HOW TO REPAIR OR REPLACE LAMP SOCKET

Lamp repair is one of the easiest things you can do, and in this video I show you how to do that. Basically, you need to take apart the old light socket, undo the wiring, rewire to a new light socket, assemble the new light socket.

On different lamps, you may find slightly different light sockets, but they all built the same.

Light socket #1: Take off the socket shell by simply pulling it up and off. I’m going to pull out the socket a little bit to give myself some room to work with and I’m doing that by holding onto the wires and pulling on them. (If you can’t pull up the wires easily, check the base to make sure that the wires are not catching on something, and you can totally take off the felt bottom to check the wires underneath.) The base cap of this light socket comes off by simply unscrewing it by turning it counterclockwise. Finally, disconnect the wires.
Light socket #2: The top part of the socket shell can’t be pulled off like the other one. It needs to be screwed off. (I couldn’t pull the socket out easily, so I’m looking to see where the wires might be stuck. The wires were getting stuck in the hole at the side of the lamp base.) I’m pushing the wires up through the rod so that they're coming out from the top. Instead of pulling up on the wires, you can also just push the wires up from the bottom. You can see that the wires are tied in a knot. The wires are normally tied at this point to keep the them from being yanked off the terminals by someone pulling on the wires from the bottom. I’m taking the wires off the socket. Like the other socket, this bottom part of the socket shell screws off.
Light socket #3: This is an Ikea lamp, and the way you take this light socket off is by gently prying off the tabs on the side using a flat-head screw driver. Again, I’m going to grab and pull up on the wires. Again, you can see that the wires have been tied in a knot and this what’s called an underwriter’s knot. It's what they teach you as the proper way to tie the knot for a lamp cord. Now, get the wires off the socket. Unlike the other sockets you’ve seen so far, where the wires were connected via screws, these wires are pushed in and to pull them out, you need to press on these metal parts next to where the wires have been pushed in. Once you have disconnected the wires, the bottom piece of the socket shell can be taken off by turning it counterclockwise to unscrew it.
Light socket #4 and #5: Here are other light sockets that have a screw on the side, which keeps the base cap attached to the metal rod or the nipple through which the wire travels. So, if you see this screw on YOUR light socket, you must unscrew the screw and then you can simply pull off the base cap instead of unscrewing the base cap itself to take it off.

Light sockets are very cheap. A new light socket costs less than $4 from Home Depot or Amazon.

How to install a light socket.
I’m going to install my other used light sockets on this Ikea lamp to show you that you can install any light socket to any lamp base. Also, wiring a lamp is very simple.

1. Install the harp saddle.
2. Screw on the socket base cap or the bottom half of the socket shell (screw onto the threaded metal rod or the nipple).
3. Tie an underwriter's knot (with the 2 wires, make 2 loops in the shape of Mcdonald’s arches, and then it doesn’t matter which, thread one of the wires through the loop from the front and thread the other wire through the other loop from the back, and pull on the ends to tighten the knot).
4. Connect the wires: hot wire (smooth wire) is connected to the hot terminal (usually indicated by a brass screw); neutral wire (ribbed wire) is connected to the neutral terminal (usually indicated by a silver-colored screw).
5. Pull on the wires from bottom of the lamp to pull the light socket into place.
6. Depending on the light socket, either screw on the top part of the socket shell or just push in the socket shell, aligning it so that the opening goes over the switch. If the lamp socket wobbles, no worries. It’s because the socket shell is not on firmly. Just push it down.

When the light socket doesn’t have the hot terminal marked by brass (when both screws are silver colored), how can you tell which is the hot terminal and which is the neutral? You can see that the hot terminal feeds into the Hot contact that the bottom of the lightbulb will touch. The neutral terminal makes direct contact with the rest of the threaded part of the socket base, which is the neutral contact surface.

Now, I’m putting on the lampshade harp on an Ikea lamp that wasn’t designed to hold a harp. So, that I can replace the broken Ikea lampshade with an old lampshade that I had around the house but that need to go on a harp.

Видео HOW TO REPAIR OR REPLACE LAMP SOCKET канала KYK Creations