Regular or Digital Ballast?

Sorry, Charlie,

Your ballasts blow. They last about a month or two.

I won't be the "Quiet Guy" on this one...

~420QuietGuy

jsllxm said:

The most important is that you must buy a high quality electronic ballast. The con is the price. But EB will save you a lot money if you use it for a long time. It is the trend.

We produce high quality electronic ballasts in China. In the past years we only sell them to Europe, from 2008 we are selling them in USA and Canada.

Click to expand...

I have pets and satellite. The RF interference thing hasn't been an issue in at least 2 or 3 years. Once the manufacturers realized there was a problem they began using better-shielded cables, and there is no more problem.

I have five cats, and three digital ballasts, and one magnetic ballast (which I no longer use). The cats have had no problems whatsoever with any of them, so that's not an issue, at least not with cats, and I doubt dogs would have any problems either.

All my digital ballasts are Lumatek. The oldest (400 watt) is about 3 years old and the other two (both 600's) are about a year old. Never had any problems of any kind with any of them. Quiet, much lighter than magnetic ballasts, and quite a bit less heat. I can't say whether any other manufacturers make good digital ballasts too, as I've only used Lumateks (and will probably always use them).

If you're paranoid about a ballast dying, keep a spare handy. That's what my 1000-watt magnetic ballast is for, to tide me over until a replacement ballast arrives, should one of my Lumateks choke on me. You can also use CFLs in a pinch for a few days, while waiting for a new ballast. But yeah, it's pretty dumb to buy shoddy stuff to save a hundred bucks or whatever, when you're putting thousands of dollars of bud at risk by doing so.

All good so far the noise is great just like a clock ticking rather than that hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm all night lmao

How do they do when swaping bulb over from MH and HPS someone was telling me the Mh tends to blow out more .

What does not get made in china these day,s lmao

The chinese are the world hi-tech wizards and sell cheap crap to the U.K lol

And make my Nike Trainners for £1 and sell them to me for £100

Lumatek appears to be a British company. Their website is:

lumatek |

www.lumatek.com is not the same company, and appears to be a Spanish-speaking company that makes lighting for film and theater.

Doesn't mean there are no Chinese parts in them. But Chinese, British, Martian, I don't care. All I care is that they're reliable, and they have been for me.

lumatek was originaly made by hydrofarm, it is now made by sunsystem


,2 of the best and oldest names in california for grow supplues (been aournd for 25+ years)

if you want a wall-mart style ballast.....go with chinese

btw....I have owned hydrofarm for years with no problems and now run lumatek because of the no questions asked 5 years warranty on ballast

Ouch!!! Shitted on...... good one jsllxm

Isn't there a death penalty for simply smoking herb in China?

If there were, would there be 1.2 billion Chinese? Heh.

No, there'd be 1.2 billion + those executed for smoking the ganja!