Magnavox 12" tube B&W TV from 1970
 

I recently came across this 12" B&W Magnavox tube TV that was made in Japan by somebody else and branded as a Magnavox. I first thought it was a Matsushita-built set, but then I saw a Sanyo label on the tuner. The CRT has a date on the label of 12/69, so this set was likely made in 1970. As far as the CRT, it has a Magnavox label pasted on top of a Toshiba label, and the tube appears to be the original, since it has a serial number label on it that matches the serial number of the set.

Cosmetically, it has some slight blemishes, but I've seen a lot worse. The handle had come apart, and I had to remove the chassis in order to retrieve all of the handle pieces and put it back together.

Electronically, the picture tube tests very strong and even at 3V, it still has good emission and cutoff, and I see no other evidence of repairs. So, this set was probably bought and used very little.

The set was dead, due to a blown fuse. So, I disabled the heater string, bypassed the fuse, plugged the set into a dim bulb tester and plugged the DBT into my Variac. I brought it up slowly, without any problems. I then enabled the heater string, bypassed the bulb, and the set produced a raster. It has some vertical height and linearity issues, and some horizontal centering issues, which is all probably due to those crappy gray capacitors, and I even see a few wax capacitors in there.

As far as the blown fuse, that probably happened when the person who sold it to me found it, after it had likely been sitting for decades, and plugged it in. As we know, old electrolytic capacitors often don't like getting woke up abruptly after a long sleep, and that's probably what popped the fuse.

I believe Magnavox offered these sets for a few years (the Photofact is dated 1967) and there was a similar Magnavox after this one, but it used a hybrid chassis (tubes in sweep circuits, solid-state modules for everything else) and I think that particular one was made by Magnavox.

If anyone knows for sure who made this set, I'd appreciate the information.

I'm no expert on anything but this appears to be very similar to the SEARS branded sets of the late 60s and IIRC I think they were made by Sharp?