Sounds good but I still prefer old fashioned preheaters. BTW how expensive is one?

Me too, glow bottle ones are more exciting but this one is a good one to use for vintage lamps.
I have only one, they cost about 4,50€.

OK. Price is mormal for special starters. Still a nice one.

I hope that it will easy to find these types of electronic starters in "Do it yourself" and hardware shops in Israel.
These starter have the ability to prolong not only the life of the lamp, but of the ballast too, as they have often EOL protections.

Not too likely to get in a shop off the shelf. The price would be a shock to the average buyer, who buys lamps and starters only as a grudge purchase and only buys the cheapest ones there. You will have to order them from specialist suppliers, and they cost a lot more. I do like them, as the one I am using makes the lamp act like it is in a RS fitting - waits a half second after switch on then the lamp lights up dimly then at full brightness after 3 seconds, with no flashing.

@SeanB~1 That sounds interesting, do you have a picture of that starter?

Very nice! These electronic starters are great, I've known lamps to last at least twice as long with these!

I agree, I prefer Glow starters but I would like one of these!

I wish there were those for 120 Volts

There are electronic starters that should work on 120 V. Small (<20 W) tubes can run in series pairs on a preheat choke on 230 V, and there are electronic starters available for this (in Europe at least). They should also work for single lamp operation on 120 V with a simple inductor as ballast.

@Elliot_240 I did post a pic a while ago, but it is just a white starter on the outside, and inside pretty much like this one.

You can easily modify these by replacing the Zener diode inside. It go from the main thyristor anode via some resistor to the main thyristor gate, in the "4..85W" it is ~150..180V, in the "xx..20W" it should be about 70..90V type.

I like this kind of starters but I don't see them selling anymore except those instant start ballasts that have replaced them. I have made a Programmed Start Circuit for my room's T8 36w lamp since it has frequent switching and wears the tube out...

Quote from the description: "I've seen it preheat for up to 5 seconds when it's cold (ambient temperature) and only about 1.5 seconds when the lamp is still warm from operation"

If the preheating time of this starter is 5 secs when the lamp is cold and about 1.5 sec when hot, there is a high possibility that this starter relys on a PTC to preheat the electrodes. PTC usually have a very unreliable preheating and often even instant starts hot lamps with cold cathodes when hot restarting the lamps (Although the german Osram Dulux EL longlife, had also such a behavior when hot restarted, despite it have a very well made ballast and a very long life and also a very high initial price).
An electronic starter which have really a smart preheating mechanism (Timed preheating: Ie. the electronic starters of Shingout Electronic-Start ballasts), should have 5 secs preheating when starting a cold lamp and 5 secs preheating when hot restarting a hot lamp (In short terms, in a smart preheating, the preheating time is always the same regartless of lamp temperature and the period of the off time until turning back on).
If a hot restarting of a hot lamp, leads to a shorter preheating time or even a cold cathode instant starting, this is a clear behavior of a PTC.

@dor123: In preheat circuits (with magnetic series ballast) the preheat time should be 1.5..2 seconds, on electronic ballast it depend, how much current the ballast deliver in the preheat phase (for 2x the nominal arc current in current mode and/or 6V voltage mode it mean 1 second, 9V voltage mode 0.25..0.5 seconds).

@imj: Philips sell electronic starters, they are programmed start with 1.75..2second preheat time ("S10E" and "S2E").

I have used this starter plenty now, I have never observed an instant start with it, not even when I'm aggressively hot restriking a warmed up lamp a few times in a row with maybe 1 second of light between. The nominal preheat time stated by the manufacturer is 2.3 seconds at 20°C.
I noticed something, though I'm not sure if it's really caused by starter, as soon as you apply power the filaments don't light up immediately, they fade in *very* slowly, reaching their maximum brightness only shortly before ignition. The preheating time seems to depend mainly on ambient temperature which naturally rises during operation if the starter socket is located directly underneath the lamp holder (integrated, I hate that). Maybe that's why it preheats for a shorter period of time when the lamp is hot, a drawback of the cheap integrated starter socket design you commonly see nowadays.

That sounds good

We have here a magnetic version of programmed start ballast called Perfekt Start, it preheats allways too but it heats the filaments at normal speed (like a stuck starter would)

The slow heat up is because of the limited current the ballast provide. Cold filaments mean low resistance, low voltage drop, low dissipated power, slow heatup. As the temperature rise, the dissipated power in the filament increase, till it reach the incandescence, when the radiation power (proportional to T^4) balance out the filament power, so the temperature settle there, till the preheat time expire and the starter generate the ignition pulse.
There is no visible instant start with these, as the starter turn ON just in the moment, when the actual voltage across the lamp reach the triggering Zener voltage, leaving no time for the discharge to develop in the tube by even not reaching the full mains peak voltage (glowbottles have to be exposed to many 100's ms of the full mains peak voltage to heat up and close, while the instant started arc in the lamp may build up earlier).

These are indeed very good starter concept to lamps, really no wear from frequent switching at all.
But be aware, then these can not tolerate any capacitor parallel (e.g. the RF supression mounted into the fixture). The GTO inside the starter get killed after few starts even by 1nF (even when theat mean few ns long pulse, the associated high peak values and possibly di/dt are killing). Longer wiring seems to be OK, as it is distributed LC, what limit the peak current (to Vcharge/CharacteristicImpedance; even when that mean few A)

try this with your 18w sox

This looks like an Arlen Pulsestarter EFS600, that marketed in Germany by Palmstep, under a different brandname.

The same basic design is used virtually in all present day electronic starters from many manufacturers...