Most of our trees are prelighted. In fact, I believe only a few of them are not. It's a very convenient feature until the lights quit. Even worse is when part of the string stops working. That's exactly what happened to us as we were preparing tree 11 in the lineup. We carried it up from the basement in three sections, reassembled it, set it in place, fluffed the branches and plugged it in. That's when we discovered a portion of the very top string was dark. Yikes! What to do?
About three years ago, I bought this Light Keeper Pro after seeing it advertised on television and having a friend at school tell me about hers and how satisfied she was with it. It claimed to fix burned out tree lights. After Christmas, I found the tool 75% off at Walgreens in their post-holiday collection. I decided it would be worth keeping on hand just in case we'd ever need it.
Guess what? We needed it. I had loaned our tool to some friends a few weeks ago and they just raved about it when they returned it the following day. They were able to repair three strands of lights at their house with it and decided they wanted to buy one of their own. Cautiously optimistic, I pulled the Light Keeper Pro from the Christmas closet. We read and followed the directions and...tada! It actually worked!
It took us about 45 minutes---partially because we had no experience with it and partially because the situation was not remedied by the first step. The directions spell out troubleshooting, though, with step-by-steps actions. There are various options for different problems causing the lack of lighting. How does it work? I took this paragraph directly off their website (you may need to enlarge it to read on the yellow background).
I am not a big gadget person because in my opinion, they're usually overrated and are underperformers. This gadget, however, seems to be a winner and well worth the cost (especially at 75% off!!). I just looked up the Light Keeper Pro and it appears that Walmart and some home improvement centers carry them for around $20. Do you know about this gem? Do you have one? It seems that lots of people have never heard of them so I wanted to mention it. Bad bulbs are a frustrating obstacle when it comes to decorating, so you may want to keep this in mind and avoid getting your tinsel...and lights in a tangle!!