire" at about 90 Volts, and then settle down to about 70 Volts and will mantain that Voltage with some increase in current, older lamps may or may not work at these Voltages and may take more to turn them on.

They exibit negative resistence, that is, once the lamp turns on, it mantains a fixed Voltage with increases or slight decreases in current, sort of like a Voltage regulator tube (0C3 may be one of these).

If too much current flows the lamp will overheat and go bad or with a LARGE increase, just explode (Don't ask me how I know this!) :)

Mark T. :music:
 
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