1176/1178 Replacement Bulbs

JohnX said:

Please forgive me for reviving this ancient thread, but I have a piece of urban mythology that I would hope that someone in here may already have some clarity about:

For years, I have heard other engineers mention that an 1176 sounds different when the lightbulbs are blown as opposed to when it has functional bulbs.

This urban mythology carries no differentiation in terms of era, model, brand, etc.

The only thing I could possibly think of would be that there might be more voltage moving through the circuit with the lightbulbs dead, but that’s a far-fetched guess at best.

To be honest, most of the 1176’s that I have worked on already had blown lightbulbs when I got to the studio & I have certainly never taken the time to do any kind of testing/comparison - nor do I even have the equipment to do such a test.
I was sure that I would find a thread about this, but since I haven’t, I’m going to put the question out to any of you who may already know the answer.
Thanks in advance.

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pucho812 said:

Revive all you want. I made it a point to replace the bulbs with drop in led bulbs at the studio. They ran about 10 dollars each and no soldering required.
People like the red color. I like they I don’t have to rebulb.

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matta said:

Hi Guys,

Well I made it to Nashville! I'm sitting here in the studio and been put to work on some a couple jobs.

One of which is replacing some blown out lights in some old UREI Black Faced 1176's. From what I gather they are Bayonet Lamps, but they are still racked and am wondering if anyone knows what the specs are before I go and unracked them to check?

Same with the Dual Channel 1178.

Any info would be much appreciated.

Cheers

Matt

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JohnX said:

I also replaced mine with blue LEDs quite a while ago because I got sick of changing the regular bulbs. I have not had to change it since & I love the blue color.
But my question was really regarding the aforementioned urban mythology as to whether there is truly a sonic difference with or without bulbs.

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