Splitting a strand of lights.

[tealman353]

I have a string of bats that light up using christmas lights. They are all technically the same circuit. How could I separate the individual bats electrically?
Details: There are six bats on the string.
They plug in as one circuit to the wall.
The string as a whole operates on 120volts AC 60Hz.
There are 85 lights on the string total.
Each bat consists of 17 lights.
I am running these lights with the Olsen 595.
I wish to make each bat an individual channel.
I have seen people use a "Happy Holidays" sign for this purpose, so I was wondering how they separated each individual letter of the sign electrically.

Tim Ambrose: Inventor/Scientist

[Macrosill]

If there are 6 bats and each bat has 17 bulbs that means there are 102 bulbs not 85. The easiest to do would be to cut the string in half, 2 50 ct sections. Other than that go find some 35 ct sets at the store and put one set on each bat.

[Photovor]

If you're wanting to cut them down even further, be prepared for some work. For every bulb you remove, you'd have to basically replace it with the correct resistor, and that resistor must have the correct resistance (test the resistance of one of your bulbs) and then of course the correct wattage.

Far beyond what you'd want to get into... Any chance you can take the bats off the string and put c9's in them? That'd remove a ton of calculations.