Is my mh bulb supposed to be ringing?

I just bought a new HID grow light kit from amazon and i screwed in my mh at first and i think i screwed it on a little too tight cause when i turned it on it came on for a brief second then went off. So i unscrewed it again and it came right on but now there is a ringing sound and i was wondering if i might have messed up the bulb by chance or if this is normal? If someone could help that would be great, thanks!

I just answered a question like this last week. I had a similar problem with a top-notch ballast. The electronic ballasts seem to not fire the MH all that well, or at least in some cases. I've never heard of one ringing, but try placing your ballast in different positions, up, down, on end etc... Or, send it back if it bothers you.

Did you try answering it?

ballasts have pretty loud humming noise. The guy at my grow store says the top end ones are much quieter, but I have personally never dropped $400 on a ballast to be honest.

sunny747 said:

I just answered a question like this last week. I had a similar problem with a top-notch ballast. The electronic ballasts seem to not fire the MH all that well, or at least in some cases. I've never heard of one ringing, but try placing your ballast in different positions, up, down, on end etc... Or, send it back if it bothers you.

Click to expand...

Its not bothering me, i just didn't hear it when i screwed in my hps bulb so i was kind of concerned.Thanks sunny747, Ill try that out. But if its just the bulb humming then I'm ok with that.

It sounds like the frequency the ballast runs at is causing some resonance in the bulb. Might mean nothing but might mean they aren't that compatible and the bulb may fail sooner than it should. I stick to my tried and true magnetics and never hear more than a low hum fom the 1000W. None of the 400s make any noise at all and if a magnetic ballast does make a racket it's easy to fix. Cheap Chinese ones have loose transformer plates so a bead of glue run down the corners stops the vibration or long thin ready rods with nuts and lock washers can be used as most have holes all the way thru near the corners.

SunPulse has a certification program to match ballasts and bulbs you might want to check out.