No Connector? No problem!

One of the sad facts of life is that not every audio console includes a task light connector. As you can imagine, this state of affairs baffles us, confounds us, causes us great confusion and keeps us awake at night. However, our mission to provide reliable task lighting for all those audio soldiers will not be thwarted by this glaring omission.

Sure, you can use one of our free standing work lights such as the LW-18-LED (and please, do!) but often your work space is limited and finding room for a desk lamp can be a problem. A problem with a solution.

When we designed our own XLR connector a few years ago, we built in some extra functionality that enables us to produce our new 18X-LED-NA. It kinda sorta looks like a regular Littlite but it has a little something extra.

The 18X-LED-NA is designed to plug into any XLR panel socket such as an open microphone input and plugs into any regular power strip or wall socket for power. (No, you can’t power it with phantom power, sorry). We’ve removed the pin insert from the XLR connector and we’ve included a dimmer control (Bonus!).

Our Gen V LED circuitry provided gobs of warm, white light and the 18X-LED-NA, like all Littlite products, is built to take a beating.     

 

Authored by: Donn

PRODUCT REVIEW: Littlite “Anser”

PRODUCT REVIEW:  Littlite “Anser”

by Alan H.

Thank you for allowing me to 'test drive' the Littlite.  Yes. I have put it to good use.  I have used it almost everyday. I have an office in my basement, where I do some work or just play around with music (practicing or amateur recording). I set the light on top of my computer tower, shining down on my desk. It works as a great task light for anything that I have to read on my desk (including music lead sheets). I love the fact that I can position the light a fair distance away from where I'm working and still get a decent light intensity to see well. And, the gooseneck allows me to move the light around and use it for a variety of uses that a typical desk light would be too cumbersome, for instance making a connection in the back of my computer, looking at the contents of a drawer, finding something that dropped on the floor. Plus, the light, itself, has a pleasant, incandescent feel to it.

The weight of the base has been most adequate for almost every position I've put it in; tipping over was not a problem with me.

Being an engineer, I had some other comments:

    The unit "feels" robust.  It appears to be solid.  The dimmer feels high quality (I use it to turn it on/off)

    I took the bottom off to see what was inside....it was surprisingly simple (great for reduction of potential problems).

    The steel plates on the bottom are a very effective and low-cost solution for weighing down the base.

    I'm assuming that the lamp is LED...good for long life.

    I like the fact that the temperature of the light does not get real hot.  It is warm..but, I'm not going to get burned by touching it.

It appears that you did a pretty good job designing the unit.  The light performs quite well.

Shared by Rhonda Fackert: One of our development goals was to produce a Littlite that had the warm incandescent feel to it, like our classic halogen series, only with LED’s. We were excited to see in Alan’s review that he noted the pleasant, incandescent feel and later was not sure of the light being LED. The “Anser” with the LED concealed in the end of the hood, makes it difficult to determine the light source.  We are pleased that our engineering goals to meet customer demand for a dimmable LED task light with an incandescent feel appears to be fulfilled with our new “Anser” Littlite.

Littlites Popping Up Everywhere

Littlites as most people know them have been the light of choice on music consoles for the last 35 years.  They were designed to be rugged, to withstand being shipped on tour and the rigors of the road.  The lifetime warranty backs it up even if the light has an extra hard life.   Like somebody accidentally driving over it with the tour bus…

This makes the light a natural choice for industrial applications.  Where durability is key on a machine that may process 40 jobs an hour.  You don’t want a cheap imported light that only lasts 6 months and when it breaks it stops or affects production until you get the light replaced, you want something that lasts as long as the machine!

We have had some manufacturing customers learn about our lights, and as far as cost goes we are on the low end for the competitive range of lights industrially.  We have started to pop up, and light up, some new and interesting applications. 

Recently we had a customer purchase our lights for his automatic hole punching machine, to help the machine detect the color differences needed for its operation.  The light has held up to the vibration and is significantly reducing defects.  Also we have another customer who is using them for quality inspection, our Anser light with its end out light is a perfect fit for quality inspection benches.  We have another customer that is using them in trains, in the front engine car for the engineers to see the train controls.  And yet another customer is using them for lighting on electrical chassis system.   And a final amusing one, a customer calls our light “the marriage saver” because she uses it to read before bed and her husband didn’t want to be kept awake by a bright light. 

For more information about our lights, check us out at www.littlite.com

Authored by: Kristine 

Helping someone add our lights to a unique or unusual application is sometimes challenging but always fun. Here's an example of one of the fun projects. There was very little space left in this synth module case for any sort of lighting  . . but that's okay, we are Littlite after all . . . a couple of XLR panel sockets on the outside of the case, wire them to a power supply outlet jack on the side of the case, add a couple of X-Series Littlite LED gooseneck lights and it's mission accomplished once again.

Authored by: Donn

One of the questions/requests we get asked a lot is why can't we make a Littlite that would operate in a phantom powered mic input. Setting aside the absurd notion of an open, unused mic input on an audio console, (it could happen but I've never seen it), I sent a telegram to our army of technical technicians located in the room next door and asked them: "Can we make a phantom powered Littlite for an audio console?"

Ten minutes later the following reply came via courier pigeon:  

Phantom power is supplied to microphones over the microphone's audio cable. In
the old days, capacitor microphones had tube amplifiers in the microphone to
amplify the small high impedance signal. The standard for phantom power is +48
volts applied to BOTH sides of the audio signal pair through two resistors, with the V- connected to ground and shield. The voltage is too high for efficiently driving LED's, and the available current, limited by the series resistors, is a maximum of 2 to 10 mA, depending on the console design. (That is a maximum of about a tenth of a watt available.)

It is possible that that a lamp with a bunch of LED’s in series, like maybe 8, could
be powered from the phantom supply, but the other detail is that any disturbance
to the phantom supply could cause noise in sensitive audio inputs, which, as they
say, would be bad.

So, in other words: No.

Authored by: Donn


  

Our first Blog!

Welcome to the Littlite Blog page. We’re a little late to the Blogging party but we’ve been busy making Littlites and sending them to our customers all over the planet.

But now that we’re here we’ll be using this page to talk about a variety of things that interest us and hopefully interest you as well. We will talk about Littlite and lighting of course but we’ll also talk about other topics that tickle our fancy. Oscar picks, horoscope info (Virgo, thanks), Michigan weather, Apple vs. PC, probably not Justin Bieber, music, movies, coffee and did I mention Michigan weather?

So, stop in every now and then and see what we’re up to and, oh by the way, like us on Facebook because we hear that’s the thing to do these days.

Authored by: Donn