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On 11/15/2014 Witchy Woman said:

About 5 years ago, I bought a prelit slimline Bethlehem lights tree from QVC. The second year, the center section of lights went dead.

I have the light tester thingy that was mention and did everything I could to figure out what was going wrong. Tried to get some satisfaction from Q and from BL with no luck.

DH tried to remove those lights and spent hours. Gave it away.

Next year, I bought an unlit tree and I will NEVER have another prelit. Ever.

Definitely agree WW! I am on my second expensive prelit tree. Last year the lights came and went, depending on how the tree sat. I'm sure it will be a game again this year tree, having to adjust it every time the lights go off.

Never a prelit tree again. For the money I will bear the aggravation of stringing lights.

[Ms X]

I did this a couple of years ago. I'm about the least handy person there is, but it wasn't difficult at all. It was a bit time-consuming on a smaller tree than yours. I then bought new lights and strung them. It is very easy to do, IMO. If you only have that middle section, it will be a piece of cake.

I got a new tree last year and added more light strands to it because I didn't think they were enough. I love the new "twinkling" strands. It's nice to have extra lights because then I have many that are always lit while some of the lights I added twinkle. White lights on trees can be very beautiful, but I always go for the multi-colored because I just can't resist.

[gardenman]

The LightKeeper Pro is your best friend if you have a prelit tree. It will help you to diagnose and fix nearly any problem you have. Visit their website and watch their videos on how to use it and then give it a try and you'll feel like a wizard as you restore the lights. I almost find myself hoping lights go out so I can fix them these days. It's a great little gadget that's available pretty much every place. It's the best $20 you'll ever spend.

[sciencegeek_1]

I have a pre-lit tree that was very good for several years. Then parts of the lights would go out. The tester/fixer thing worked somewhat, but after 2 years of having to weave a string into a dark hole halfway through the season, I'd had enough!

The tree still looked good, so I decided to take the lights off. Wow, what a pain. Those things aren't just clipped in, the wires are curled and pig-tailed around and around the branches, in different directions. I took a wire cutter to it, and ended up cutting about once every foot of wire. It took me 5 hours to cut all the lights off my 7 foot tree!

The next day I put 12 new strands of lights on it, section by section, using green twist ties to keep them in place in the back of branches, so now it is a brand "new" prelit tree.

I don't know how you would remove just part of the lights, though. On my tree, the only place the strings were separated were where the sections joined. So I would have had to do a whole section or none at all.

It was lots and lots of work, but well worth it to me. I chose to spend the time instead of money on a whole new tree--light strands are cheap!

Good luck, let us know how it goes!