Unfortunately, 12V 30mA is stated in error in some early service manuals but does not correspond to what's factory mounted in
the Beomasters.
They will not give correct function to the tuning discriminator lights, typically leaving the two just lit up showing nothing at
all and, since they don't provide the correct load on the 15V supply, they will in many cases cause the Beomaster to turn off
by itself intermittently and/or make it hard or completely unwilling to go into standby or change to specific sources, depending
on the general state of the rest of the Beomaster.
B&O issued a tech note about this.
They will also give different light output since some of the Beomasters lamp circuits are balanced and current controlled where
others are just supplied from a plain analogue source so it won't look as the designers intended.
I've had Beomasters sent to me for service where the only faults was that wrong wattage lamps or lamps of different wattage
were mounted.
The lamps mormel link to are cheap china types, not high quality long-life types and they will
require replacing quite often.
Some of the lamps in this series of Beomasters are living a fairly hard life and if the load on the supply is
too light, which it will be if mounting lamps with too low wattage, the voltage will be too high and lamp life
will be short.
Plus they won't fit into the lamp holders, which again will allow them to vibrate ever so slightly and their filaments will
become brittle in no time.
People, who owned Beomasters through the 1970's and 80's, will remember that lamps were an everlasting head-ache,
and that was because the owners bought the cheap lamps supplied by radioparts dealers instead of spending a little more
and buy the correct and better ones from a B&O dealer.
I recommend you use long-life types only and of the correct wattage. Preferably types capable of handling a continous 15V DC, since
many B&O lamps are slightly overrun and will stay lit for hours. The three balance/treble/bass lamps are always fully lit when the
Beomaster is powered on and they form part of the electronic switch circuit, decharging the 15V secondary at switching off.
Correct lamps can be hard to find and the typical cost is about EUR 3/each (a little cheaper if you buy 10.000 pcs.) but
are, as J0hnbarker also suggests, available as a kit which also comes with instructions.
Martin