LED icicles not dimming

[Comopr2]

So I bought all new LED Icicle lights this year to replace my very old and well used incandescent icicle lights.  I'm pretty happy with the overall construction of these new icicle lights and they seem much sturdier then my old icicle lights.  These new icicle lights are GE brand 100 LED Energy Smart M5 Warm White bulbs that I purchased from Lowes.  Here's where my issue starts and I hope someone has a fix or solution to my problem.  These lights do not dim very well.  I have several situations where my light show will have slow dimming on and slow dimming off and they dim more like in stages then anything else.  When they are supposed to dim on and off at a faster rate they merely come on and off instead or when they should be flickering they pretty much just stay on.

Is there something that can be done because it really makes my show not look the way it should look and I paid a lot for these new lights.

 

[George Simmons]

Unfortunately, when we're discussing retail store lights, price is in no way an indication of quality.

I can't help you. Hopefully someone else with experience with those lights will chime in.

But I sincerely encourage you to do your shopping with online merchants who cater to this community. Their lights are far beyond anything available at retail and certainly a lot less expensive if you shop the pre-season sales coming up in just a few weeks.

Edited December 4, 2014 by George Simmons

[uncledan]

I made the same mistake 7 years ago...  Key word is full wave rectified.  Some people have had luck with led's from Lowes, Home Depot, etc.  Not me.  Like George said shop online with vendors who cater to this community.  I have had good luck with holiday-light-express.com.   There are many vendors online that you should shop in off-season when running sales.  All LEDS are not created equal!  

[rainyoregonchristmas]

BEWARE if you try to dim the wrong LED's they can and do CATCH FIRE!  This is a known issue with Martha Stewart lights. 

[Santas Helper]

And this is why I purchase my lights/icicles from CDI. One of the vendors for our displays.

[dgrant]

The online vendors mentioned already are certainly better quality and I agree with getting those if the checkbook will allow it. Now I've been using cheap LED icicles from BigLots and they work beautifully for me. However, lets be fair, I had a string of them fail last year so rather than fix it right there, I replaced it with a new one so the show would go on. When I did test it, 5 of the leds on it had failed and not for the reasons expected like rusted leads. It was the leds themselves. I will have to guess that a surge took them out but they are only connected to the controller. I know there was a lightening strike last year too as one of my megatrees took a hit so who knows.

[Comopr2]

Thanks for you inputs.  I've also read some information about the dimming curves.  Would this help with the lights being able to dim.  So far I haven't had any luck with the pre loaded ones.  One of the things I did notice with these icicle lights while messing around with them and the dimming curves is that once they dim on, they don't dim down at all.  They just dim straight to off.  I'll try to address this on one of the other forum rooms.  Just thought I'd mention it here briefly.

Has anyone dealt with NoveltyLight.com or ChristmasDesigners.com?

[Darryl Lambert]

As far as I know if there just on or off your sort of outta luck but if they dim in stages or just not smooth you can try a snubber. I use these on all my half wave led's & makes a big difference.

[Jim Hans]

One way to tell if it is the LED that doesn't dim or if you need a snubber is to add a string of incans to your LED icicles.... if they dim good now then adding snubbers should fix your problem.  If they still don't dim then you may have just purchased non-dimmable LEDs. 

[slipperyclam]

I am running leds from fleet farm home depot and Wal-Mart  and I seem to be ok with dimming and such now I do not have more than 6-7 strings attached together on one channel if that maters