This one dates to December 1986!!!....I have often noticed Sylvania MV lamps from around that time which is spent CAN actually still be working but VERY HARD to start.....try a 100 or 150 watt pulse start MH ballast.....or use a electronic BBQ ignitor or something to attempt to start it!

that is one Terribly blackened arctube!

Do MV arctubes usually get this black?

Yes, if there is no special long life coating and was a great quality....

The special coating is those like the Lifeguard, Bonusline and Banner......

So a modern merc would get this black as long as everything wasn't flawed?

I think any MV lamp could get this black if it did enough hours. Eventually, the emitters would be used up on the electrodes....just like a fluorescent and things would start to get ugly in the last part of life. The anti-blackening stuff would eventually be used up I think.

does anyone know the composition of the "Anti-Blackening" Emitter used in those lamps?

what's the stuff made of?

and i agree with don...eventually it would get used up and start blackening.

At first I thought this was a metal halide lamp.

But that is very black! How long has this been in use?

I think the stuff used in lifeguards and such was dangerous or toxic or something so it was banned. Then again, mercury is dangerous too....

Mike, No not banned, it was because the companies couldn't make enough money because the lamps just lasted too long, so they stopped that feature.....Philips continued to use it on the low wattage all the way to 1995 or 1996. I know that the 50 watt MV continued to have those stuff until around 2003. They didn't get banned, the companies stopped using it (except for Westinghouse/Philips for a long time) because they just wanted to sell more MV lamps, so they just removed them to make lamp life shorter!

Ahh. I'm thinking of PCBs. Duh! That's in transformers and ballasts. hehe. I kinda figured it had something to do with the companies not makign enough money. I really do wonder what they used to make the "blackening" turn white...

I had this in use for approximately 65,700 hours.

Wow great service life!

Yeah, how much dimmer was the lamp when it neared the end of its service life if you still remember?

It was getting pretty dim,probably down to a 60W bulb,I finally thought this thing has got to go lol.

wow a 60W bulb? That's dim! I find usually the 175W mercs don't dim as badly. Even back in the lifeguard/banner/bonusline days the 100W mercs would dim out to the point where no usable light reaches the ground. I have a 70s 100W lifeguard and a 70s Sylvania cleartop 100W and they're both dimmed out about the same amount and I think the Sylvania is a standard lamp. Was this one greened out?

Do you still have this lamp? It may come back to life with more extreme methods. I grabbed a neon sign transformer specifically for this purpose last fall LOL. I did try something similar with a microwave oven transformer on a Sylvania 1000W mercury lamp and it worked!

If you put the lamp IN the microwave it might work too. I've seen a video on YouTube when a guy stuck a dead MH lamp in an old ratty microwave and it lit up lol.

You could try this on the 320W PSMH ballast from the M-400A2 I'm sending you Darren.

It was getting to the point where I could barely see my shadow under it. It was greened out a little,yeah Mike I could try it in the 320W PSMH. Yes Vince I still have this lamp,cool you grabbed a neon transformer,that might get it going. I do have a microwave transformer. I did try before to get the lamp started again,I think I tried kick starting it on a 250W MV without success.

Well if you ever decide to throw that lamp away, don't! There's a good home for it in Québec LOL.