I look at it more as a failing from the sales people selling them the gear in not keeping their customer up to date than the customer too busy to stay up with the times until pushed to modernize or experiment. Hmm, why don’t I do more sales where I work type of thing... endless problems and I have my own problems in staying up to date as a primary buyer.
Still my suppliers attempt to keep me as up to date as possible be it from
play testing pre-market lamps to just plain feeing me inside info where they can so as to if not keep me in mind with them as a supplier, at least get me on
line with the newest gear.
Let’s
face it, students have studies, professors have shows, class and life. Ain’t like quarterly
LDI’s everyone gets to attend in staying up with what is fresh to the industry, this much less easy to once something new comes out transfer into it within a budget while maintaining ones expected outcome.
When I have to
play sales person or lamp expert for the company I often confuse also with too much info. This much less even at times if I
send out a sample it don’t make for a sale even if I would not
send out a sample if I did not think it would be a better option. Sales game is complex in even the sales people being the weak link between lamp buyer I am, the sales person, me providing all the info the sales person needs in educating the customer and that customer somehow not getting that or if given it sticking with what works for them. Lots of stuff and concepts out there and overall it might not be the in-shop person’s fault for not being up on what is younger than almost these days 15+ year old technology.
Good that you are noting the questionable lamp
socket term in that how some lamps get made differs largely by way of how they are retained and what materials are making that part of what retains them on the lamp
level be it
ceramic or metal. Endless fights with the original
ceramic HPL lamps which tended to break verses other of both that tended not to seat or once there fall out. Materials that make up the housing for the pins does differ company to company but is more a question of the
socket -
fixture holding lamp
base than lamp overall in this because normally no matter the material, lamp
base to lamp
base the tolerances are really normally at least good.
Ah’ back than to the days of a MSR 700 lamp before P3 technology, purple paint
etc. This lamp type didn’t in its original incarnation last long. Switched to a domestic brand for a while that was far more random in quality control this much less still zoning in the chemical and pressure mixture of their lamps to match a name brand. Lot number to lot number they were often way off. This much less
spatter “mistakes” on the nickel plating of the lamp pins which cannot otherwise be described in other than welding terms. Imagine blobs of material on the pins to the lamp
base pins. That’s not a good thing but from this company what we often saw. That is gonna destroy a
socket and much less not last long in a
fixture. Was often told in sending them back upon inspection that there was a slight error with that lot number until I could no longer depend on that company for a supplier.
Imagine you got your expensive lamp but there was blobs of material on the pins of the lamp.
Anyway, as with most new lamps - the Fast Fit style at the top of my list for being crap, there is some give and take with them until they mature perhaps or become dead lamp lines I could only hope with that style of lamp very similar to the development of the MSR 700SA history, this or say the MSI 1800w/s lamp
line in the other extreme.
Still the HX-600/FLK
line of lamp has been on the market as long as I have been a pro in the industry persay. One would think that initially it not the lamps pins but more a question of bad
socket.
See ya in the Phillips GLA
line of lamps once you change all that.