I bought the bulbs without the base, and just swapped the bulb out on each base. If I had to do it over again, I would do what I did at the end of the season, just cut the pre-lit strings out and hung regular bulbs on it... preferably LED bulbs. It's just too agrevating. I thought about pulling literally every bulb out, and seeing if there was an LED swap I could do.

I thankfully found this year that stringing the bulbs takes like... 5 minutes. If I have to do it every year, I'm still saving a ton of time.