In my experience, one or more of the shunts does. They're a lot smaller
than
the wire in the string.- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

I replace my bulbs when they burn out, so I don't have the domino
effect predicted above. Reactor's strings probably have fuses in the
plugs like mine do, and like all fuses, they're designed to protect
the wiring. By the way, I love my prelit tree, it looks awesome and
is easy to keep functioning if you apply a little common sense.

Dish


I do too, but on two occasions I've had it happen with a short 20 or 35
light string. I wasn't in the room, but within a period of a couple hours,
it cascaded until every bulb in the string was blown, about half of them
were blackened significantly and several had open shunts. I guess it's not
that surprising since all the bulbs had the same hours on them and once one
failed the others ran hotter and so on.

That said, no harm was done, and I've still yet to see a string with a
safety bulb in the first place so by putting a normal bulb in there you're
no worse off than someone using an older string without that feature.