Another 12" Color Tube portable, This one a Teleton in the UK
 

Here's my latest TV set--From around 1972, a Japanese 'Teleton' VX1110 12" Delta-CRT Color set.

By UK Standards--a complete oddball, I used to think back in the day when the occasional one came for repair, that these were of American manufacture, due to the valve line-up, 31JS6A, 17DW4A, 17JZ8 etc. but found they were made by General Corp, Japan...

http://www.radios-tv.co.uk/wp-conten...0/Teleton1.jpg

http://www.radios-tv.co.uk/wp-conten...0/Teleton4.jpg

The pictures above were taken by its previous owner, Mike, (Also a UK based enthusiast) who has done a good job cleaning the set up and making it actually work!

The face reminds me of a Sears badged Japanese set I have but the cabinet reminds me of a totally different Japanese set I've got. The Japs dumped a TON of TVs in the USA market and used our broadcast standards in their country...They also naturally used (and adapted) many of our American tube types (I do find a random euro tube and or jap only type thrown in the mix sometimes).

Their design factors were a bit wacky by US standards too...Some of their control layouts were never seen in domestically made gear, cabinet design, materials, and chassis layout were out there too...Take all the oddest chassis features of the small independent US firms, grab some design influence from europe, add their own touches to it all, smash it in to the smallest box possible, often with the least metal in the chassis possible, add a bunch of card stock insulation randomly, take an odd assortment of Jap, euro and American parts with odd mounting schemes and make a TV out of it. If you work on 3-5 different tube Jap color sets there will be very few US built models that will look unusual to you...

For some reason the European makers that were heavy hitters in our HiFi console and table radio markets never bothered to import that kind of volume of tube based TVs (that or they did and they were such crap that none survived here since you NEVER see them in the states), so these Jap sets are usually the closest we 'Mericans come to working on euro tube TVs.

Well--I think maybe the UK set makers were too busy trying to keep up with demand, the UK only getting color in 1967-1968. either that--or there was some kind of embargo on export--just like there was on Import of any sets bigger than 19" till some time in mid/late 70's...

I doubt UK styled sets would have done well in America--most are rather boring wooden boxes with a tube in! Yours are at least stylish and are more furniture than the things we had at the time.

Here's a British made ITT CVC2 from 1969, Only UK made color set made with point-to-point wiring--

http://thumbs.picclick.com/00/s/MTE0...ry-rare-_1.jpg

It must've worked for a short time, as it looks like one of the tubes went to air, maybe the 17JZ8.
What does the power supply look like, as your sets have to be designed for 220/240 @ 50 HZ.
It looks like the CRT is a low focus voltage type, as the blue gun is in the 6 o'clock position.
It also seems strange to us, that the set only has a UHF tuner, VS the sets, were used to be familiar with. :scratch2:

Looks like Teleton took some cabinet design cues from Hitachi. I had a mid-70s junker console that had a lot of similarities in front.

This one looks like an NEC although at least the HOT is a
Toshiba tube. The tubes are typical US except the 17JZ8
was the common vert osc/amp in B&W sets. May be a Toshiba
chassis also but its been since about 1980 we stopped
most tube repairs. Age has not been kind to my memory !
Never liked working on tube Jap sets. With the exception
of some late hybrids most were worn out in a few years needing
lots of work. Add to that the unservicability & parts problems.
They sat on the incoming shelf along with GE sets the longest.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

The early Panasonic built small screen sets, Penncrest, Bradford and Singer didn't age too gracefully.
Brittle PC boards and tube sockets, convergence cloverleafs and waxpaper capacitors. They really had the strange tube types, 9AQ8, 15CW5, 9A8 etc.
You always had to chase for them, as you didn't repair that many of them.

That is very European styled and would thus have appeal on that alone. The Scandinavian style is very much in fashion for the MCM furniture nuts here. But.... a British set would be a HIT with any of us TV-nutz with that protruding, no-mask CRT. And now, for something completely different.:D

The pushbuttons look just like a set I recall watching when in London, 1980 whilst watching some totally wacky programmes and sipping Tennet's Lager. Four channels IIRC, BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Ch4(?) Perfect to watch the likes of Doctor Who, Red Dwarf or Monty Python -LOL

I recall Channel Master labeling Japanese sets also. Of course, Sears and Roebuck's wicked price-point placed many of these smaller color sets in circulation in our area.

Like Tom said, loaded with cardboard fishpaper. It shielded the lousy ABS plastic case from the tube heat and kept the coins and other crap kids would push into the long vent slots from landing on something energized. After reluctantly working on one, I NEVER thought I was finished:sigh:, like there was something else wrong preventing it from looking good.

And those wacky-ass tubes sure kept us from subbing them to make SURE we were done. Id call out a number and the boss would say: "sounds like a bastard" A lot of those frame-grid euro-types from Amperex and Mullard were actually improvements as described in old issues of the PF reporter.

With small cars, the USA's big 4 took a ham-fisted approach, producing legendary lemons because they could not make money on them. American TV makers did not make too many survivors in small-screen color sets for the same reason. With apologies to Zenith and GE's budget-priced porta-color, Sony kicked their collective bums on that alone!

The Teletons that we saw here were generally pretty reliable. I do remember the 17JZ8 on the 12 and 14" portables did give trouble--probably as they were run pretty hard in a color set.

The 19" sets used a 21LU8, a tube of twice the power ratings of the little JZ8, which didn't give problems as I recall--not that we ever saw many Teletons anyway! Sadly these larger bulbs are not interchangeable, even though pin/pin compatable as the triode-sections are different specs..

Although oddball the sets used top-quality parts, and were well made. The caps are Elna electrolytics or Suzuki oil-filled things, with a few polyprop films around

Nothing shows any burning/discoloration or stress around tube-bases etc, and all tubes are still a good tight fit in the sockets. The HOT in its tin-box on the right with the 3AT2 is a pretty large thing considering the size of set, with a heavily potted overwind.

Power-supply has a Mains-Transformer 'autoformer' style having a tapping at 117V for the tube series-heater string, and a small overwind giving 250V from the 230V input for the main +B. There's a couple of isolated 15V rails and the CRT heaters also from this trans.
In this set--All the tubes in this one were made by Toshiba, although I'll be replacing one or two with some American ones, as I pulled the top-cap off the HO valve, and have botch-repaired it just to keep the thing working. I'll probably replace the luma and CDA output valves as well as the 3AT2 EHT Rec. because I have low brightness--even though the CRT Tests good.

Not sure who made the CRT, The green label in the pictures above has long gone. You're right--The CRT is a low-focus type--but strangely has a razor-sharp picture, just its too dark--a fault I'm chasing slowly. I normally dislike those low-focus tubes, nearly always soft pictures....

I am lucky enough to own an ITT CVC2 exactly like pictured above. The A56-120X CRT was quite soft when I got it, but found a really great one and its made such a huge difference to the picture. One sold just recently on ebay for a completely ridiculous amount, and I have no idea why these old sets are making this sort of money these days.

There's two small issues I need to sort out. I need to replace the A1 pots as they are a little intermittent and do something with the focus-control. It currently as made, has a 'Metrosyl' resistor from the final-anode 25KV down to 6KV focus, this part is varying its resistance and seriously affecting focus, especially during the first 10-30 minutes use.

I have NO idea where I would get a Metrosyl now for this, so will probably end up doing a little redesign and use a more conventional focus-pot...

The collectors over here would probably go potty for a genuine Roundie, I know I would!

9AQ8 = PCC85, 15CW5 = PL84, 9A8 = PCF80....

All European valves! The American numbers are odd to me--the valves most certainly very familiar! Only Japanese set I think we saw with Euro valves was a Sanyo, those were pretty good as I recall...

Zenith had NOTHING to do with the GE-portacolor. If you've ever watched a Zenith 15Y6C15 (their first small screen color set) it is basically a console chassis shoehorned into a tiny cabinet, and puts out a picture as good as any good console (heck it looks better than some consoles). All Zenith portable color sets I've seen were pretty well on par picture quality wise with their console cousins...And almost as heavy! :yikes:
Comparing or lumping together a Zenith portable with a GE portacolor is like comparing a Ferrari to a Yugo...
The jap small screen sets usually fell somewhere between Zenith and GE on picture, but were close to GE on price, and thus were a good initial value.
The jap sets as I understand it were a lot like RCA portables...Good preforming in the beginning, but after a few years an unreliable dog that didn't want to make a picture as good as when bought even with much coaxing.

So--Here's a question....

What would be considered to be the best Tube Type/hybrid color set say from the late 60's early 70's in USA, both for all round reliability and great picture...?

Zenith and RCA