Silencing a Buzzy Cree LED bulb.

The $12 Cree branded bulbs that HD sells are great. They are bright, have good color, they dim and turn on and off reliably with old style pushbutton X10 dimmers but when they are on an old dimmer they buzz something fierce. When on a new style dimmer they are much quieter but I bought some especially to put on X10 dimmers.

This, is a bulb who’s silicone coated envelope was broken in the packaging that I didn’t notice till I got home...

so the fact it has no glass on it probably means it’s even louder (and take note, I dont believe this is an isolated power supply and even if it were it’s probably 70+ volts across all those LED’s in series so you could definitely hurt or kill yourself with this, thats why I’m putting it into a fixture very high up where it doesn’t matter that it’s damaged or what it looks like)

and this:

is what I filled the base with to shut the noisy thing up with. And boy is it quiet now. I dont know what that will do to thermal issues in the power supply, but I just mixed that entire tube and poured it down the top of the bulb letting it coat all the electronics. Once setup it’s as silent as I could wish for.

It really shouldn’t be necessary to break the bulb off one to do this, you could drill a small hole in the metal base, there is room in there probably to do so without hitting anything if you were careful. Probably, but dont try it unless you can see what you’re doing and wish to ruin a lightbulb in a spectacular and potentially dangerous way. And then you could fill it with proper non-conductive thermally conductive potting compound to do the same which would probably then increase the life of the bulb... If it dies a horrible death sooner rather than later I’ll be sure to write it up.