Question about Christmas lights.

I fixed the lights on mine that way for a couple of years then stripped all the old lights (which was a real pain in the arse) and just install lights every year like you would on a live tree

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I used my volt meter to test the bulbs but the volt meter goes off over the whole tree. Anyone habe any suggestions?

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Vague, very much so.

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Question about Christmas lights. by Chuckd
You're not talking about a volt tester are you?

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No, not really. There is a speciffic Christmas bulb repairer. It uses a volt tester but it also takes a bulb socket and shoots a low voltage burst through it and that repairs most damaged strands

Mine is green so you're good.

That thing is awesome. You can just plug in into any bulb outlet in the unlit section and pull the trigger and they come on. Have no idea how it works but it does.

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I used my volt meter to test the bulbs but the volt meter goes off over the whole tree

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Not sure what that mean exactly.

does it have standard miniature lights or LEDs?

One thing to check is that is the plug. It may have fuses in it.
Plug fuse replacement

It may also have a fused light which will typically have a different color base (white). Find that bulb in the string and pull it out, that may actually fix the problem. Here is a video that has something about that at about the 6 minute mark.

Prelit Christmas tree light repair

Meaning the volt meter indicated that the whole strand had voltage going through it. The troubleshooting videos I watched used a volt meter to troubleshoot but that doesn't seem to work for me because my meter tells me the whole thing has voltage.

It's a volt indicator. Thanks for the help. In the video you linked, she taught me that in addition to the fuses on the plug which I knew about, there are also "fuse bulbs". They usually look different than the rest and that was exactly the problem. I had two bad fuse bulbs.

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You can just plug in into any bulb outlet in the unlit section and pull the trigger and they come on. Have no idea how it works but it does.

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Light keeper pro. It's awesome.

Each bulb has what is called a shunt. When the light burns out the shunt is supposed to close so current will still go through the burned out bulb. Sometimes a bulb fails and the shunt doesn't close. You stick the light keeper pro in place of one of the bulbs and pull the trigger a couple of times and it closes all of the shunts that need to be closed and the string of lights will turn on. You then need to replace the burned out bulbs because if you get too many bulbs burned out in the string it will burn out the entire string of bulbs. There are normally 50 lights per string at 2.4 volts each for 120v. Each light that burns out and is replaced with a closed shunt increases the voltage to every active light in the string. Too many burned out lights and the voltage per bulb gets to a point it will burn out every light in the string. I had that happen to one of the strings in my pre-lit tree where I just used the light keeper one too many times without replacing the burned out bulbs. Had to replace every bulb in the string.

I do find it's crazy that it's cheaper to buy a string of 300 lights and steal bulbs from it than to buy 50 replacement bulbs.