In message , Geoff Norfolk
writes
How about replacing the bulbs with LED ones............. they seem to
be good for 30,000 hours and use minimal electricity.

And indeed emit minimal light too. These are best suited to mood
lighting.

The white ones are still predominantly the ugly blue-white and the
quoted life is often not achieved when the lamps have used crappy LEDs.

That said, the circuitry that drops the mains voltage and limits the
current to the LED arrays in these lamps has evolved to a stage of utter
simplicity and low component count. Namely (for a 240V lamp) a 240 ohm
1/4W current inrush limiting resistor (also acts as a fuse), a 270nF
400V capacitor to limit the current, a 1Mohm 1/4W resistor to discharge
the capacitor and avoid nasty nips off the lamp pins and lastly a small
bridge rectifier to rectify the limited AC to DC for the LED array.
Sweet.

See the PCB of a lamp he-

http://www.emanator.demon.co.uk/candle2.jpg

--
Clive Mitchell
http://www.bigclive.com