Videokarma.org

Go Back   Videokarma.org TV - Video - Vintage Television & Radio Forums > Early Color Television

We appreciate your help

in keeping this site going.
Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #16  
Old 06-12-2011, 12:47 PM
mstaton's Avatar
mstaton mstaton is offline
"Book em Dano!"
 
Join Date: May 2011
Location: Caldwell, Id
Posts: 1,600
Some Sears sets were a pain to keep working. Our neighbors Sears console was always on the Fritz. Seems like every week there was something or other. It was from the late 60's or so. All tube. Not sure who made it. May have been Toshiba. I had inherited my grandma's Sears 20" color portable. It only weighed 10 kilotons. It was an all tube set built by Toshiba. The TV repairman that was at our house to repair our maggie said it was a dog. I could never get a good focus out of it.
Reply With Quote
  #17  
Old 06-12-2011, 04:17 PM
N2IXK's Avatar
N2IXK N2IXK is offline
Technohippie
 
Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Sittin' on the "Group W" bench...
Posts: 799
My parents had a 19" Sears color set that they bought around 1975 (their first color set!), and it lasted until 1991 with only ONE repair, a scratchy volume control that I replaced myself while I was still in high school. I think the chassis was actually a Toshiba, rebranded by Sears. Finally the CRT gave out, but the set didn't owe them a thing after ~16 years of daily use.

I worked in TV shops for a few years in the mid to late 80's, and the ones I remember seeing a lot of were:

Zeniths--Burned up 9-160 modules on the newer ones (we rebuilt the boards in-house), or open 4-legged caps on the older vertical chassis sets. Remember changing a few HV triplers, as well.

GE--Constant problems with the "griplets" used instead of plated-through holes on the double-sided PC boards.

RCA--Poor soldering particularly on the varactor tuner cans. And more than a few bad flybacks.

Sony--The usual "chain reaction" horizontal/power supply failure. The 2 SG613 GCS thyristors, plus the smaller one in the low voltage PS.

Magnavox/Sylvania/Philips--4 legged cap would go open, causing the HV to go to 50-60 kV. Usually arced right through the CRT neck into the yoke windings, neatly cutting the neck off the tube.

Sharp--Hardly a week would go by without one of these things on the bench. Poor flyback design would arc internally, sometimes burning through the case near the focus/G2 pots. Usually took out Horiz output, and PS regulator SCR. Sets apparently caused several home fires, and manufacturer provided new flybacks and a dozen other parts as a "meltdown kit" for free on certain models.
Reply With Quote
  #18  
Old 06-15-2011, 10:53 PM
rcaman's Avatar
rcaman rcaman is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2002
Location: mississippi
Posts: 745
Quote:
Originally Posted by ctc17 View Post
This is about what Im seeing with my massive collection of tube color sets. The RCA flys dont seem to be as bad as mentioned, maybe because its not that hot and humid here. The Zeniths are tough to fix, I have some I still cant get the HV regulation and color working right on.
I worked in a tv repair shop in the late 80s and it was mostly early solid state stuff. We changed a bunch of those T03 horizontal output transistors. (I cant remember the NTE number but there were around $13) Then we would bring it up on the variac while watching the E current. If it was cool we let it run for a few hours then shipped it. It was a bad day when the thing reshorted an hour later. We also changed lots of tripplers.
The Zeniths were always put at the back of the line because they were almost never a quick fix.
We also repaired VCRs, what a waste of my life that was! Changing belts and rollers, cleaning heads and replacing that LED that sticks up inside the tape.

It was a garage operation but the guy always had 5 sets a day to work on. $25 to check it out and it was usually under $50 out the door repaired.

I have never even seen a ctc38, they must have all died before my time. I currently have a 16, 17, 25 and 35. Those seem to be the most common survives.
ecg 165 and 238 were the replacement numbers
Reply With Quote
  #19  
Old 06-16-2011, 06:15 AM
cwmoser's Avatar
cwmoser cwmoser is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Dec 2009
Posts: 552
The business model today that is analogous to TV repair is PC servicing.

We make more house calls/business calls than accept PC's the customer brings to us.
Most times we can fix it on site but many times take more than 30 minutes. Sometimes I think that the cost to travel to the customers site, spend 30min to 1hr to examine the PC, and taking it back to the shop is not worth it - you can purchase a new PC for less. But the data copying, software installation, and deboxing/setup of a new PC is also time consuming.

I wonder if you TV repair guys in the 1970s charging $25 to travel to, spend 30 minutes looking over, removing chassis, travel to shop, repair time, parts, and take back and setup ... did you really make much money??

Carl
Reply With Quote
  #20  
Old 06-16-2011, 07:58 PM
Findm-Keepm's Avatar
Findm-Keepm Findm-Keepm is offline
Followin' the Rules...
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Posts: 2,832
Quote:
Originally Posted by cwmoser View Post
The business model today that is analogous to TV repair is PC servicing.


I wonder if you TV repair guys in the 1970s charging $25 to travel to, spend 30 minutes looking over, removing chassis, travel to shop, repair time, parts, and take back and setup ... did you really make much money??

Carl
I know 7 TV repairmen - guys that owned (and some still own) their own shops in the 70's - 90's. None of them are rich, and all will tell you they made money in the 70's and 80s, up until the advent of the disposable set, often called BPC around here.

Thanks to the ubiquity of the RCA "clone sets," all one had to do was get proficient on the most common problems. I won an old tube caddy on eBay a few years ago. It was funny because all of the stuff in it was the same stuff we carried back in the day - replacement circuit breakers, belfuses, degaussing "nickels", tuner bulbs, a few pigtail fuses, some 1KV power supply diodes, tunerlube (grease - not spray!) and knob springs. Those parts, plus a good supply of RCA, Zenith, and Admiral specific tubes, and you could just about service 90% of the sets in the home - it was the 10% you had to pull that you possibly didn't make much money off of, but it evened out in the end. I've gone on many $18.50 service calls in the past where we fixed the set in the home, and often the customer had another for us to take in for repair, or we were given the set for parts. We made money either way.


Cheers,
__________________
Brian
USN RET (Avionics / Cal)
CET- Consumer Repair and Avionics ('88)
"Capacitor Cosmetologist since '79"

When fuses go to work, they quit!
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
  #21  
Old 06-16-2011, 08:14 PM
ctc17 ctc17 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2009
Posts: 1,615
$25 would barely pay for the gas to get the van to the customers home and back to the shop today.
I bet it was a decent living.
Reply With Quote
  #22  
Old 06-16-2011, 09:03 PM
bgadow's Avatar
bgadow bgadow is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: Federalsburg, MD
Posts: 5,814
Quote:
Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm View Post
I've gone on many $18.50 service calls in the past where we fixed the set in the home, and often the customer had another for us to take in for repair, or we were given the set for parts. We made money either way.

This goes along with what Howard Sams prodded shops to do: "Ask, what else needs fixing?" For years that was plastered on their folders, and the last TV shop I cleaned out had a sticker with that motto prominently located behind the counter.

The TV repairmen I've met may not have been rich, but most of them live in very nice ranchers built in the 60s/70s.
__________________
Bryan
Reply With Quote
  #23  
Old 06-18-2011, 11:40 AM
Phototone Phototone is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2010
Posts: 89
Back in the early 1970's, gas was under $1 a gallon, generally about 65cents, a new service van might cost $3000...probably less. So it was easier to make a profit.
Reply With Quote
  #24  
Old 06-19-2011, 11:12 PM
doogie812 doogie812 is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: White Lake MI
Posts: 76
RCA CTC-38 There were so many sold that there was a disperporitonate number of failures. Shopping carts of 6GH8A’s, flybacks, and 25XP22’s.

Zenith Arc and Spark in the High Voltage box. If the customer said the set was in the basement I was shear to bring the dental tools and corona dope.

Motorola Does NOT works in a drawer! I was never able to shop just the chassis!
Reply With Quote
  #25  
Old 06-20-2011, 08:35 PM
roundscreen roundscreen is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2003
Location: buffalo ny
Posts: 377
Motorola Does NOT works in a drawer! Now that is funny. What a great line. Look!!!! I have one and it works. But not sure how long...
Attached Images
File Type: jpg tv collection 2 005.jpg (51.3 KB, 67 views)
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
  #26  
Old 10-02-2011, 05:30 PM
KentTeffeteller's Avatar
KentTeffeteller KentTeffeteller is offline
Gimpus Stereophilus!
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Athens, TN
Posts: 791
GE Does Not Give Performance Television. (Big Grins). GE did give smoke well and excelled on Fire too.
Reply With Quote
  #27  
Old 10-03-2011, 06:07 PM
Robert Grant's Avatar
Robert Grant Robert Grant is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Feb 2008
Location: Monroe County, MI
Posts: 518
Quote:
Originally Posted by doogie812 View Post
RCA CTC-38 There were so many sold that there was a disperporitonate number of failures. Shopping carts of 6GH8A’s, flybacks, and 25XP22’s.

Zenith Arc and Spark in the High Voltage box. If the customer said the set was in the basement I was shear to bring the dental tools and corona dope.

Motorola Does NOT works in a drawer! I was never able to shop just the chassis!
Very curious, since I am getting into restoring a Zenith color roundie - What would you use a dental tool for?
Reply With Quote
  #28  
Old 10-03-2011, 06:20 PM
Electronic M's Avatar
Electronic M Electronic M is offline
M is for Memory
 
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Pewaukee/Delafield Wi
Posts: 14,758
Scraping dirt and carbon tracks off I'd imagine .....
Reply With Quote
  #29  
Old 10-05-2011, 07:56 AM
DavGoodlin's Avatar
DavGoodlin DavGoodlin is offline
Motorola Minion
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: near Strasburg PA
Posts: 3,400
If only I could write a book based on experiences of tube and solder jockeys, I would travel all over to do the interviews. Most of the TV-Radio guys in this corner of PA were veterans who learned electronics during WWII and Korea. I learned alot from these fellas as the vast majority were honest and shrewd buisnessmen. The 50's-70's really was a good time to make a living doing this. A new B&W cost $170 and the average repair was 35 bucks, the 19" color sets started at $380 and most repairs were under $100. Many stuck it out when transistors/modules replaced tubes, but left the business in the era of one-board chassis and black box TV's.

I also installed many antennas as I was the "young-un" that was crazy enough to climb roofs and towers. A Winegard antenna with a Blonder-Tongue mast amp and Alliance U-100 rotor was the workhorse setup that lasted. Rural areas were "cabled" in the mid-80's and that ended quick.

I first worked on TV's that were tossed in the trash dump or at the curb in mid-70's and soon after worked in "the business". I first worked for place that sold GE because they also sold appliances and sold Magnavox along with thier furniture. I also worked at places that sold Zenith, RCA, Sony, Panasonic, Sylvania and Admiral (until '77). We still looked at anything that was brought in. We dreaded anything from a department store like Sears, etc. Even the RCA's sold at discount stores were a variant of the ones sold by RCA dealers.

We called GE: "good enough" or "generaous electric"and porta color was "sorta color" GE got by on reducing component counts, compactron 12 pin tubes and cutting out some functions altogether. One positive, you could always get parts at a reasonable price and they were so simple you could always fix em. The CRTs always went soft early.

We called Magnavox: maggotbox due to the generally fuzzy pictures and poor color due to soft CRTs, The later chassis from 1976-on were better and usually only had bad solder joints.

Last edited by DavGoodlin; 10-05-2011 at 03:29 PM. Reason: was sent before finished
Reply With Quote
  #30  
Old 10-05-2011, 09:01 PM
wkand's Avatar
wkand wkand is offline
VideoKarma Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Everett WA
Posts: 260
Ah, TV repair in the 1970's

I agree to the letter with the by-brand problem descriptions. with one slight exception: I still have a 1968 Motorola tube set (not Quasar) that produced an excellent picture including flesh tones, once the old Motorola CRT was replaced. That set needs a focus resistor now.

I was in high school in the 1970's and we had a vocational electronics class that culminated in TV repair. We fixed small appliances, radios, car radios, stereos, as well as B&W and color TV sets from the 50's through the 70's brought in by students and teachers. We wouldn't allow sets from anyone not connected with the school. A few times TV shops gave us collections of old sets they had been storing that were more costly to fix than their customers were willing to pay. We sometimes combined working CRT's with chassis whose CRT's had gone out, converged them and gave them away. We fixed easy and difficult issues, never butchered a set, and had an arrangement with a shop for the tough dogs. We only charged for parts unless it went to the shop with the arrangement. Parts were very easy to get.

Our class had a full compliment of test equipment: O'scopes, Sencore CRT tester rejuvinator, Sencore tube tester, marker generator, etc.

I had a ball!!!!! Wished I'd been born 20 years sooner.

I used that experience to land a job as a bench tech for an electronics mfr (when there was such a thing in America), for whom I worked for 8 years. I now work in network design for a Fortune 500 company.
Reply With Quote
Audiokarma
Reply


Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 07:56 AM.



Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
©Copyright 2012 VideoKarma.org, All rights reserved.