The lampholder is ok. Oddly enough, I renewed the cable to the lamp a
few weeks ago, as it had gone intermittent at one of the bend loops,

Yes ! The middle one. The original cable was fabric woven sheath over
rubber. I replaced it with "electric iron" cable but that didn't last
as long as the original one. I've now got a modern plastic insulated
cable in there. Its much thinner and more flexible. I used cambric
spaghetti over the wires at the bulb holder end just in case the heat
damaged the plastic insulation.

and as the holder was original, and looking a little worse for wear, I
put in a new one, and a new pressel switch as well, which had failed
and been bypassed
long ago ... :-)

Arfa

That little push on push off switch went a very long time ago ! There
is just the hole now, adding to the ventilation !

--
Best Regards:
Baron.

I too have a thin plastic cable in there. There was a good reason that I
changed it apart from the intermittency. Over the years, it has had a lot of
'half-arsed' repairs done to it. I'm sure if you have one, you know exactly
what I mean. It's half past two, and the guy is coming to pick up his
amplifier that you have assured him will be ready at half past four, and the
bench light starts going on and off ... Well, a long time ago, some silicon
sheathed heat-resistant wire had gone into the lampholder, and been joined
to the feed cable (via the pressel switch bypass ...!!) with a bit of
plastic choc-bloc. Yes, I know, but I didn't have a ceramic one to hand.

Anyway, it had been fine until I started using these small very hot bulbs in
it, whereupon the nylon insulation on the bloc had crisped up. Well, a
couple of weeks ago, I had one hand on the (earthed) chassis of an amp I was
working on (no, it wasn't plugged into the bench isolation tranny as it
should have been !) and I grabbed the Anglepoise shade to pull it into a
more convenient position. A microsecond later, the air turned blue as a
stream of profanity flowed from my mouth ...

The crisped up insulation on the choc-bloc had left a mains leakage path to
the metal shade. I decided there and then that no such thing was going to
happen again, so I have now rewired it with a thin three-core cable, and
grounded the metalwork to mains earth, via the earth connector on the brass
lampholder. Silicon sleeving has also been fitted to the wire ends in an
effort to proof them at least some, against future heat problems.

I've got to admit that the shock I got from the setup was a bit of a wakeup
call, as it's often the case that your forehead brushes agains the lamp
shade, as you try to stick your head inside some recalcitrant item that's on
the bench for repair. At least now, if there should be any future leakage
issues, it should just whack the RCD out.

Arfa