Hey guys, first off i am new here!  I am glad i found such a place for people like us interested in old and new lighting fixtures and such! I am an electronics hobbyist and have always been into lighting, mostly gaseous discharge lamps of all sorts most noteably HID's!  I also love fluorescent,and am particularly fascinated with Low Pressure sodium's, although i have never owned one yet! When i was younger i purchased a mercury vapor, both clear and frosted which i let go, and finally my favorite, a 35 watt Electripak High Pressure Sodium which i have kept in the family, giving to my dad for his house and when he moved taking back and this past summer i installed the 19 year old light fixture on my house, albeit with a new bulb a Sylvania Lumalux bulb which is much "creamier" in color than the stock generic that ran for 18 years and bit the dust!  Annnnnyways....before i bought the HPS wallpack when i was a kid i wanted a LPS wallpack...i had magazines with one particularly in it that i loved...the Phillips Mini-SOX 18 watt LPS wallpack!  I found out it was darn near $300 and there was no way i could afford as a teen so i went with the Electripak HPS for $75 as reccomended for a budding teenage experimenter by the kind older man at the local electrical store! (around 1992) What's the chance of finding a brand new one of these anywhere? Have they been discontinued for a long time?  I am unable to find pretty much anything on them, and figured this would be the place...other than one article on here (how i found this forum)with a fella who converted a Lights of America pack to a replica which i think is very neat!! Thanks a ton ahead of time guys,

Mike T  

welcome to LG MikeT

 hopefully you will score a LPS one day. i love them the way it starts up.
 i been a collector of hid lamps as well and the same for flourescent lamps as well. there are a quite a few members that into electronics and i am one of them. now it a must to modern High frequncy junk now days.
wish you the best of luck on LG.

Hey thanks a ton man!  I'm glad to meet like minded people!  I truly like the oldschool magnetic ballasts and such too< i can appreciate the newer electronics but they just don't have the presence about them as the old stuff LoL!!  I've never gotten to see a LPS ignite before in person. I saw the YouTube video of one which was verynice of the gentleman to post!  As a chile when we would visit relatives in new york, i saw the tunnels lighted by these mysterious U shaped yellow glowing lamps LoL....i wonder if they are still in use!  Sometimes they would be neon orange!  That must have been starting up or going bad!  Do they run cool to the touch?  Like could you actually put your hands around a running fully heated one? (18 watt i'm, talking)because of the vacuum bottle construction?  I'm venturing to guess they are cooler to the touch than even fluorescent!  The unmatched efficiency blows my mind!

Hey there !

I am into lighting as well as general electricity / electronics and computers (grephics / hardware / software / networking etc)

WELCOME MIKE, I`m a fan of the LPS lamps too, heres 2 of the best for you, a Philips and a Thorn, enjoy your stay

Welcome Mike!

I take it your talking about one of these.  It took me 10 years before I finally found my first LPS light.

Hey guys!  Thanks!!!  I am very glad to be here! I finally got internet service today< i apologize for being absent for so long.  I had moved in March and the only way to ensure i got house and trim work done was to hold off on cable and internet access, and from work i am limited as part of policy LoL, so i hadn't made it back here much since my original post.  I plan to frequent much more now! That's awesome that ya's are fans of these lamps also, thank you for the pictures!  I love the usual bent one and the straight one!!  Where were the straight ones used mostly?  I remember long U shaped ones int he tunnels in New York, i wonder if they are still there, I haven't been there since a child.  There were so many in the tunnels and i remember very well as a child that not driving allowed me to observe them, and in all different states.  SOme would be flickering others running bright, others dull, and lastly some pure red!  That wallpack IS EXACTLY like the mini-sox18 watt fixture i wanted as a your epirimenter!  Being 30 now makes it a bit easier LOL, hopefully i'll get my hands on one sometime soon :-)  I wanted bright but oldschool style lighting in my garage here, and when i bought this house 2 octobers ago it had a few incandescent lights and being i am into woodworking and audio i wanted bright lighting to do some woodworking of speaker cabinets, so i purchased 14 double bulb cheap 48" T12 shoplights for the 1 1/2 bay garage i do work in.  They are quite the specatacle firing up all together< very loud hums and flickers and such especially when cold like now on pennsylvania!  Now that i finally have broadband i will try and upload a video for ya's soon.  They are cheap $10 fixtures with magnetic tar ballasts, but i purchased 28 T12 10,000K Sylvania T12daylight tubes for them.  THey barely glow when below 30 degreses and are very loud but slowly but surely steady out.!  I have them all on one switch and it wakes the fiance to start them.  I will try and get video soon :-) Not as exciting as Low Pressure Sodiums but pretty neat!  I"ll also try and get my beloved HPS with the new LUmalux bulb up too!  :-)  It looks like your wallpack LPS!  I haven"t run it for a few weeks!  I love how much of the yard 35 watts of HPS lights.  WHen wiring various decorative yardlamps  for the fiance and myself, i snuck that guy up as it is 18 years old and my dad ran it from 2000 till 2010 (i had bought in 1992).  I love the new lumalux bulbs creamier white (i am thinking higher mercury content in the arc?).  Anyways, i found a peak at the rear of the house into which to place it and it is on it's own switch.  At night after work (i work 2nds) in warmer weather i enjoy lighting it upand charcoal cooking some foods out under it's 35 watts (seemingly 300)light enjoying the weather.  Unfortunatley it's darn near freezing now and it's been off.  I love to hit the switch and run around to hear it ignite and slowly brighten and quiet! (thank god the fiance works 3rds) lmao!  SHe partly understands my electronics obsession but i'm very glad to have found this forum to spare her the banter LOL!

Hi mike, the straight version of the LPS lamp, (known as the SLI/H, which was S=sodium and LI=linear with H=horisontal running), were used the most in the UK for road and motorway lighting in the 60s,70, and 80s.

They were the first low pressure sodium lamps to hit 100 lumens per watt, before being superseeded by the U-shape SOX lamps.
In Cheshire, in the UK, where I live, 90% of the street lighting were these type of lamps, and they came in 60,140,160,200watts, and a 200watt HO, high output version was also made.

My avatar pic is one end of the 200watt version.

I have three of these, two used ones mounted on the house and a BRAND NEW complete one still in the box. It is a Norelco 18 watt SOX fixture, I scored it out of the dumpster at my old place of work. The owner (moron) of the electrical business would routinely walk through the shop and see old dusty items on the shelves and I think he just had enough looking at these old oddball fixtures and out to the dumpster he would go and toss them in......I scored a ton of cool old fixtures, ballasts, lamps, photocontrols etc. this way.......