1974 Warwick-built Sears 19" color TV - Videokarma.org TV - Video

radiotvnut · #1 01-10-2023, 03:45 PM

I found this 19" Warwick-built Sears color set at a flea market for $10. I was hoping it was a hybrid, but it turns out to be all solid state. Cosmetically, I think it can be cleaned up, but the volume knob is missing and the color and tint knobs are broken.

Electronically, I have not attempted to power it up and it uses a 19" Sylvania-built delta-gun jug. The biggest issue I see, so far, is a melted focus divider and there is wax dripping out of the bottom vent openings.

In all my years of fooling with TVs, I recall only seeing one other set like this and that was 30 years ago (I think that one also had a melted focus divider). From what I've heard and read, TV technicians hated these solid state Warwick sets and they were not very reliable (that could explain why I've seen so few of them). I believe that Sears eventually dumped Warwick because of QC issues and in about 1977, Sanyo bought what was left of Warwick.

I'll check the jug and if it's usable, I'll try to repair the set. If the set isn't worth fixing, then maybe I'll at least get a good 19V delta-gun jug out of the deal.

zeno · #2 01-10-2023, 06:35 PM

We tried avoiding Sears but I did a few. You want to see a grown man
cry ? Tell him to bring it to Sears ! Even the local Sears tech hated them.
Seems no mater what you did to one it never looked right. The module contacts were trouble & the Hoz out area was way over complex also.
I thought these had the in line RCA jug but this one obviously is a delta.
Maybe a different model.

Sears parts story. Had a Toshiba built that had the 1st vert out IC.
Called Sears they wanted abt $45. Went to Sams & pulled one that
had the same IC & got the Toshiba part##. Called them it was only abt $10

73 Zeno

LFOD !

damen · #3 01-10-2023, 08:36 PM

Hated those Sears sets with the modules piggy-backed on top of each other! Someone once told me if you carried one of those sets into Sears for service they had a chute and slid them right down into a compactor.

dieseljeep · #4 01-10-2023, 08:49 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by damen

Hated those Sears sets with the modules piggy-backed on top of each other! Someone once told me if you carried one of those sets into Sears for service they had a chute and slid them right down into a compactor.

I worked on two of those sets, that weren't Sears badged. One was badged K-Mart and the other was badged Coronado! They both had that SCR type power supply. The problem with both of them.

Jeffhs · #5 01-12-2023, 12:21 AM

I had a Sears-badged (the set was likely made by Warwick) 19" roundie table model in the early 1970s, a trash find in my old neighborhood in suburban Cleveland. To my surprise, the set only had one thing wrong with it when I found it: the push-pull power switch was bad. I jumpered across the switch and the TV turned on immediately (well, after a short warm-up period for the tubes). It made a very good picture for a set from the mid-1960s, using a pair of rabbit ears as an antenna (this TV was made, IIRC, before April 1964 or so; I am guessing at the manufacture date since it did not have UHF).

This TV worked very well for me the next couple of years. Due to circumstances far beyond my control, however, I had to move in spring 1972. I brought the set with me and, to my relief and surprise, it worked very well at my new residence.

However, the set developed a problem (a bright white hum bar traveling vertically up the CRT) a few months later. I tried to repair it by changing the 6AW8 video output tube; this probably would have worked very well and cured the problem in a blink of an eye, except the only replacement 6AW8 I had had a bent pin. When I tried to insert the tube into the 6AW8 socket on the video PC board, I must have pressed down a bit too hard, as the next thing I heard was a sickening crunch as the tube fell to the bottom of the TV cabinet. The socket had broken out of the video PC board, so the TV was junk from that moment on.

This experience has, to this day, made me extremely wary of PC boards, especially very old ones which have become brittle due to heat. I do not want to go through it again if I can help it. I was very upset for a long time when this happened to my Silvertone color TV (my first color set) and, of course, I will keep my hands off PC boards from now on. These things are too darned delicate, especially when they get a few years on them. PC boards are good, but when they age they get brittle, eventually getting to the point where the least bit of pressure on them will crack the board in almost no time flat.

AlanInSitges · #6 01-12-2023, 08:18 AM

Those things used to come right out of the box with bad connections where those modules plugged in. We had a neighbor when I was a kid who bought a new TOTL console from Gambles, they brought it out and set it up, color was maxed out. Guy gave it a whack on the side and it cleared up for a couple of minutes, then broke again. A week later they brought out another new set and swapped for the dud. It worked fine for about a day, then same problem. New owners were trying to fix it with whacks. They finally let me, the 12-year-old neighbor kid, open it up and after poking around for a couple of minutes figured out the left-most module wasn't seated all the way. Pushed it down and set was OK after that.