LED Keeper® - LED Holiday Light Set Repair Tool

At first it was uh-oh...then Wow - I repaired all 4 sets of string lights within 15 minutes. All sets were identical with identical symptoms, that is half the string didnt light. My first string, after following the instructions, I placed the tool in the midsection of the failed half and pulled the trigger. Per the instructions, one side should light while the other side remains dark...but in my case both ends lit up! After checking the instructions and their website, there was no mention of what to do in my case...I almost gave up until I decided to just check the fuses in the power plug and noticed one of the fuses was loose. After pushing the loose fuse back into place, the light worked! Second string: I checked the fuse but they looked fine. So I tried the tool, and this time I was able to follow the instructions as one side did not light, and was able to pinpoint the faulty LED. Actually the LED itself was fine, it was just loose from its socket. Third string: The fuses were fine, and just like the 2nd string I was able to pinpoint the loose LED. Fourth string: This time the faulty LED had its connectors twisted in such a way that it missed the connection to the socket contacts. Simply straightening out the LED wire connectors with my fingernail fixed it. The tool probably saved me at least 3 hours of frustrating work trying to check every bulb!

Couldnt get to work at first, and almost threw it in the trash due to frustration. The video tutorial was helpful, but could get no lights to light up at all, on a working or non working strand. Decided to change the 9V battery, even though the red indicator light turned on when I squeezed the trigger. So CHANGE THE BATTERY before you get mad and throw it away. Was fairly easy to work after that. Although still required some effort because I found I had multiple bulbs out and a bad socket on a single section of strand.

Year after year we have tons of icicle lights that all of a sudden won’t work after being stored. After years of purchasing new sets and wasting so much money we decide to try this and it is so helpful. We were able to save about 80% of the strands that weren’t lighting up by pinpointing dead bulbs and replacing them. It’s tedious work but worth it.

I was skeptical, but this thing works AMAZING! each light strand costs like $10 now, this thing fixed 7 of them! Highly reccomend!

There are some things that are predictable karma rules - 1) A flock of Pigeons will gather immediately after you have just detailed your car 2) The wind will blow just after you have raked the fall leaves into a nice pile, and 3) It will rain the day after you finish stringing up the Christmas lights. The first two problems are dealt with through a little more effort, and perhaps some sort of crystal therapy....but the third problem means that at least one or more of your Christmas lights will short out as the water finds its way into the light set. In the old school non-led world of Christmas lights, this was not much of a problem. But since I switched to LED, the problem has gotten much worse, and it seems that every year I wind up replacing several strands of those expensive buggers. So, enter this device which promises to find and fix the trouble LEDs. Yay! I watched the video, it seemed simple enough, so I ordered it, and collected my strands of dead LED lights to finally get some control over the spiraling cost of replacement. Or at least, that was the plan..... So by now, you are probably getting the idea that this is a negative review. It is probably a 3 star product, but I took away an extra star because it also broke my heart...never giving me the satisfaction of salvaging my light strands. Heres why: 1) The directions on the package are pretty useless., there are all sorts of gizmos and do-dads on the device, but the only one that is explained is the little hook thingy that you use to test the wires. 2) The product works by trying to short back to the plug, causing the lights on the string to light up, and then uses ptotato chip bag clips to mark the spot to replace the bulb. But heres the thing, to do the test, you must unravel the twisted strands of the wires leading to EACH AND EVERY bulb, and test it one at a time. It is tedious, and since the device pierces through the strand wires to make contact, a negative reading occurs frequently, even if the bulb is good. What is the fix? CUTTING OUT the bad bulb and attaching a shorting (shunt) bar - which is like a fancy wire nut. You are given 2! I had more than 2 on the first string alone! 3) Testing on a net light, I could never even FIND the problem. Had to call the technical service - who suggested it might be the transformer - and then informed me that it is probably beyond repair. Nice! I could have bought two new strands of lights for the cost of a device that tells me to go buy strands anyway... Each of the 4 net lights I tested (each taking about 30 minutes each to test) had the mysterious transformer problem. Sigh.

Sliced Bread has nothing on this thing. Best thing EVER. If you use LED Christmas (or other holiday) lights, they WILL go bad, and you WILL spend hours and/or money fixing or replacing them. Unless you buy this thing. Ill just give you the punch line first: Those repairs that normally take 20 to 30 minutes to find/repair --- you can do them in about 2 minutes with this thing. (If youve done this before, you probably dont believe that it can be done this quickly, but its true! I have one of those crazy light-shows: hundreds of strands of lights, almost all of them LED, timed to music. As you may know, the bulbs start to corrode/rust/fail after a year or so of use. Most consumer grade strands dont have a stay-lit feature when a single bulb burns out, and even the ones that do, dont always work as expected. When a bulb burns out (or more likely, the leads have rusted or corroded) half of the strand goes out, and you have to pull out every bulb until you can find it, often snapping off the leads to other bulbs in the process. If youve got more than one failed light, youll probably never fix the strand. I normally have 5 to 10 failed strands per year, replacing them costs about $10 per strand; fixing them takes about a half hour per strand, unless I get really lucky. Ive fixed about 8 to be repaired strands from years past and 5 strands that I was going to replace this year, in less time than it would normally take to repair one strand. You can read the instructions for the thing, or watch the online videos, but here it is in a nutshell: First you plug the strand in to an outlet to see what half (if any is lighting) you use a little marker clip to remind you which light was the last working light. Next you plug the strand into the outlet on the tool, and you use the tool to hold and pierce the light cord about half way down the burned out part of the strand. The half that doesnt light up has the bad bulb or bulbs, you mark the spot and keep finding the bad half usually in about 3 to 5 checks, youve isolated the bulb, and can replace it, and youre done. After youve done it the first time, youll be fixing them in under two minutes. The tool even has little, easy to use sockets to test the lights individually, and to test the tiny fuses that the lights come with. It also comes with a couple of easy to use jumpers in case there is a problem with the wire or socket where the light is showing failed. (Not a common problem...) I wish the little cord were a bit longer to make it easier to fix lights that are in the deployed position without having to take them down, but a decent extension cord actually does the trick. Its so fast and easy, youll enjoy it... This is a MUST HAVE if you maintain LED Christmas Lights!

I had two outdoor reindeer that had partial LED light strands out. I monkeyed around with a voltage tester, voltameter and randomly swapping out lights to try and find the culprit for hours - to no avail. I bought this in hopes of salvaging the reindeer or not having to rerun new light strands. After 15 mins, I found the 3 dead bulbs and the reindeer are as good as new. Save yourself the trouble and just buy this tool. Specifically for pre-lit trees/decorations, the probes on a voltameter are almost impossible to insert and get lined up on both sides of the terminal with such little room, the voltage tester is too sensitive to get an accurate reading with the way they wrap the strands and you continually get false readings, and swaps are only good if you only have 1 bad light. If youre curious how it works, this tool injects very small probes in through the insulator and completes the circuit at a specific spot in the line, by-passing half of the strand. With process of elimination you will find your bad bulb/bulbs in no time.

USED TO REPAIR 6 50 STRINGS OF LIGHTS. tHE FIRST ONE I RECEIVED WAS DEFECTIVE AND THUS FRUSTRATING, HOWEVER AFTER I DETERMINED THAT THI PIERSING PIN WAS NOT SUPPLING THE VOLTAGE NEEDED TO LIGHT LIGHTS. I RETURNED THE DEFECTIVE ONE AND WAS SENT A REPLACEMENT WHICH WORKS GREAT. ONLY NEGATIVE IS ITS A BIT CLUMSY FOR AN OLD 78 YR OLD TO USE. AFTER A BIT I GOT THE HANG OF IT. LOVE IT!

The first time I used the tool I repaired four 25 ft light strands in about 25 minutes, saving me more than the cost of the LED Keeper! The tool is easy to use and I recommend watching one of the videos on Youtube starting out. After your first repair, you’ll feel like a pro and be able to fix an unlit string in minutes. In addition to finding the bad bulb, the tool has a bulb remover to save your fingernails, a bulb tester, and also a fuse tester built in! Great value for the money.

Do you get frustrated because your GD Christmas lights stop working for half the strand and it’s a giant PITA to figure out which bulb is bad? So you just crumple the malfunctioning lights in a pile and go buy more lights and forget about the broken ones for several months? If this sounds like you too, this is totally worth it. I saved 3 strands of LED Christmas lights today! took me less than 5 minutes per strand and now I don’t have to buy 3 more $10-12 strands of lights so it’s basically paid for itself.