They do hold up quite well but when a failure occurs it is often the capacity but the ballasts and igniters are not resistant to fsilure. 70s-80s era GE was indeed good quality. They weren’t bad at all. They had excellent mercury vapor fixtures and great HPS fixtures. So far, the oldest GE’s hold up better than any other brand. I find more vintage GE’s than vintage Westinghouse’s. Westinghouse did make better bulbs when it came to mercury vapor, but GE’s fixtures seemed to be better at holding up. Don’t usually still see too many Silverliners nowadays. In some places I still see plenty of 1960s era M400 Mercury vapor street lights

I’m not sure about Line Materials and I don’t know too much about them. The ballasts GE used for their MV fixtures were very good. The ones from the 1960s through the 80s seem to be the best (I still see plenty of 80s M400R2 and M400A2 fixtures still holding up as MV’s as well). The older M250’s and M400’s by far are the most common vintage fixture to find in mercury vapor. GE always had very good MV ballasts. Even GE’s newest MV fixtures hold up very well. It seems that regardless of brand, mercury fixtures last longer than HPS fixtures. This even applies to Cooper and 2000s era AEL. Fixtures without igniters don’t seem to fail as much. There are even those cheap MV yardblasters still around. It seems that the ITT/Electropak yardblasters seem to last the longest. The Cooper/Regent ones weren’t too good quality and the ballasts in the MV ones failed frequently.

Of course there are people who have different experiences, some may say “yardblasters last longer than cobra heads”. NEMA heads seem to be just as reliable as cobra heads when it comes to the ballasts as I believe they use similar ballasts. NEMA heads just get vandalized more easily and the buckets sometimes crack over time. I see vintage MV NEMA’s still working all the time. The place where I live is all LED and was HPS prior. But even then, there were MV NEMA’s often used on barns or on home yards. NEMA’s weren’t used in my area to light streets usually. I’ve been to many parts of the U.S. and I’ve seen many street lights. For example, it’s very easy to find a NEMA head with a missing refractor, while it is pretty hard to find a missing refractor on a cobra head though you do occasionally see it. I’ve seen cobra heads with broken or missing refractors. Usually those are glass. Most cobra heads with missing refractors are just FCO fixtures with a clear flat lens.

Cooper and GE fixtures tended to get bad door seals causing bugs to get in. AEL fixtures don’t have bad door seals as often.

Here’s an interesting fact: the HPS fixtures used by SCE in So Cal up to 250w didn’t use capacitors. Just plain chokes to 150w, and HX-NPF for 200w and 250w. So I never see any very dim deep yellow/orange in their system.

That’s interesting. Capacitor free HPS.

Here’s an interesting fact: the HPS fixtures used by SCE in So Cal up to 250w didn’t use capacitors. Just plain chokes to 150w, and HX-NPF for 200w and 250w. So I never see any very dim deep yellow/orange in their system.

Acuity in general seemed to be poor quality in recent years. From failing HPS igniters to purple street lights.

Here’s an interesting fact: the HPS fixtures used by SCE in So Cal up to 250w didn’t use capacitors. Just plain chokes to 150w, and HX-NPF for 200w and 250w. So I never see any very dim deep yellow/orange in their system.

Are you saying a higher PF leads to less pressure broadening and more sodium-y light in HX ballasts? If so I might invest in some capacitors.

No, bad capacitors can cause lamps to go dim and yellow on certain ballasts. On other ballasts like chokes and HX capacitors only provide power factor correction.