Premium Quality & Reliable LED Lighting Products
Since 1983, LEDtronics has been America’s Premium Brand LED Company. We are the pioneers of designing, manufacturing and packaging LED lighting in the USA for industries and customers of every sort, including 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies.
With more than 12,000 part numbers and over three decades of LED lighting experience, LEDtronics products and service are of truly unrivaled performance and value.
The company’s vast array of premium-quality products includes Tube Lights & Thin Panels, Shoeboxes, Street Lights, Post Tops, Canopy Fixtures, Bay Lights, Flood Lights, Down Lights, PAR & CFL-Style Bulbs, Miniature, Panel Mount and thousands more!
Markets and applications served include Commercial & Retail, Military & Government, Transportation & Railroad, Power Plant & Utilities, Municipalities & Roadway, Hospitality, Healthcare, Educational Institutions, Safety & Security, Outdoor Area & Facilities, General Illumination and many more!
Q Division Studios Restores Treasured Console
Partners with LEDtronics to Light What Was Dark
By David Dickstein
When a professional recording studio owns a half-century-old console that’s deemed “an endangered species” and “one of the best ever manufactured” by people in the business, you do everything possible to keep making music together with the treasured piece of audio equipment.
For Boston area-based Q Division Studios, restoring its circa 1970s Neve 8068 MKI recording console was a labor of love. A lot of labor, actually. Every switch and pot needed to be sonically bathed and re-lubricated, if not replaced, rebuilt or redesigned entirely. Faceplates required rescreening. Edge connectors were replaced and retentioned. Decaying plastic guide rails were sourced and replaced as were the power supplies and lamps. The patch bay was redesigned. Not stopping there, the person hired to oversee the project, Andrew Lypps, associate chief engineer at the revered Berklee College of Music, restored the Neve’s documentation, drawing up new schematics and block diagrams where they were damaged or missing.
“One of the trickiest parts of the incredibly thorough restoration process was converting all the old incandescent bulbs in the center section to LEDs,” said Q Division’s head engineer Rafi Sofer, adding that after some back and forth, the team went with UltraBright LED bulbs from Southern California-based LEDtronics. So radical was this component of the console’s renewal, some of the 55 bulbs were used to light up switches that weren’t originally illuminated.
“At the risk of sounding like a lighting geek, we first were considering a different product, but it didn’t look as good as the WF150-SIW-028V, which also fits great and works for all the units on this project,” Sofer said.
Q Division and its precious Neve 8068 recently relocated to larger environs in North Cambridge, just under a mile from the old place in Davis Square. The nucleus of the new facility is the 2,800-square-foot Studio A, Q’s largest recording room. The performance studio includes a large high-ceiling central space and two sizable isolation rooms.
“Now that our oldie, but goody Neve 8068 is spic and span inside and out, it’s ready to capture great performances at our great, new space,” said Sofer, who has recorded with such Boston-bred artists as six-time Grammy winner James Taylor and influential post-punk band Mission of Burma.
In a sense, Q Division built the new studios around the restoration of the Neve 8068.
“All recorded signal pretty much goes through the Neve,” Sofer said. “It really is the centerpiece of the facility from both a technical and sonic/vibe/workflow standpoint.”
The Neve 8068 is famous for its unique low mid-range response and balance of clarity. A keen ear will detect these and other characteristics in a multitude of music made on the console. Tracks include “Stacy’s Mom,” a Top 25 hit for Fountains of Wayne in 2003. Music by Yo Yo Ma, Wiz Khalifa, Aimee Mann and many other artists also has been engineered on the instrumental instrument.
The console’s resume factored in Q Division opting to restore rather than buy new – a decision the leaders knew would be wrought with challenges, but with high reward. By all accounts, ROI on the renovated 8068 has been immeasurable, not only from a business perspective, but in how beloved this console is to the recording industry. Gearspace, a website and forum dedicated to audio engineering, has said this to say: “Much like Fender guitars made before the company was sold to CBS, the Neve 80-series consoles, such as the 8068, became an endangered species when the Bonochord Group took the helm of Neve Electronics in 1973.” A review on Audiofanzine.com says, “There is nothing quite like the Neve 8068 as it is without a doubt one of the best consoles ever manufactured.”
With the Neve restoration in the rear-view mirror, Q Division is now looking to refurbish its 25-year-old Studer A820 analog tape machine. Step one will be to bring light to what is currently dark – as in all 24 channels on the device.
“We’re so happy with the performance of the bulbs from LEDtronics and how they modernized the 8068 that we’re ordering more for our follow-up restoration project,” Sofer said.
Making the Studer machine better than new will have its own challenges, but nothing in comparison to those of the “gargantuan, all-encompassing, wide-ranging Neve job,” to use Sofer’s words.
After what the folks at Q Division Studios just went through with the old 8068, the thought of a simpler restoration project is definitely music to their ears.
One Of The Last-Surviving U.S.-Based LED Lighting Manufacturers Turns 40
by David Dickstein, Special to California Business Journal
Through it all – the precedent-setting pivoting caused by COVID, labor shortages impacting supply chains, inflation being combatted with higher federal interest rates, the global economic effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine; and myriad other hurdles even beyond the past decade – LEDtronics has kept the lights on for 40 years.
Persevering several decades of challenges has enabled LEDtronics to not only be a lighting industry leader, but one of the last-surviving U.S.-based LED lighting manufacturers.
“It’s a rare OEM that can stave off a buy-out, merger or bankruptcy with what we and other industries have had to deal with over the past 40 years,” said LEDtronics President Pervaiz Lodhie told California Business Journal. “We’ve had to become lean and mean to survive some of the greatest economic shocks, but being prudent and efficient has allowed us to ward off those nasty outcomes and stand tall.”
The year was 1983. Ronald Reagan occupied the White House, “Gandhi” was “Best Picture,” a box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes cost $1.19, and working out of a garage in Torrance, Calif., a Pakistani immigrant couple realized their American Dream by founding a company they hoped would become “the General Electric of LED lighting.”
Pervaiz and his wife Almas were married only three years when they launched what has become an industry-transforming manufacturer with a wonderful success story. Today, as LEDtronics celebrates a milestone anniversary against all odds, the company’s headquarters is no longer housed in a humble suburban garage, but within a state-of-the-art 66,000-square-foot plant in the tech-rich South Bay of Southern California. A second facility is based in Pakistan.
As a world-leading supplier built on light-emitting diode technology, aka LEDs, aptly named LEDtronics has a much larger footprint than the birthplaces of the company and its founders. A global network of sales representatives is deployed to seek and service customers ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 corporations.
One of them happens to be GE, which at LEDtronics’ founding still went by the name of General Electric. The fact that GE has purchased bulbs from LEDtronics for 30 years is a source of pride for Pervaiz, who, as noted, had aspired for his company to be the LED version of the multinational conglomerate nearly 100 years its senior.
“When GE got out of the incandescent bulb-making business, we were thrilled to get the nod from a compny I always admired,” Pervaiz said. “It’s so rewarding when companies large and small recognize that LEDtronics is on the front lines of a revolution that sees the private and public sectors phasing out traditional incandescent bulbs in exchange for energy-saving, eco-friendly, environmentally safe LEDs.”
Years before GE turned to LEDtronics, the company had already been supplying Southern California’s burgeoning aerospace industry with cutting-edge lighting solutions. Among LEDtronics’ first customers were Northrop, North American Rockwell and Hughes Aircraft, the latter of which actually performed quality control inspection out of the Lodhie’s garage – a first and possibly last for the once-thriving American aerospace and defense contractor. According to Pervaiz, what piqued the companies’ interest with the Torrance start-up was a blurb in a now-defunct trade publication.
“LEDtronics’ first set of customers came from a very fortunate meeting with the editor of Electronics Products,” he recalled. “He bit on my pitch and we met at a Denny’s for coffee. At his suggestion, I sent him a photo of our first product along with a small write-up explaining its attributes and benefits. When the article appeared in the magazine’s new-products section, I started receiving calls and leads. That was the jump-start for LEDtronics.”
Defense, railroads, power plants, hospitality, health care – it’s no exaggeration to state that LEDtronics has shined a light on every virtually every sector of every industry and to the delight of countless customers.
Pittsburgh-based Hutchinson Computer and Electronics Repair, which procures parts for the U.S. nuclear naval program, has purchased light and housing indicators, colored LED maps and light-emitting diodes from LEDtronics since 2017.
“LEDtronics always provides us with fair pricing, and the company’s best attributes are their sales people – always friendly and extremely helpful,” said company owner Mark Hutchinson. “Congratulations on their 40th anniversary!”
For seven years, LEDtronics has provided LED lamps for equipment controller boards of Digilube Systems, which supplies lubricants and related equipment for a variety of applications in the manufacturing setting.
“LEDtronics provides some of the best LED products – bright and crystal clear – ideal to use on our equipment that is usually installed on conveyor lines up in the air in manufacturing facilities,” said Digilube buyer Sherri Sutter. “The best attribute of LEDtronics is the quality of their products.”
Some of the more public uses of LEDtronics’ lighting solutions can literally be seen at Buckingham Palace, Los Angeles City Hall, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., the worldwide tour of “Wicked” and countless other landmarks and productions.
As holder of over 50 lighting-related patents, Pervaiz has brightened up much of the world. And brightening his own world for 43 of his 79 years has been Almas. Celebrating their corporate ruby anniversary only three years after their ruby wedding anniversary conjures cherished memories for Almas.
“For the founding and first few years of the company, I was co-running LEDtronics with my husband as I held our first child in one arm,” Almas said. “Once the company’s foundation was established and business was flowing, I gradually focused on raising our children while my husband and his team took over the day-to-day work.”
Almas echoes her life – and work life – partner in saying that the past 40 years have been “a great journey.” Doing so in their adopted Land of Opportunity has made the adventure even sweeter.
“As American citizens, one of our top priorities is to create American jobs and make American products,” she said. “Although we’ve been through many ups and downs, we are so proud to continue to be a company that offers LED products manufactured right here in our country.”
While the majority of LED products used in the U.S. are now made in Asia, many of today’s most ubiquitous LED products were invented by Pervaiz and first manufactured at the same Torrance plant where production is still very much alive. In addition to LED strip lights, which younger generations know better as the wildly popular TikTok lights, LEDtronics originated the beacon bulb, a precursor to the modern-day post top LED lamp that beautifully illuminates walkways in many cities worldwide. LEDtronics is also home of the LED tube light, which in under 20 years has evolved from a low-voltage drop-in replacement of ballasted fluorescent tube lights to today’s high-voltage variety.
Looking back at 40 years of innovation spawned by and at LEDtronics, Pervaiz listed as a key ingredient of his company’s success a combination of product design expertise, superior product application knowledge and always exceeding customer expectations across all sectors of the business. Almas added a dedicated workforce, of which product assembler Clara Garcia is the longest-serving employee with 37 years.
Also on LEDtronics’ payroll is Pervaiz and Almas’ son, Shaan, who wears the hats of chief operating officer and marketing manager. He joined the company shortly after graduating from USC, and even after 14 years there, Shaan is still in awe of Mom and Dad’s accomplishments.
“As immigrants who came to America and started a company in their garage that grew to revolutionize the LED industry, my parents truly are living the American Dream,” Shaan said, adding that he hopes to be part of LEDtronics’ future.
“Looking back at how much technology has advanced in the world over the past 40 years, I can’t even fathom what things will look like in the next 40,” he said. “LED technology is already advanced into amazing tasks other than lighting, including grow lights for plants and even in the medical field for assistance in healing.”
Looking into his LED-illuminated crystal ball, Shaan foresees a world without incandescent, halogen, fluorescent and HID lighting. The likelihood of that vision becoming a reality is aided by a ban on most incandescent bulbs by the end of 2024. Originally based on a 16-year-old bill that Pervaiz helped inspire, a Biden administration policy that was passed in April 2022 establishes a new minimum energy-efficiency standard of 45 lumens per watt, meaning bulbs under that efficiency level will not be permitted on the market.
“The whole world,” Pervaiz concludes, “will be switched over to LED, and I’m hoping solar power will have advanced enough to provide light to all people globally in a completely sustainable manner without the need for an electric grid in the more rural and remote regions.”
Copyright © 2023 California Business Journal. All Rights Reserved.
LEDtronics New LED Modules Offer Long-Lasting, Efficient Lighting for Signal & Traffic Lights |
19-JAN-23 |
| Download Hi-res Print VersionTORRANCE, Calif., January 19, 2023 — LEDtronics® announces its latest generation of 8 and 12 inch LED Traffic Signal Modules that are direct incandescent replacement lamps designed to accommodate pre-existing traffic signal enclosures.The new TRF series uses only 6 to 13 Watts, depending on any of various offered combinations of voltage (120VAC or 10~30VDC), color (super red, super yellow or blue-green), connection (Type-1 forked terminals or E26 screw-in base) and size — 8 or 12 inch (200 or 300 mm, respectively).In addition to 80 to 90 percent less energy consumption than equivalent incandescent lamps, these LED lights last much longer, resulting in years of reliable performance and reduced relamping, maintenance and lower liability costs for municipalities, cities and highway departments. Such enormous energy savings alone repay the capital outlay in less than three years!Due to their sunlight visibility, dispersing light uniformly across the entire face of the lamp through an optically optimized lens, and faster turn-on times than conventional incandescent signal lamps, these LED modules promote safe driving by increasing the amount of response time available for motorists. With the use of multiple LEDs, these traffic lights continue to provide light even if one or more emitters fail, unlike when the filament breaks in an incandescent bulb.Additionally, since LEDs emit colored light, these lamps lower concerns surrounding broken or faded colored lenses or filters, which are necessary with incandescent traffic bulbs. Intensity and color remain virtually stable over the LED lamp’s lifetime. Solid-state design renders LEDs impervious to electrical and mechanical shock, vibration, frequent switching and environmental extremes, and they perform well in applications subjects to voltage dips or surges.In addition to traffic signal lights, the LEDtronics 8- and 12-inch Type 1 and Type 2 TRF series is a perfect choice also in other automotive and transportation applications — traffic warning lights, railroad crossings, road closure signs and tunnel warning lights. They can be directly retrofitted into existing 200 and 300 mm traffic housings, respectively. They are water-resistant for outdoor use and have a protection rating of IP65, and are also totally protected against dust ingress.The TRF lamps are manufactured in conformance with the ITE purchase specifications for LED vehicle traffic signal modules, and meet MilSpecs MIL-STD-883 temperature cycling and mechanical vibration standards as well as MIL-STD-810F for moisture resistance. Also, they are compliant with FCC Title 47.Integrating solid-state electronics with advanced LED technology, these latest LEDtronics traffic signal modules feature durable, UV-resistant polycarbonate housing that eliminates dust and dirt buildup; clear, non-color-tinted lens, and an ambient operating temperature range of -40°F to +165°F [~-40°C to ~+74°C].The Type 1 lamps require modifications – hard wiring the lamp, to retrofit existing traffic housings. They come with two secured, color-coded, 600VAC-rated, 18AWG 3-feet-long wires. Type 2 lamps feature male 26mm Edison bases that simply screw into a socket.This latest TRF series of 8- and 12-inch Type 1 and Type 2 traffic signal modules come with a 5-year LEDtronics warranty, and are available through LEDtronics distributors. Quantity discounts are available, as well as other options such as color-tinted lens, low-voltage 12 VDC, solar power applications, and traffic arrows.For more details and technical data, visit the product web pages: https://www.ledtronics.com/Products/product_select.aspx?id=TRF112W-0BG-120A |
LEDtronics Bi-Pin Based Miniature LED Light Bulbs Perform Above and Beyond the Incandescents They Replace
TORRANCE, Calif., Oct. 27, 2022 — LEDtronics® Inc. announces updates to its long-time series of Midget Bi-Pin LED Miniature Bulbs, a product category it has been manufacturing for over 25 years. With an input voltage of 24/28 VDC and wattage of only 0.42, they are designed to directly replace industry-standard T1-3/4 (5mm) bayonet-based 7327 and 7387 incandescent lamps, with up to 90 percent energy savings.
The BPF200-028V Series comes in an array of color options — 3000K Warm White, 8000K Cool White, 525nm Aqua Green, 612nm Super Orange, 660nm Ultra Red, and 595nm Super Yellow, offering viewing angles ranging from 80 to 120 degrees. They operate on a current of 0.015 amps, producing maximum candela ranging from 0.075 to 1.4 cd.
The BPF200 product category also includes operating voltages of 5VDC and 12/14VDC with similar color options.
Unlike the incandescent lamps they replace, these rugged LED bulbs are virtually impervious to shock, vibration and temperature extremes. They use a tiny fraction of the energy, generate only minimal heat, and provide sharper, higher-intensity and more uniform illumination and better visibility than standard lamps, achieving full brightness more rapidly. They neither emit UV/IR rays nor produce RF interference.
The lamps have a Rynite sleeve, hard-tempered terminals of Nickel Type 200 with bright, tin-lead plate finish.
The LEDtronics midget bi-pin based LED miniature bulbs operate in a wide temperature range of -22°F to +122°F (-30°C to +50°C) and boast a long lifespan — Color LEDs serve 100,000+ hours (more than 10 years), compared to an average of 4,000 hours for incandescent lamps. White LEDs offer lumen maintenance greater than 70% at 50,000 hours of operation.
The BPF200-028V Series comes with an unconditional 3-year LEDtronics U.S. factory warranty. The series is available through LEDtronics distributors, and quantity discounts are available.
For more details and technical data, visit the product family web page:
https://www.ledtronics.com/Products/ProductsDetails.aspx?WP=1087
About LEDtronics®
Since 1983, LEDtronics has been America’s Premium Brand LED Company. We are the pioneers of designing, manufacturing and packaging LED lighting products for hundreds of industries and thousands of customers, including 80 percent of Fortune 500 companies and all the major national and regional US distributors. LEDtronics is proud to have been manufacturing in the USA for over three decades now. The company is a qualified Government and Defense supplier (CAGE code 8Z410), and over 600 National Stock Numbers (NSN) have been assigned to our products over the years. All of our products come with an UNCONDITIONAL U.S. factory warranty.