Instead of the "Service saver" chassis made by Zenith, RCA decided to start the "Service maker" line of them instead!
All kidding aside, I used to love seeing those sets come in with fried flybacks! It meant good profits back then and an easy repair. This fly came out of my CTC 21 it was still working (somewhat) note the dripping wax, toasted plate cap lead and carbonized socket at the top (due to a numbskull that had no idea how to put the top of the hv cage back on properly!)
Remember the "no color" problem caused by the bandpass transformer having an open primary?
There also were other annoying problems caused by those incredible corroding coils on the earlier chassis runs.
Can anyone name some other problems/fixes that they may still remember?

Is there any practical way to substitute some flybacks with a more common or higher grade one?

Anthony

How about all the PC board problems. My CTC-16 had several hack repairs when I got it (and a ruined cabinet on top of that). I repaired more foil problems on the color board than I care to count. Then we have the hack repairs done before we got the sets.

I have always found RCA's tuners to be a bitch to clean. two cans of cleaner later, it's still not right.:mad:

The flyback problem is the worst for me. I had a Magnavox roundie clone of the CTC-11. I thought I had the flyback problem licked, then it went kerblooie on the test jig, during a G.H. Bush press conference on top of everything else. I never got to see a picture on the Maggie round screen. If AK (and the internet as we know it) had existed then, I would still have the Magnavox.

I remember my brother had a set that used that type of flyback.
It burned up too but we cobbled up some type of repair with silicone I think and he got a few more months out of it!

His actually looked a whole lot worse than that one.

Eric

My father bought a CTC 27 19" portable new in 1969 and we had nothing but trouble with the tuner and solder connections on the sync/horiz/vert board.
He finally sold it off in 1977 and replaced it with a GE with VIR (another troublesome set)
Still though, I like the old RCA sets with all their problems, Some had cool styling like my 21 or my portable 27.
Also, Once the original RCA flybacks were changed out with Thordarson replacements the sets became more reliable.
I used one of those in my CTC 21 so it should be good for a very long time, Especially considering the limited use it will see.

man, Captain Moody... that burned up flyback brought back some memories. I've discussed this in earlier posts but when summertime rolled around we were quite busy with the flyback jobs! My Uncle only replaced with Thordarson. It was always an easy repair for him and quite the profit maker. As for problems on sets.... I know my Uncle HATED the CTC-38 chassis. His opinion was that it was the worst crap RCA put out. They always had poor alignment, and toasted boards. And overall, a cheap feel about them. As for other brands, don't know of any specific problems, but know he hated working on Magnavox and Motorola tube sets. Zenith was pretty good, but I remember a set he had sold that was a DOG. It was a 19" 4 tube hybrid. That P.O.S. broke at EVERY oppertunity. It wasn't the same problem either. It was like it had a surprise on every housecall visit. He made a deal with the lady that had it, and he practically gave her a solid state chroma 2, because he felt bad about it AND he didn't want to work on it anymore. The 4 tube went from the back of the van straight to the trash......

got to thinking about some house-call memories and thought I'd share a few bad ones that I still remember to this day. 1 was a housecall job to a really old ladies house. She still had an ancient RCA B&W. If memory serves it was a late 40's model. I remember that it sat on it's factory stand that had the longest legs. Anyway.. it had a sync problem, so my Uncle changed the tube and while it was running the picture tube burned out. It was weak and on a brightner and it just "died" The picture tube tester confirmed it. He ended up telling the lady that parts weren't available anymore. He didn't want to put a new picture tube in something that old. Another call was on a Zenith roundie. It had no color, and just needed a few tubes. Set worked with a great picture when the tubes were replaced, BUT the flyback burned up a few days later. Man were those people pissed. They were sure we had caused it. Any of you guys that used to service sets "back in the day" surely remember those dreaded calls where you would service a set and the damn things would break with a "new" unrelated problem and the customer would expect you to fix it for free. That was the downside on working on some of these old sets that saw heavy daily use.

Oh yeah, I remember a few jerks back then that wanted warranty work done for a completely unrelated problem, That must have been why my boss hated tube sets!

The name goes on before the quality goes in. ;)

I enjoy hearing those old stories from the radio/tv repair days. Good to share them! I'm sure that if I was born a little sooner I'd have gone into tv repair but it was washed up by the time I got out of school in '90. One sorta story I have, about the time I graduated I came across 2 late 60s color sets at a used furniture store, a GE that never worked right and a Philco-Ford that worked great. Should have kept it, but I swapped it at another used furniture store for a Truetone multiband transitor set. I got a call about a month later saying they had sold the tv but the guy was having problems. I offered no warranty, of course, but I went to the guy's house just for the heck of it. Here is this guy, all he could do is yell, at the kids (and he had a boatload of 'em), at the tv, at the glass of tea he knocked on the floor, he yelled at everything but me. He had carried this Philco out to his shed so he goes out an gets it, its a fair size console, and he just picks it up and carries it in! I'm not screwing around with this guy! Anyway, all that was wrong with it was one of the kids had turned the horizontal hold control and the guy didn't have sense to know what to turn. I still wish I had bought it back from him.

HA! That is why many manufactures had those "hidden" doors. So the kids or whoever wouldn't mess with the controls! It was also a big selling feature when sets came out with the "one touch color" button. I sure miss the days of going on house-calls. I was only a kid myself, and by the time I would have been ready to go into the business, that part of it would have been all washed up as well. I would say up into the mid 80's it was a big deal to purchase a set. In the late 70's a nice Chromacolor console would have set you back $700.00. AT that time an extensive repair could have run about $200.00. Tubes were really expensive back then if you look at a Sylvania tube price list. (I imagine the mark-up was huge as well) At that time people usually only had 1 set, that saw allot of use. They may have had a B&W set for the kitchen and maybe if they had "a little money" a 19" color set in the bedroom or rec room. So they would weigh the pros and cons of having a usually 10-15 year old tube set fixed and risk another big repair within a year or getting a new solid state set. During the late 70's into the 80's it was also a great time to be in sales. My favorite memories of house-calls were in the fall. I'm in Nebraska and Football is really huge here (Cornhuskers) Many people would just run out and get a new set if the old one couldn't be fixed in time for "the big game", or if you could get their set fixed in time you got the HUGEST Thank YOU! It was nice when people would be happy, because many times a tv repairman was viewed in the same light as an auto mechanic (a necessary evil) Granted a sales / repair shop made most of their money on repairs. New sets were expensive, but the amount the dealer got wasn't very much. It was a fun time tho. You would open up and usually turn EVERY set on, so that was cool. Of course I liked messing around in our "used" section of the store and having all those old sets on which were all repaired and cleaned up for the sales floor. Anyway... enough rambling by me. For those of you who weren't into the business at that time, it was really exciting and I never thought it would end up like it is now, where a set is a "throw-away" item, much like a toaster.

About 30 years ago, while attending college, I worked for and with several TV repairman. Only two of them seemed to do ok financially. One had a seperate job delivering the mail for the US post office. The other had retired from the military after 20 years and had a part time security job.

This is the reason I became an electical engineer and not a TV repairman. The pay and benefits are much better. I like restoring old TVs, but never considered TV repair as a profession.

One additional item is that all of the TV repairmen that I ever knew smoked. The older ones had health problems because of it. What is everyone else's experience with this?

"Any of you guys that used to service sets "back in the day" surely remember those dreaded calls where you would service a set and the damn things would break with a "new" unrelated problem and the customer would expect you to fix it for free. "

LOL

I certainly can relate to that one because I for a time in the late 1950s was a Television Service Technician ( not a particularly talented one unfortunately ).

As I near the end of my working career I am employed as a computer and printer technician. And trust me the same damned thing happens to computer techs.

I recently reimaged a PC due to a corrupted Windows XP OS. Two days later the bleeping thing refused to boot. I quickly determined that the video chip had gone south and wound up having to replace the motherboard ( farking everything integrated mainboards in corporate PCs).

Naturally the department manager was on to my boss demanding to know why he should have to pay us for a failure that I caused ??

Fortunately my boss politely pointed out that I am one very talented tech and that If I said the mainboard was kaput then ...................

I work with a shop that specializes in older equipment...and we still do house calls and haul in the equipment or chassis to the shop if necessary. There is a lot of the 1960's and 70's audio stuff still in use...particularly the big old console stereos. Many times they haven't been used in a while because there was no one who would come out and work on them, replace needles, etc.
We have also worked on a fair number of jukeboxes.

There are not too many of the tube type TV's still in use out there...we did work on one about a month ago though, an Admiral, that also had a stereo and 8-track. Its last service call was in 1985 for a 6KV6 HV regulator tube. Another lady has a 27" Magnavox b/w, still working, but she mostly uses the record player part of it.

Our shop is not a full-time job for any of us there, we probably couldn't make an entire living just off of it, but we have been busy every week and really enjoy working on the old equipment and bringing it back to life.

Originally posted by jstout66
HA! That is why many manufactures had those "hidden" doors. So the kids or whoever wouldn't mess with the controls!

Like that was really going to stop the kids. That's like child
proof caps on asprin bottles. It kept everyone out except
the kids. :)

Originally posted by lynnm
"Any of you guys that used to service sets "back in the day" surely remember those dreaded calls where you would service a set and the damn things would break with a "new" unrelated problem and the customer would expect you to fix it for free. "


Yeah! they still do it today and it does'nt apply to
just TVs.

there are some RCA parts on eBay including one of these flys!

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3638&item=6115241661&rd=1