compact flourescents r0xr.
max
and 40 watt candelabra bulbs, which it ate like candy.
With 16 bulbs, it was too expensive to run at full output (400 to 600
watts) and when dimmed, it made the room look as though it were either a
60s fern bar or lit thru a urine-colored gel ("bastard amber" istr).
So i went to chinese outlet store (Menards, as they say in alasska) and
ponied up for a shipping container of Sylvania 5-watt candelabra base
decor dimmable CFs. It was painfully expensive, but otoh, i didn't
save all my pennies for a genuine vintage Space Age Atomic Populuxe
Sputnik lamp just to have it sputtering like a gaffed firefly. Baby
needs new tubes.
All i can say is... *wow*! I'm getting better light of the sputnik
than ever, including an experimental loadout of 40+60 filament bulbs i
almost burned the house down with Bright! White! No eye-searing hott
filaments. And... it's only costing me 80 watts. Again: 80 watts!
The old way took 400 to 600. wowie wow wow!
Oh, and the bulbs look good on my sputnik lamp, very much faithful to
the old meteor bulbs, certainly more so than the miniglobes i had.
Did i mention they're dimmable? They are, over a wide luminosity range.
Almost as good as tunsten, but with one weird advantage: the color stays
a lot truer, a lot closer to white. Not red-shifted yellow. kinda
weird as kemjo would say.
CF tech. has taken a nice evolutionary step from the commodity 13 and 18
watt standard-base tubes of a couple years ago. It's not inexpensive,
but you might find it worthwhile.
So.... based on my immediate impression, A+.
.max
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