we've looked at a lot of the products within the MK base range but today we're going to
focus in on the dimmer switch because we think it's got a feature that you'll love
i saw the sign it opened up my eyes i saw the sign was that Ace of Base it was Ace of Base and in
this series of videos we've been doing looking at the base range from MK every time the scrolls come
in i've tried to give a song linked to the word base well i hope there's not many videos left in
this series i don't know how much more i can stand of this we have looked at the products before
we'll put a link for the full MK base range in the description if you haven't seen any of those
there are some great products in there but today we're looking at dimmers Gary and we're going to
start with what i would term the low end okay so explain what low end is on the rig behind us
it's a lovely looking rig as well yeah that's nothing to do with the quality of the dimmer
it's to do with the light level when you've turned the dimmer down so we've built this rig here
that's got these uh rather fetching conduit lamps and go did he make these yourself did yes there'll
be a short video out make sure you check that one out yeah we haven't we've paired them as well with
some five amp sockets a great tip if you want to if you're doing a rewire put a few of these in a
room so the customer can come along and plug in wall lights or table lamps and things like
that so that's a good combination but when i mean low end Gary i'm going to turn this lamp down to
its lowest setting is that it at the moment yeah right okay so we didn't have a lot of dim in there
so we've come all the way to a certain point and it's stopped the dimming process yeah and it's a
trait of LED lamps there's a bit of compromise in LED lamps in case of matching your lamp to
your dimmer but built into most LED dimmers as the feature to trim this low end now let's just remind
ourselves because the rig in front of us here we built when we did our Great British dim off series
we found that there's the best there's two ways of setting that low end isn't there Gary yeah
we've got to get potentiometer in one of them so that means we've got to take the front off and
live actually adjust it down to trim that lower end or the other one let's exaggerate
it slightly you have to sort of stand on one leg tap the back of your head press the button rotate
it full rotate it back press it twice more and it went into it like a pairing mode for that low end
okay so let's just unpack that a little bit Gary i've got the scenario you've wired the
house here could be new build rewire customers moved in they've changed the light fitting right
you'll be getting the call soon about the loop in loop out wiring so you can help them out there
but they want to set the low end just setting that that low end level that first scenario they've got
to pull the switch off the wall yeah probably you could damage the decoration et cetera et cetera
yeah but trim that potentiometer with it live yeah needs to say they've got a insulated screwdriver
you're probably not going to recommend that one are you no and then that second version they've
lost the instructions that you didn't leave with them in the first place and then i've got to
remember what those instructions said myself and i probably haven't got a set either of course that's
gonna be difficult i know what's gonna happen you're gonna end up jumping in your van and you're
gonna have to drive out just because the dimming pattern doesn't suit the the client does it
yeah well MK have solved that with this product Gary okay yeah that's a simple innovation i like
simple innovations are you ready for this i'm ready for it let's put the line potentiometer
on the front panel ah right okay so you just just start with that with your screwdriver yes
you don't have to you don't have to remove it you don't have to yeah twiddle the switch 20 times so
i'm going to do it now i've got this lamp here and see it's dim's nice and beautiful and smoothly but
personally i want a lower end setting on there i'll just twiddle that with the screwdriver
you can see that comes down i mean i can dim to off okay but personally i just like to leave it
at the lowest poss there you go and just set a glimmer of light there
and then i can dim that nice up again i can dim that back down to a nice smooth level turn off
turn it back on again and then we're at that level so
i think that's i think i could instruct somebody over a phone on how to do that
and then there is the screw cap you can just put over that if you want to seal that off if
you don't want the customer meddling with it you can put that over there and watch out for our top
tip on how to remove that yeah a little bit of duct tape just wipe it over the top of it pull
it off it's not an issue it's not uh let's not put the caps on because of that i think the caps
go back on there ever so easy to get off on me yeah so we've paired this them and people asked
us when we looked at GU10 lamps what dimmers are like when it comes to this very popular style of
uh incandescent lamp which is obviously LED i'm just gonna say it's not an incandescent there's
an LED lamp if you can get hold of an incandescent lamp i'll be very surprised nowadays yeah but it's
at LED so these incredibly popular um this dimmer works fantastically with this but what's it like
with other types of lamp source we have in the home okay first off i've married up some uh LED
strip then led strip that's dimmable i don't think we've covered that so far on the channel yeah so
we've actually dimmed this through a LED driver that's suitable for use with phase control dimmers
so if i've got a standard driver for me LED tape the likelihood is i can't dim it can i no but this
is a special one and we will look at that in a separate video about how that driver performs
but it's just maintained out to your LED tape low voltage and then coupled with this difference
yeah absolutely it's up there doing there you can see there yeah it's dimmed down but again
i think we can go lower okay so you're gonna trim that low end just gotta trim that low end
so if we look at that yeah wow and there you go so i think that's uh
that's pretty good performance there and that's straight out of the box we just wire
the switch as we would normally in this case it's a dimmer we take our terminal screwdriver and we
can just adjust that low end yeah i like it a lot yeah and then on the bench in front we've got some
GU10 lamps now again as we always say LED dimming is about compromise it's about we tend to find
if you buy a better quality lamp you get better performance dimming so it's not just about
the dimmer switch it is about that so we've got the lamp behind us the one we got from Phillips
these are also some Phillips GU10 lamps okay so you can see again let's bring that in i've
got our low end setting on here i can trim that down and go yeah wow the setting i'm happy with
dim that up i get great performance now just to demonstrate that i'm going to swap these out for a
oh just a little bit more budget lamp okay and that sort of flies in the face of it a little bit
we're looking at effectively the base range from MK is sitting itself in that sort of budget end
but sometimes in installation you've got to buy maybe a quality lamp to get a quality performance
would you agree with that Gordon yeah definitely i mean that's time and time again we see it
you know so yeah i've changed those for some uh yeah so just a bit more budget lamps
you've got you've got them on at all yeah okay turn them on there but again would have turned
out that low end that's it that's as far as it goes well i'll trim the low end a bit more
yeah that's it so the low end cannot fix the problem with that the only way to fix the dimming
on there is to buy a better quality lamp okay so it trims it beautifully okay that's a reasonably
priced dimmer works brilliantly with the the slightly more expensive lamps but yeah so that's a
little bit of a compromise there with you managed to get a dim LED strip as well as LED incandescent
style lamps yeah and i think that's you know that covers most bases you would expect to find
in most homes um the dimmer itself is rated for between 6 and 100 watts of LED lamp load okay yeah
you can also use it with halogen and incandescent lamps but um if you can find any yeah if they're
not sold in the market anymore there is always a compromise though with anything you know there's
always a compromise what's the compromise with this MK base one okay so compromise on this uh
is obviously to make room for that potential there yeah the dual gang version takes up
obviously a twin a twin socket box a two gang box so we can't get two two of the dimmers on a single
box we have a twin box okay that's fair enough and it is for one way lighting control only so you
couldn't use it say on a staircase or where you've got two entrances into a room and you wanted two
way switch and the depth of the box can just remind me that they recommend a 35 millimetre box
okay so the compromise is there isn't it so we've now got a twin box for the for the two gang it's
35 mil deep yeah but let's remember some of these dimmers we looked at earlier have quite
chunky faceplates and one of the features we loved about the base when we looked at the other
products in the range is there's a common depth of faceplate across the range there is there's loads
of great features in the MK base range and like we said we'll leave a link to that in the description
for you to check those out and the video that we made on the range but we're always interested in
your feedback do you believe like i do that this trimming of the lower end by just using a terminal
screwdriver on the potentiometer is actually going to make your life easier leave those
comments below did you know about the MK base range and there's something else in there that
you want to talk about that has a standout feature leave them comments and we'll try and get back to
as many as we can and feedback on Gary singing i saw the sign it opened up my eyes i saw the sign