View Full Version : Scored a 12" GE from 1979


Eric H
08-01-2009, 06:42 PM
I don't know if "score" is the right word for this but it's kind of neat.

This is nearly mint except for a missing section of the antenna, built in Jan 1979 it's a model number 12XB9102S, I bought it because it appears to have been built in the U.S. at Portsmouth VA, at least that's whats on the tag.

The chassis is an XB-C

It powers up great with a very strong CRT, I haven't hooked it up to a converter to see how the picture is but I have no doubt it works.

They actually had two of these, the other seems to be just a tad newer with a headphone jack and different knobs, I didn't look at it close up because it was inside a fenced area.

radiotvnut
08-01-2009, 06:52 PM
Nice find! The "XB" was a very popular chassis that was used in 12" and 15" GE B&W sets over a period of many years. I think it was first used around '73 and stayed in production at least through the early '80's and maybe until the end of GE. Most of the ones that I've had were in a cabinet like yours; but, I have seen a few in a woodgrain plastic case. The last one I had was a 15" Truetone that was built by GE. Mine had a bad flyback; so, it got junked.

zenith2134
08-01-2009, 07:22 PM
Found a 15" XB 'performance series' set like this in a guy's garage a couple of years back, but the crt had nearly no emission.

radiotvnut
08-01-2009, 10:58 PM
Found a 15" XB 'performance series' set like this in a guy's garage a couple of years back, but the crt had nearly no emission.

That seemed to be a problem I ran into a lot with these. Some would rejuvenate well, some would look like crap after rejuvenation and then fall back down, while others would do nothing. Also ran into 2 or 3 bad flybacks. The rest were easy routine repairs. IMHO, the solid state XB chassis was better than the tube SF chassis that was built during the same time period and often using the same cabinet as the solid state XB sets.

zenith2134
08-01-2009, 11:27 PM
Yeah, i had no way of rejuve'ing it or even opening it up since it was at a garage sale...but yeah the SF set I have here makes a lousy pic and the PCB has dark char marks since the tubes are mounted right on it...so if I were to use it heavily it would probably toast itself up

Jeffhs
08-10-2009, 11:44 AM
In the early '70s I had a Sears Silvertone 21" color roundie TV, with circuit boards in every stage except the horizontal output. The video output board cracked and broke one day when I tried to replace the 6AW8 video output tube.

I've been leery of PC boards ever since, and will not attempt to repair one again. I know Zenith all but swore by PC boards in their transistor radios, even the later Royal 500s (I believe the first ones were actually hand-wired on a metal chassis), and even their televisions of the '70s (think the modular Chromacolor II sets), but these were solid-state and did not require (actually were not designed for) service at the board level--the modular Chromacolor IIs and other Zenith TVs from the seventies until the end of the Zenith era were "repaired" eight times out of ten simply by replacing modules. I have two Zenith radios, a 13-transistor portable from 1980 and a clock radio of the same vintage, both with nearly the entire set on one board.

PC boards are great for applications where high heat is not a problem (read solid-state) and/or frequent repairs are not required, but not, IMHO, for devices that use tubes, especially tubes that run very hot such as horizontal or audio outputs. The extreme heat from these tubes weakens the PC board over time, eventually making the latter so brittle it will crack if you so much as sneeze on it.

Another major trouble spot in many TVs with PC boards was poor connections and/or breaks in the boards around heavy components such as flybacks, power and output transformers, etc. These sets probably would have lasted longer and been easier to repair had the larger components been mounted somewhere off the PC panel, say on a small aluminum chassis; however, this would add to the cost of building the sets, which in turn would be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher prices for the sets in the stores. The small 12" TVs with single PC boards were meant to be sold cheaply and were made to reflect their low price, not to be easily repairable when they needed service. Most of these sets were trashed at the first sign of trouble any more serious than a bad tube; even then some people (probably most) didn't bother getting it fixed if the set only cost them, say, $60 or less when it was new.

With the outrageous rates TV shops charge simply to look at a set, let alone repair it, I don't blame these folks one bit. The smaller tube-powered portables, IMHO, just aren't worth it. I would not have a recent-vintage (read five years old or less) solid state 5" TV/AM-FM radio repaired, either, as cheap as these are nowadays (if they can even be found anymore).

The only exception I might make to the above (having a recent vintage 5" TV repaired when it went bad, and was out of warranty) would be if I had a 5" Zenith battery/AC-DC TV with radio. These weren't cheap when new, although they show up at very reasonable prices once in a while on eBay. However, being Zeniths, these little sets were made solidly and to last a long time. It wouldn't surprise me if they were modular as well; if so, they would be easy to repair....that is, if one can find the modules (or parts, if these sets were built on single PC boards) these days.