1 00:00:00,080 --> 00:00:02,127 As we reach the end of November, 2 00:00:02,127 --> 00:00:06,316 many of us  get out the decorations and fa la la la la and whatnot. 3 00:00:06,316 --> 00:00:10,278 I’m certainly no exception,  especially when it comes to lighting. 4 00:00:10,278 --> 00:00:14,942 Why exactly do we litter our homes with light  bulbs ‘round Christmas time? 5 00:00:14,942 --> 00:00:17,079 Don’t know, but it’s probably marketing. 6 00:00:17,079 --> 00:00:19,068 By golly it worked on me, though, 7 00:00:19,068 --> 00:00:23,805 and as a lighting enthusiast generally the  opportunity to put hundreds of little light bulbs 8 00:00:23,805 --> 00:00:28,503 on railings and windows and shrubs and trees and stuff is just impossible to pass up. 9 00:00:28,503 --> 00:00:34,347 But as you may very well know, I have a problem with the Christmas lighting industry. 10 00:00:34,347 --> 00:00:37,115 And that problem is LEDs. 11 00:00:37,115 --> 00:00:39,765 Don’t get me wrong, I love LEDs! 12 00:00:39,765 --> 00:00:44,608 The light emitting diode is one of the most important inventions of the last however many years. 13 00:00:44,608 --> 00:00:47,791 And some LED Christmas lights are great! 14 00:00:48,693 --> 00:00:53,445 But multi-colored LED Christmas lights usually aren’t. 15 00:00:53,445 --> 00:00:56,493 Rather than look festive and cheery and bright, 16 00:00:56,493 --> 00:01:03,593 modern LED Christmas light sets usually make it look like a gaming PC exploded on your front lawn. 17 00:01:03,593 --> 00:01:06,141 If that aesthetic tickles your fancy, 18 00:01:06,141 --> 00:01:08,439 I will judge you but I won’t get in your way. 19 00:01:08,439 --> 00:01:09,780 Have fun. 20 00:01:09,780 --> 00:01:17,192 But for the past several years I have been on a foolish quest to determine the best way to make modern LED Christmas lights 21 00:01:17,192 --> 00:01:20,953 look like old-fashioned incandescent Christmas lights. 22 00:01:20,953 --> 00:01:25,057 Luckily, some much-more-commited-than-me folks started up Tru-Tone 23 00:01:25,057 --> 00:01:31,784 and now manufacture incredibly excellent LED versions of C7 and C9 bulbs. 24 00:01:31,784 --> 00:01:36,627 They are virtually indistinguishable from their energy-sucking incandescent counterparts 25 00:01:36,627 --> 00:01:39,960 and if that’s something you’re looking for, you should check them out. 26 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:43,139 They’re not paying me to say that, I bought these with my own money 27 00:01:43,139 --> 00:01:46,593 but they are exactly what I’ve been hoping somebody would do 28 00:01:46,593 --> 00:01:53,573 and if you live in North America (and are the same kind of weirdo I am)  I think you’ll be more than pleased with them. 29 00:01:53,573 --> 00:01:58,810 However, Tru-Tone has not yet made inroads on  tackling the mini-light problem. 30 00:01:58,810 --> 00:02:00,837 So here we go again. 31 00:02:00,837 --> 00:02:02,899 To explain what my problem is, 32 00:02:02,899 --> 00:02:08,818 in ye-olden days we made light happen by making tiny bits of tungsten wire very very hot. 33 00:02:08,818 --> 00:02:11,562 Hot things produce light through incandescence, 34 00:02:11,562 --> 00:02:17,270 and when it’s hot enough a whole bunch of wavelengths of light will be emitted which together look white. 35 00:02:17,270 --> 00:02:20,670 When we wanted to make that look a color other-than-white, 36 00:02:20,670 --> 00:02:28,217 we’d add a coating to the glass of the light bulb which acted to filter out most wavelengths aside from our target color. 37 00:02:28,217 --> 00:02:35,023 The result was a sort of blend of wavelengths that produced a pleasing (if reduced in brightness) appearance. 38 00:02:35,120 --> 00:02:38,960 LEDs, on the other hand, only emit a single wavelength of light 39 00:02:38,960 --> 00:02:42,482 which depends on the materials used to create it. 40 00:02:42,482 --> 00:02:50,109 That monochromatic light has an incredibly intense color because it is literally pure as can be - 41 00:02:50,109 --> 00:02:53,189 it’s like the color wheel picker on your image editing app. 42 00:02:53,189 --> 00:02:55,614 A perfectly pure hue. 43 00:02:56,155 --> 00:02:57,853 Some of you may like this. 44 00:02:57,853 --> 00:03:00,079 Even I like it at times. 45 00:03:00,079 --> 00:03:01,389 But for Christmas lights? 46 00:03:01,389 --> 00:03:03,200 It’s just wrong. 47 00:03:03,200 --> 00:03:08,175 Especially greens and blues - that is not a warm and fuzzy looking festive display, 48 00:03:08,175 --> 00:03:13,793 it’s a tacky storefront with those chasing LED strips around the windows letting you know they have CBD oil. 49 00:03:13,793 --> 00:03:16,318 I’m sorry, that’s just the truth! 50 00:03:16,318 --> 00:03:20,149 If the blue and the green could be toned down a bit, 51 00:03:20,149 --> 00:03:23,319 I’d probably be a little less grumpy about this. 52 00:03:23,319 --> 00:03:30,271 A large part of why LED multicolored sets and incandescent multi-colored sets look so starkly different 53 00:03:30,271 --> 00:03:35,900 is that the filament in an incandescent light doesn’t produce a whole lot of the green-to-blue wavelengths 54 00:03:35,900 --> 00:03:41,776 (that would require getting tungsten into melty temperatures and those bulbs wouldn’t last long at all). 55 00:03:41,776 --> 00:03:49,649 So, through pure physics reasons the blue and green will appear quite a lot darker than reds, oranges, and especially yellows. 56 00:03:49,649 --> 00:03:57,289 A multi-colored LED set that just mimicked those relative  brightness ratios would be a huge improvement. 57 00:03:57,360 --> 00:04:00,134 There are reasons that’s difficult, though. 58 00:04:00,134 --> 00:04:03,338 Something something voltage drop, gallium nitride, et cetera. 59 00:04:03,338 --> 00:04:05,234 But there’s another way: 60 00:04:05,234 --> 00:04:11,131 through lots of innovation involving phosphor coatings excited by blue to near-UV diodes, 61 00:04:11,131 --> 00:04:17,694 we’ve made extremely good and reasonably broad-band white LEDs that are quite cheap. 62 00:04:18,303 --> 00:04:24,457 So, why don’t we just make a whole bunch of white diodes and put a colored cap over them a la the way we used to do it? 63 00:04:24,457 --> 00:04:26,944 Then we could have the best of both worlds! 64 00:04:27,214 --> 00:04:30,546 Just to make sure that hasn’t happened yet and, side note, 65 00:04:30,546 --> 00:04:34,365 somebody please just do it so I can end this! 66 00:04:34,365 --> 00:04:38,910 I went to a couple of big box stores to see what their big boxes had in store. 67 00:04:38,910 --> 00:04:40,388 The first thing of note: 68 00:04:40,388 --> 00:04:42,690 Europe is invading! 69 00:04:42,690 --> 00:04:47,452 Traditionally, light sets over here just have raw mains voltage going through them. 70 00:04:47,452 --> 00:04:53,226 A set of 100 mini-lights will actually have two runs of 50 bulbs wired in series. 71 00:04:53,226 --> 00:05:00,461 The bulbs are rated for somewhere near 2.5 volts and with them all in series that adds up to 125 volts 72 00:05:00,461 --> 00:05:04,801 (the bulbs actually fail as a short circuit which keeps the rest of the strand lit… 73 00:05:04,801 --> 00:05:08,393 usually… so they build some margin in for that). 74 00:05:08,393 --> 00:05:14,840 C9 and C7 sets supply straight line voltage to each bulb socket which, fun fact, 75 00:05:14,840 --> 00:05:19,776 is why those sets have polarized plugs and mini-light sets don’t. 76 00:05:19,776 --> 00:05:27,249 This is a note to editor me, make sure you put that little asterisk in there about how some older C7 and C9 sets were also in series. 77 00:05:27,249 --> 00:05:28,665 Did you do it? 78 00:05:28,665 --> 00:05:29,832 Good! 79 00:05:29,832 --> 00:05:38,619 Now, though, LED light strands that come with little power adapters that make some flavor of not-line-voltage are starting to become available. 80 00:05:38,619 --> 00:05:40,884 And new form factors, too! 81 00:05:40,884 --> 00:05:47,673 Most LED sets have been mimicking the shape of incandescent lights but now we have so-called “rice lights” - 82 00:05:47,673 --> 00:05:51,717 and these have some built-in chasing functions to make things interesting. 83 00:05:51,717 --> 00:05:58,829 And then there’s these “ribbon lights” which seem to be a play on LED tape light but with diodes in little blobs. 84 00:05:58,829 --> 00:06:00,715 Both of these are intriguing, 85 00:06:00,715 --> 00:06:04,022 though I must say that ribbon light doesn’t look too durable, 86 00:06:04,200 --> 00:06:10,160 but sadly the multi-colored sets still look like  something a unicorn threw up so I had to pass. 87 00:06:10,160 --> 00:06:17,762 Also interesting, some of the “traditional” LED sets for sale are starting to come with non-replaceable bulbs. 88 00:06:17,762 --> 00:06:20,779 To be honest, this annoyed me at first. 89 00:06:20,779 --> 00:06:24,286 But I’ve come around to this probably being better. 90 00:06:24,286 --> 00:06:29,975 Until this year, every one of these sets I’ve seen has technically had replaceable bulbs 91 00:06:29,975 --> 00:06:34,288 but they were made just like the incandescent sets of the past. 92 00:06:34,288 --> 00:06:42,609 In fact, it was often the legs of the LED bent around the bulb holder just like the tiny wire leads of the incandescent mini-lights. 93 00:06:42,609 --> 00:06:49,544 Corrosion was a major problem there, plus the bulbs could sometimes end up falling out which would kill the whole strand, 94 00:06:49,544 --> 00:06:55,462 so sealing the whole thing up is likely going  to make the set more durable in the long-run. 95 00:06:55,462 --> 00:06:57,550 Alas, when it came to the colors, 96 00:06:57,550 --> 00:07:01,544 everything was either “decent warm white” or “shield your eyes multi-colored” 97 00:07:01,544 --> 00:07:07,508 so it’s time yet again to try my luck at figuring out how to make these less awful. 98 00:07:07,508 --> 00:07:10,065 Here’s a summary of things I’ve tried in the past. 99 00:07:10,065 --> 00:07:15,087 Sharpies: worked great but quickly faded in the sun and/or rain. 100 00:07:15,087 --> 00:07:17,522 Spray paint: didn’t work at all. 101 00:07:17,522 --> 00:07:20,832 Acrylic craft paint: didn’t work at all. 102 00:07:20,832 --> 00:07:25,841 Transparent acrylic craft paint: worked surprisingly well! 103 00:07:25,841 --> 00:07:28,713 Durability testing didn’t happen, though, because I forgot. 104 00:07:28,713 --> 00:07:31,012 Nail polish: another surprise hit! 105 00:07:31,012 --> 00:07:37,423 Probably the easiest of all and durability was probably decent but again actual testing didn’t happen because I forgot. 106 00:07:37,423 --> 00:07:39,373 But that’s all I’ve tried so far. 107 00:07:39,373 --> 00:07:40,612 At least I think. 108 00:07:40,612 --> 00:07:43,344 Wait - I forgot about the Rit dye: 109 00:07:43,344 --> 00:07:44,953 That also didn’t work. 110 00:07:44,953 --> 00:07:49,056 The heat from the dying process made the lights get all bendy, too. 111 00:07:49,056 --> 00:07:51,674 Surely there’s something better out there. 112 00:07:51,674 --> 00:07:54,784 And for your viewing pleasure and my sense of ennui, 113 00:07:54,784 --> 00:07:59,022 it’s time to once again test some light bulb painting techniques. 114 00:07:59,022 --> 00:08:03,547 On the docket today are epoxy resin and dyes for said epoxy resin, 115 00:08:03,547 --> 00:08:08,054 then we have a twist on acrylic craft paint involving some water and glue, 116 00:08:08,200 --> 00:08:11,402 and finally we have a mystery third thing. 117 00:08:11,402 --> 00:08:13,881 Stay tuned for that one. It worked pretty good! 118 00:08:13,881 --> 00:08:17,103 I started this year’s shenanigans with epoxy resin. 119 00:08:17,103 --> 00:08:21,282 I ordered some and some dyes for it and thought “this might work OK.” 120 00:08:21,282 --> 00:08:23,605 But a thought is not the same as an experiment, 121 00:08:23,605 --> 00:08:25,777 and I don’t have room for thought experiments. 122 00:08:26,228 --> 00:08:30,273 Anyway so I mixed some up, added some dye to it, and hoped for the best. 123 00:08:30,273 --> 00:08:37,777 I started with blue because this is the trickiest color - I want a nice deep blue, so it needs to have quite a lot of dye. 124 00:08:37,777 --> 00:08:41,088 But go too far and it might be black. 125 00:08:41,088 --> 00:08:43,865 Turns out that wasn’t a problem here. 126 00:08:43,865 --> 00:08:52,271 Despite adding quite a lot of dye to the resin, the mixture added hardly any color in the thin skim-coating that I knew I’d need. 127 00:08:52,271 --> 00:08:54,310 And this is something that I need to touch on - 128 00:08:54,310 --> 00:08:59,364 in all my attempts here, people are (quite helpfully) suggesting things I should try 129 00:08:59,364 --> 00:09:05,474 but a lot of the suggestions I’ve received turn out to have nowhere near as much color as I need. 130 00:09:05,474 --> 00:09:10,949 Things like stained glass paint or colored heat shrink tubing just aren’t dark enough - 131 00:09:10,949 --> 00:09:17,506 the glass of an unlit incandescent set looks nearly black on all colors but yellow or amber. 132 00:09:17,506 --> 00:09:21,300 So if this was gonna work, I’d need way more dye. 133 00:09:22,066 --> 00:09:24,139 After adding way more dye, 134 00:09:24,139 --> 00:09:29,377 I was starting to get worried that there would be too much dye for the resin to cure properly. 135 00:09:29,377 --> 00:09:31,438 But there was only one way to find out. 136 00:09:31,438 --> 00:09:39,953 After making the concoction so dark as to appear black, things looked promising at first but then quickly became the opposite of that. 137 00:09:39,953 --> 00:09:45,798 Test-dunks revealed just how tricky the balance is here between too dark and not dark enough - 138 00:09:45,798 --> 00:09:51,436 the light goes from hardly visible to  just right to too pale in a matter of moments. 139 00:09:51,520 --> 00:09:55,347 Add to this the general difficulty of getting the coating thickness I wanted 140 00:09:55,347 --> 00:10:02,548 (this resin was extremely runny and even after waiting over  an hour, despite thickening quite a bit, it would still run off eventually) 141 00:10:02,548 --> 00:10:05,629 and epoxy was ruled out completely. 142 00:10:05,629 --> 00:10:11,966 My next trick was to try the milk glass coating  I stumbled upon through sheer dumb luck. 143 00:10:11,966 --> 00:10:17,518 I got these table lamps from the Swedish meatball place last year and while they are pretty cool looking, 144 00:10:17,518 --> 00:10:21,633 having bare light bulbs in your peripheral vision kind of sucks 145 00:10:21,633 --> 00:10:24,233 so I wanted to frost the glass. 146 00:10:24,233 --> 00:10:29,823 But not frost it like the translucent kind of frosting, but the opaque white kind of frosting, 147 00:10:29,823 --> 00:10:37,870 and there weren’t any good guides on how to do this so I just tried equal parts (by weight) water, white craft paint, and PVA glue 148 00:10:37,870 --> 00:10:40,365 and by golly it worked perfectly! 149 00:10:40,365 --> 00:10:43,706 The lamps still look great, no cracking or yellowing, 150 00:10:43,706 --> 00:10:48,606 and if you’re interested in learning more about this  process you can check out the video on Connextras. 151 00:10:48,606 --> 00:10:54,062 I thought I would try this technique for Christmas lights but using colored paint instead of just white. 152 00:10:54,062 --> 00:10:59,951 So I mixed some up, dunked the bulbs, and thought that perhaps I had cracked it! 153 00:10:59,951 --> 00:11:02,112 But then the coating cracked. 154 00:11:02,968 --> 00:11:09,353 Yeah, not sure if it’s because it was on plastic or what  but the coating shrank and cracked and generally didn’t hold up. 155 00:11:09,353 --> 00:11:12,271 I also tried just half glue and half paint 156 00:11:12,271 --> 00:11:15,566 (the water made the mixture a little runnier than I think I wanted) 157 00:11:15,566 --> 00:11:18,050 but this also didn’t dry well. 158 00:11:18,050 --> 00:11:23,933 Again, I started with blue and since both of those two techniques didn’t work I promptly gave up. 159 00:11:23,933 --> 00:11:28,835 Even if this had worked well, it still had that frosted look which I would have accepted 160 00:11:28,835 --> 00:11:31,765 but wasn’t exactly what I was going for. 161 00:11:31,765 --> 00:11:34,139 So, back to the drawing board. 162 00:11:34,139 --> 00:11:40,261 The absolute best end-result I have gotten so far came from transparent craft paint. 163 00:11:40,261 --> 00:11:44,173 But, it was fiddly and annoying to apply. 164 00:11:44,173 --> 00:11:48,750 I mean, let’s be real, this whole endeavor is objectively ridiculous. 165 00:11:48,750 --> 00:11:56,036 I am a ridiculous person who is committed to the bit, but if I’m gonna keep doing this I want something just a little bit easier. 166 00:11:56,036 --> 00:12:03,126 But then I noticed that one of my bottles of paint - the yellow one that’s been sitting on the shelves behind me for what, two years now? - 167 00:12:03,126 --> 00:12:06,444 says “Airbrush colors” on it. 168 00:12:06,444 --> 00:12:09,017 Now, I’ve never had a need for an airbrush 169 00:12:09,017 --> 00:12:10,935 (usually I use a comb) 170 00:12:10,935 --> 00:12:15,064 but if that’s what it’s designed for maybe an airbrush would help. 171 00:12:15,064 --> 00:12:16,733 So I got one! 172 00:12:16,733 --> 00:12:21,867 Did I just search on Amazon for “airbrush kit” and buy the most obvious one? 173 00:12:21,867 --> 00:12:23,091 Yep! 174 00:12:23,091 --> 00:12:25,304 Do I really know how to use an airbrush? 175 00:12:25,304 --> 00:12:26,448 Nope! 176 00:12:26,448 --> 00:12:28,068 Did that stop me? 177 00:12:28,068 --> 00:12:29,059 Nope! 178 00:12:29,059 --> 00:12:32,334 But having the airbrush is only one part of the problem. 179 00:12:32,785 --> 00:12:37,214 The other was how to hold the lights to make airbrushing possible. 180 00:12:37,214 --> 00:12:39,224 Now, as I’ve discussed previously, 181 00:12:39,224 --> 00:12:43,926 I really don’t care for many of the color combinations on offer today. 182 00:12:43,926 --> 00:12:49,478 My preference is a simple four-color palette of red, green, blue, and yellow. 183 00:12:49,478 --> 00:12:52,884 I will accept amber or orange in place of yellow, 184 00:12:52,884 --> 00:13:00,578 but teals and purples and pinks are completely unacceptable because those are Easter colors and that comes later. 185 00:13:00,578 --> 00:13:04,008 Those colors do not belong in Christmas light sets! 186 00:13:04,008 --> 00:13:05,352 Capiche? 187 00:13:05,352 --> 00:13:12,526 As luck would have it, the very four colors I wanted were available in a set of transparent airbrush paint. 188 00:13:12,526 --> 00:13:21,968 I bought new paint just in case the old paint was going bad, and that yellow bottle was already separating two years ago so it’s much worse now. 189 00:13:21,968 --> 00:13:26,558 And if for whatever reason I were to change my mind about color preferences, 190 00:13:26,558 --> 00:13:30,568 different colors could be made by mixing these primary colors together. 191 00:13:30,568 --> 00:13:32,811 Just ask your kindergarten teacher! 192 00:13:32,880 --> 00:13:36,837 So, knowing that I’d be spraying a strand of one hundred mini lights 193 00:13:36,837 --> 00:13:41,148 in my objectively correct preference of red, yellow, green, and blue, 194 00:13:41,148 --> 00:13:44,717 I took a spare piece of cardboard from one of those Amazon boxes 195 00:13:44,717 --> 00:13:49,449 and used a single hole punch to make 26 holes along its edge. 196 00:13:49,449 --> 00:13:52,554 Then I taped over one of them because I only needed 25. 197 00:13:52,554 --> 00:13:56,561 And I meticulously poked every fourth light through those holes 198 00:13:56,561 --> 00:14:02,511 and then taped some printer paper to the edges of the piece of cardboard to protect the rest of the set from overspray. 199 00:14:02,511 --> 00:14:07,354 Then I picked this gravity-fed airbrush from my airbrush kit because that would probably work, 200 00:14:07,354 --> 00:14:10,369 shook up the blue paint bottle, put some paint in the cup, 201 00:14:10,369 --> 00:14:11,960 and went at it. 202 00:14:11,960 --> 00:14:14,084 And by golly, it worked! 203 00:14:14,084 --> 00:14:15,931 It worked greatly! 204 00:14:15,931 --> 00:14:18,301 The blue paint was actually a perfect color, 205 00:14:18,301 --> 00:14:21,461 the airbrush made applying it nearly effortless, 206 00:14:21,461 --> 00:14:25,760 and after a couple of coats it was exactly what I was looking for. 207 00:14:25,760 --> 00:14:28,519 Of course the only thing left to do was let it dry, 208 00:14:28,519 --> 00:14:30,002 clean out the airbrush, 209 00:14:30,002 --> 00:14:36,196 then pull out all the now blue bulbs and shove another quarter of them through the holes to prepare for the next color. 210 00:14:36,196 --> 00:14:37,900 Then repeat. 211 00:14:37,900 --> 00:14:40,302 This was still a pretty fiddly process, 212 00:14:40,302 --> 00:14:43,639 but it’s definitely the least fiddly of any I’ve tried. 213 00:14:43,639 --> 00:14:51,879 In fact the primary fiddle factor was dealing with the light-holding rig while untangling and wrangling and retangling the rest of the strand. 214 00:14:51,879 --> 00:14:53,342 If I were to do this again, 215 00:14:53,440 --> 00:14:56,031 I would try to find a better way to hold them. 216 00:14:56,031 --> 00:15:02,847 Maybe a large piece of cardboard with holes made by a drill press or something could tackle five strands at a time - 217 00:15:02,847 --> 00:15:06,458 though how to keep them organized would be quite the question. 218 00:15:06,458 --> 00:15:11,378 And the end results, while pretty great,  still reveal a few flaws. 219 00:15:11,378 --> 00:15:18,528 For one, I had forgotten that the last time I used these paints  the yellow was very much a highlighter yellow 220 00:15:18,528 --> 00:15:22,341 and it benefitted from adding a bit of red to warm it up. 221 00:15:22,341 --> 00:15:24,419 I should have done that again. 222 00:15:24,419 --> 00:15:32,204 This red is also not quite transparent - interestingly I  found the same thing last time with this different brand of transparent model paint 223 00:15:32,204 --> 00:15:36,095 so my guess is it’s an inherent issue with red pigmenting. 224 00:15:36,095 --> 00:15:41,758 Another thing to consider is that apparently this paint benefits from heat treatment. 225 00:15:41,758 --> 00:15:46,355 Whether that can be safely done without melting the plastic caps I don’t know. 226 00:15:46,355 --> 00:15:49,402 I didn’t try and I’m not going to. 227 00:15:49,402 --> 00:15:56,387 This year, I am going to actually put this strand outside where it will be exposed both to the Southern sun and the 228 00:15:56,387 --> 00:15:59,196 just lovely weather we get around here. 229 00:15:59,196 --> 00:16:04,666 I’ll report back on its durability on the second channel - so maybe subscribe there if you haven’t. 230 00:16:04,666 --> 00:16:07,685 I’ll try to do one of those community posts too. 231 00:16:07,685 --> 00:16:09,199 Now, you might ask, 232 00:16:09,199 --> 00:16:12,204 “why are you doing this to yourself?” and my response would be 233 00:16:12,204 --> 00:16:15,055 “that’s an excellent question.” 234 00:16:15,055 --> 00:16:18,891 Broadly, I just want to show that this can be done! 235 00:16:18,891 --> 00:16:21,752 Yes, maybe I’m just a curmudgeon who’s out of touch, 236 00:16:21,752 --> 00:16:29,672 but I really would like to use LED multicolored lighting ‘round the holidays because incandescent light sets use a stupid amount of power! 237 00:16:29,672 --> 00:16:36,453 Last year my power bill doubled for the month of December  merely because I had two C9 sets 238 00:16:36,453 --> 00:16:41,543 and I wanna say six runs of twinkling lights running for 8 hours  a night. 239 00:16:41,543 --> 00:16:46,447 That’s ridiculous, especially considering I have an electric car! 240 00:16:46,447 --> 00:16:51,416 But all the multicolored strands on the market today still look like gamer vomit 241 00:16:51,416 --> 00:16:56,811 and that’s just not something I want all over my home at any time but especially not the holidays! 242 00:16:56,811 --> 00:16:59,280 And there’s good news out of the UK! 243 00:16:59,280 --> 00:17:04,893 A viewer got in touch and sent me pictures of a light strand that is EXACTLY what I’m asking for. 244 00:17:04,893 --> 00:17:09,232 It’s a set very much like this one but where the diodes are all a nice warm white 245 00:17:09,232 --> 00:17:15,075 and its coloring comes from the plastic caps that define the shape of the pseudo-bulb. 246 00:17:15,075 --> 00:17:19,280 In this case, I think the coloring might not be quite as strong as I’d like - 247 00:17:19,280 --> 00:17:23,751 I worry this is more of a pastel color theme than the rich colors I’m looking for. 248 00:17:23,751 --> 00:17:28,254 But it shows somebody could make this if they just tried. 249 00:17:28,254 --> 00:17:33,209 So, one of you in charge of ordering all those lights from whatever factories overseas make them, 250 00:17:33,209 --> 00:17:36,973 maybe try and steer things in this direction. 251 00:17:36,973 --> 00:17:40,611 And to the folks at Tru-Tone - you could be those people! 252 00:17:40,611 --> 00:17:44,717 I will be incredibly happy if I can just... buy these 253 00:17:44,717 --> 00:17:49,533 and not go through this nonsense just to get some semblance of the things I’m looking for. 254 00:17:49,533 --> 00:17:56,518 And if somebody finally manages to make this a thing I can get in stores with all the other holiday stuff... 255 00:17:56,518 --> 00:17:58,722 you all had better buy them! Ok? 256 00:17:58,722 --> 00:18:04,717 I don’t want to find out that the gross blue-green laser beam lights are actually what you people want! 257 00:18:04,717 --> 00:18:08,858 I will be so disappointed and you’ll never hear the end of it, I promise. 258 00:18:08,858 --> 00:18:10,128 Happy holidays! 259 00:18:10,804 --> 00:18:14,250 ♫ Unexpectedly Christmas Jazz ♫ 260 00:18:15,805 --> 00:18:18,232 But, multicolored [ ] LED 261 00:18:18,841 --> 00:18:22,310 I should have them ready to demonstrate. 262 00:18:23,211 --> 00:18:27,030 Modern LED christmas light sets usually make it… 263 00:18:27,030 --> 00:18:28,432 what happened there? 264 00:18:28,815 --> 00:18:31,395 What did you get caught on, you terrible thing? 265 00:18:31,395 --> 00:18:35,100 …mimicked the relative brightness ratios would be… 266 00:18:35,100 --> 00:18:36,157 crap. 267 00:18:37,149 --> 00:18:41,149 I changed the tense of something for no reason [clears throat] 268 00:18:41,149 --> 00:18:44,690 Different colors could be made by mixing these primary colors together. 269 00:18:44,690 --> 00:18:46,808 Justk ask your [ppfttah!] 270 00:18:46,808 --> 00:18:50,761 Different colors could be made by mixing these primary colors together. 271 00:18:50,761 --> 00:18:52,568 Just ask your tche… 272 00:18:52,568 --> 00:18:54,299 why am I struggling with that? 273 00:18:55,065 --> 00:18:58,254 [a jazz rendition of We Wish You A Merry Christmas fades back in] 274 00:18:59,696 --> 00:19:02,986 Now look at all those pretty twinkling lights. 275 00:19:02,986 --> 00:19:06,154 Devastatingly, I think Menards has discontinued them. 276 00:19:06,154 --> 00:19:09,002 Now I don't feel so bad about hoarding them these last few years.