Replacement 3.0 volt bulbs

[Dave1789]

My outdoor Christmas tree uses ~1002 3.0 volt mini incandescent bulbs each. I cannot find replacement bulbs in this voltage. Can I swap to 2.5 volt maybe adding a resistor? How do I calculate that? Can I just replace with led? If so are they rated the same? IE: 3.0 volt? Thanks!

 

[Red Squirrel]

I feel your pain. I keep losing entire strings in my tree since I can't seem to find replacement bulbs in bulk anywhere (only the 4 packs which are expensive) and if you let too many burn it eventually kills off the whole string. Mini lights are really weird, I had found some 12v ones so figured I would try those since you would think a higher voltage rating would just mean it glows less bright right? Nope, it would just immediately blow the bulb. It seems you really do need to match the voltage on those. You could try the 2.5 to see but it may just blow the bulb. A resistor might work if you check resistance of a working bulb then match it. At least I would think...

Also I thought LED were better but I just lost an entire outdoor string, it just flat out died. It's too cold to start troubleshooting that but you can't even change the bulbs in those. Really annoying. The string is practically brand new, only bought it a few years ago. They just don't make stuff that lasts anymore.

 

[deadlyapp]

I feel your pain. I keep losing entire strings in my tree since I can't seem to find replacement bulbs in bulk anywhere (only the 4 packs which are expensive) and if you let too many burn it eventually kills off the whole string. Mini lights are really weird, I had found some 12v ones so figured I would try those since you would think a higher voltage rating would just mean it glows less bright right? Nope, it would just immediately blow the bulb. It seems you really do need to match the voltage on those. You could try the 2.5 to see but it may just blow the bulb. A resistor might work if you check resistance of a working bulb then match it. At least I would think...

Also I thought LED were better but I just lost an entire outdoor string, it just flat out died. It's too cold to start troubleshooting that but you can't even change the bulbs in those. Really annoying. The string is practically brand new, only bought it a few years ago. They just don't make stuff that lasts anymore.

Most of the LED strings you can simply swap out the correct color LED without an issue. With that said, it is certainly a very time consuming process to trouble shoot a dead bulb if you can't narrow it down across an entire strand.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Most of the LED strings you can simply swap out the correct color LED without an issue. With that said, it is certainly a very time consuming process to trouble shoot a dead bulb if you can't narrow it down across an entire strand.

Lot of the strings now the bulbs are built in, and not replaceable. Which is quite annoying actually. You can probably start splicing to measure out where the fault is and then narrow it down and fix the bulb that's not working, then put electrical tape where you spliced, but it starts to get a little sketchy lol. Not that it would be my first time splicing Christmas lights. Some of the strings that have multiple sets of series will stagger negative/positive so you have to resplice them if you want to use a bridge rectifier.

 

[allisolm]

They just don't make stuff that lasts anymore.

So true. Husband is outside trying to find the reason that one string of lights has 1/4th of it in the middle out and one string has a patch in the middle that blinks while all the rest are continuously on. We still have strings of big old c-9 lights that have been cut and spliced and moved from state to state and put up and taken down for many, many, many years and when a light goes out, you put a new bulb in and all's right with the world.