Vintage 1970s - 1980s Christmas Lights - repair and examination 

Lovely light set, something I really wish they would bring back today. Christmas lighting is indeed one technology that has got worse in recent years. I really miss the colourful tree lights I recall from my childhood, particularly with the various types of lampshades (lanterns, globes, stars, petals, etc). Colour light sets typically consisted of 6 colours and white sets were obviously warm tungsten white. Now it's rare to see any light sets with lampshades. Instead they try cramming as many LEDs as possible on a string, nearly all colour light sets use just 4 colours and most white sets now use cold white LEDs. Pin-point red/green/blue/yellow dots is very different to the soft light from the soft colourful lights, particularly with the lampshades.

With series-wired tungsten filament Christmas lights, a very fast way to find the defective or loose light bulb is with a non-contact voltage tester. Plug in the lights and move the tester along the cable starting at the live side, including the bulbs themselves and when the non-contact voltage tester stops lighting / beeping, the break in the series circuit has been found. Fluke 1AC-A1 or Klein NCVT-3 or similar work well. Merry Christmas 2019!!

Those lights look to be comparable to our "Pifco" fairy lights, in style and construction. There is something magical about old Christmas lights, something that LED just doesn't have. To dim mine, I use a Variac, but if you have enough load, you could equally use a normal lamp dimmer. A diode dropper will dim the lights, but the pulsed current actually shortens the filament life - much to my chagrin! Personally, I'd use the Variac every time, or a tapped transformer.

I remember that my grandma told me that my Grandad screwed one Lamp out of its socket to turn the cristmas tree off. Some day he forgot which lamp he screwed out and he needed to check all tu turn it back on. My grandad died when I was 3. Now i'm almost 15 and my grandma says that I'm just like my grandad. He did everything by himself. I loved him. He loved me. And I'm the same idiot as he was 🤣

I remember the set we had in the late 60s. It was also looped but it had a special plug. One wire was connected directly to the mains plug and the other one you could plug into the plug, this way it was easier to hang it in the tree.

Awesome stuff, these are the types of fairy lights I like! I always prefer the old incandescent ones because, if a bulb fails, you can easily replace it (assuming you can get hold of spare bulbs). We've got the modern, smaller ones (a set of 20x 12V lamps, a set of 40x 6V lamps and a set of 80x 12V lamps - the latter being 4 sets of 20 in parallel) which are incandescent and run off mains. My favorites are the so called "festoon" lights, especially the ones that run off mains voltage (240V) and have bayonet or screw type fittings, which allow for easy bulb replacement, as well as accommodation of CFLs for more light, or color changing LEDs for a nice ambience. They're getting increasingly harder to find now that most festoons are also going low voltage (20-30V) and non-replaceable LED. Merry Christmas from the UK :)

Very nice, love your collection of vintage items

It is a good idea to use Markers to paint light bulbs😀.

I’m reminded of the outdoor lights made in the 1960s that my parents would put up when I was a boy. Very different in some ways: 7-watt C9 ceramic-coated (supposedly: some looked painted) bulbs, very power-hungry, and at 110 volts here in the U. S. one didn’t want to string too many end to end (I’m fairly sure the bulbs were wired in parallel). Beautiful from a distance but very expensive to run.

Nice lights! We had similar, but with colored globes. It was a real pain to find the one thats broken or had a bad connection because I had to pull the bulb from the globe out, and the plastic hanger was in the way. It was a real challenge, when it was already on the tree :D I had to eat the candies off the tree to keep my sanity... Merry Christmas from Hungary

Merry Christmas to you too Diode

Merry Christmas to you as well. I like those lights, they looked really nice when you got them to light up.

I have an entire collection of soviet tungsten Christmas lights and I usually hang about 20 strings on a single big tree so the room gets very warm very quickly as they get used

Vidíte vynikající zpracování tohoto řetězce vánočních světel. výrobek je skutečně kvalitní, a proto je zaplacená cena oprávněná. že tento řetězec byl vyroben šest měsíců poté, co jsem začal pracovat! Doufám, že to bude trvat tolik let a přeji vám a vaší rodině Veselé Vánoce a šťastný nový rok You can see the excellent workmanship of that chain of Christmas lights. the product is really quality and therefore the price paid is justifiable. think that that chain was produced six months after I started my working life !! I hope it will last you as many years and I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year

so much memories...thx!

Those are really nice. I've never really thought about using colored permanent markers on light bulbs before. You obviously don't tease your cats by giving them electric shocks. That's a good thing of course. Just saying that your cats look like they feel pretty safe around you even though you pop stuff on your videos from time to time.

Very nice set yes ! Pitty i don't have the X-mass lamps anymore from my chilhood. Simular, but all the lamps had a specific theme.

Reminds us of the old days😁

Merry Christmas! Love your channel!

Woa! I had these when I was young!

17 weeks as of this comment think IL put mine up soon 🤔😁 reminder of happier times .

That's a nice set of lights :-D, propper bulbs with a plesent glow. Have a smashing xmas :-D The ones of my childhood were 20 x 12v smaller screw in types, the bulb sockets looked crudely like little petal flowers, but they still looked nice :-D. In later years i scraped the bulbs clean and used them to illuminate meters, they were ideal and cheap lol. I bet you have done the same when you were stuck for a 12v bulb :)

Schöne Weihnachten und weiter so

Merry Christmas to you too! Those are really awesome lights!

Merry Christmas! Those are very nice looking lights and look great on the window.

Taky máme vánoční světla Zlatokov, ale typ "svíčka" s žárovkami nastojato.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to you to your room looks nice with those LEDs awesome video😉

Merry Cheistmas!

Merry Christmas to you

Love the way when you say gooood

Merry Christmas to you too, and happy new Year even though Christmas (Dec 24th) hasn't passed

Miluji tyto zvonečky. Rodiče je mají z nazelenalého skla.

Šťastné a veselé Vánoce! Mám podobný řetěz Zlatokov, ale typ se "svíčkami". Je to 16ks 14V žárovek. Teď už teda na stromku používáme LEDky (teple bílé), ale starý řetěz jsem zařadil do své sbírky.

Thanks for explaining the "empty fuse" you called it? I knew how it worked just not what is was actually doing to close the circuit, BY THE WAY you should tell people that having a non contact voltage meter is very useful for troubleshooting christmas lights!! it works better for icicle ones but you can get it to work on single strands by measuring only at the bulb itself otherwise you will see the voltage from the passtrough strand (if it has a plug on the other end) you just have to know where the hot stops being hot and there is your faulty connection. Merry Christmas from my channel to yours!

Its sad, that our Christmas lamp had 50 broken light bulbs. It was form Chinese, but I had it for 10 years and it is very sentimental. Nowadays everybody uses led Christmas lights. I hate them, because they feel unnatural. I could order Incandescent bulbs replacement, but sadly its too late, it wouldn't arrive on time. BTW, coll video. Those light bulbs are expensive, because its so rare and collectors are taking for themselves.

good vid! always enjoy watch!

Thumbs up for the cat :)

Merry Christmas from india

Search for 20v MES bulbs on ebay international, we used to have 14 light chains in the uk into the early 80's before the fairy lights took over completely, spare bulbs for sale pop up at this time of year, though ours have permanent contact + a fuse lamp white in colour is needed so the wires don't burn.

Wow its wonderful

Merry Christmas man!!!!

Thanks :-)

Já myslel že všechny pořádné vánoční žárovky jsou zapojené do kruhu. Už sem našel vyhozených několik různých řetězů, a všechny byly do kruhu. Akorát ty čínské šmejdy s těma tenkýma drátkama a miniaturníma žárovičkama jsou asi jinak, ale to by tam zase podle mně musel vést ještě jeden drát navíc ne?

Veselé vánoce všem

Anything made back then lasted. I still have some strings that are from the 80s and still working. The crap you buy from Wal-Mart today blow out in no time. Boo....

Awesome!

❤❤

Classic christmas lights are better. Anyone who wants old fashion Christmas lights like that can go online to I recently discovered.

stary otec este stale pouziva podobne svietidla na vianocny stromcek z roku 1958

Merry Christmas, can you make video with microvawe ? (Please if you want to create this make dun with microwave oven transformer) :)

Ehee Mojaa lights

Hele já mam to samý dokonce dvakrát a byly tak takový žárovky muchomůrky a nebyly tam ty zvonečky

👍👍👍👍

Nice lights I liked them a lot its nice to know that even back in the days of communist rule you still had Christmas lights. Hope you have a great holiday best wishes from me to you and cat

Tak některá stará světýlka umějí LEDky trochu „vylepšit“ :-) Původně 6V žárovky čiré. www.dropbox.com/s/m0cqknsmwuedt91/IMG_2286.jpg?dl=0

You are Czech?

To boli kvalitne ziarovky,vydrzali 20 rokov a viac.zopar este ostalo co svietia uz 30 rokov,ale tie nahradne co teraz vyrabaju,to je katastrofa.niektora sa vypali po 1 dni, po dvoch,troch,po tyzdni a iba zopar viac vydarenych vydrzalo cele sviatky.