I have a hand-me-down halogen lamp from college which serves as a convenient light in the living room. At some point the medium setting stopped working, so I went and bought one of those plug-in light dimmers. Which is great, because we don’t need 100% halogen illuminating power all of the time.
However… the lower the light setting, the more I hear an annoying fluorescent buzz. You know, it’s that buzzing noise you hear in classrooms. It’s not super loud but loud enough to be irksome.
Are there any solutions to stop the buzzing, or should I look for a quieter lamp? (Suggestions welcome, btw.)
Yes. Ditch the solid state dimmer and replace it with a resistive unit. Solid state dimmers work by chopping off the AC waveform with an SCR. This creates something resembling a square wave which is fine for incandescent lamps and other purely resistive loads, but not so good for electronic devices–which might include your halogen lamp if it already includes some circuitry to control the brightness.
Sounds cool… so can you direct me to a resistive dimmer? Can I find it at Lowe’s? (I would have to know a brand because the local Lowe’s employees sure as hell wouldn’t know what it is.)
A resistive (potentiometer or rheostat) type dimmer might be hard to come by. I haven’t seen any in quite awhile.
A little Googling led me to this site which states
None of those options would seem available with a halogen lamp. I would suggest replacing the bulb. An older filament may be more prone to buzzing. And if possible, use a lower wattage bulb. It appears you don’t need all the light the current bulb is producing anyway. You could also look into replacing the original switch. It might be available online somewhere.
You want an electronics salvage store. A city the size of Austin should have one. Look in the yellow pages and call around. Ask for counter sales because the counter salesman probably knows but the receptionist wouldn’t.