Hi all, thought I'd post up an NZ made Pye 16" monochrome portable TV set of mine.

This particular set was made around 1969, is hybrid and does use a compactron tube in the fly back - 38HE7. This chassis called the T25Y was used in a number of Pye portables and covered various CRT sizes 12", 16" and 19 inches.

These were very popular and on the whole were pretty reliable and the layout was good which made them quite easy to service as well.

We had one of these when I was a kid as a spare TV and I used to sneak it into my bedroom at night and watch TV when I should have been asleep! :D

This one here I have had for some years, it does work and the CRT is good but has problems with the vertical. I did work on back in 2003 but haven't done anything on it since.

Some photos for your enjoyment for now...I will work on this again as some stage..maybe after I finish the set I'm currently working on :)

Cheers! Glen

Cool little set Glen! Seems all your sets are MUCH easier to service than most of our sets here in the US.

Me likey !

Very nice little set. It's great how the guts just fold right down so you can get at them. Somebody was thinking of the poor service man.

Thanks for the comments guys... I have to admit when I've seem some of your native TV sets I've cringed at how the internals can be so crammed in and I feel sorry for you guys trying to fix them at times but thats not to say how neat some of them look and how well they perform and if something ever surfaced here I'd grab it in a pinch!
I guess maybe our TV's were probably a bit more basic so a lower component count, but the fact that the chassis on the Pye does swing down does make it a breeze to work on :yes:

Yeah...Glen, you oughta tackle one of those ALL-TOOOB 8" RCA sets from '56...Little bit bigger than a box a reasonable pair of Boots come in...W/a fully-functional 1956 Tube TV somehow crammed in...I dunno if any ever found their way to Kiwiland or not. Kinda doubt it, sounds like you guys were trying to nurture yr own electronics industry.

Very fine example of an NZ portable TV from the '50s-'60s.

I noticed a space between channels 3 and 4 on the channel selector knob of your portable. Was that a special channel for public service, police, etc., or was it just a blank spot, a printing error at the factory (or Pye's parts distributor) perhaps? DuMont TVs of the late 1940s-early '50s here in the US had continuous tuners (which DuMont called Inputuners); the standard FM broadcast band was right in between channels 6 and 7. I wonder if NZ TVs of the same vintage had such tuners as well. Your set may not, but I'm thinking some of Pye's high-end consoles might have had continuous tuners covering the NZ FM band as well as local TV channels, and also a turntable. Were there such things as "entertainment center" 3-way TVs in New Zealand in the '50s-'60s as we had here in the US during that time frame?

Yeah...Glen, you oughta tackle one of those ALL-TOOOB 8" RCA sets from '56...Little bit bigger than a box a reasonable pair of Boots come in...W/a fully-functional 1956 Tube TV somehow crammed in...I dunno if any ever found their way to Kiwiland or not. Kinda doubt it, sounds like you guys were trying to nurture yr own electronics industry.

It is true about the 8" RCA sets. I have one and it is probably the most cramped tube set i have ever serviced. That Pye 16" portable is very smartly designed with the high heat generating components on the metal chassis so as not to cook the circuit board. Also, it appears to have a mains transformer built-in. Most American portables of that era were transformerless. I too am curious about the gap between the channels and it also looks like it has a channel one. Is that a wood cabinet?

That RCA sounds like fun! :yes::no: I'm trying to recall if I've seen one of those on here? I very much doubt anything like that made it over here to NZ unless if someone moved from the United States here and thought that their TV would work here.
I'm trying to think about some of the NZ portable tube sets that were difficult to work on, not that I've seen many but do recall a retired TV guy telling me all about this locally made portable that was so awful to work on and all crammed in etc, he hated them. Maybe thats why there are none left! I do have another couple of NZ made portables which I'll have to post up on here for your guys interest too :)

Yeah...Glen, you oughta tackle one of those ALL-TOOOB 8" RCA sets from '56...Little bit bigger than a box a reasonable pair of Boots come in...W/a fully-functional 1956 Tube TV somehow crammed in...I dunno if any ever found their way to Kiwiland or not. Kinda doubt it, sounds like you guys were trying to nurture yr own electronics industry.

Hi, to be honest I'm not sure what that spacing was on the channel selector, may have just been a blank spot or an error? :scratch2:

As far as I know we never had continuous tuners in any of our TV sets here.

Yes we did have some '3 in 1' TV/Radio/Turntable consoles but only in the black and white era, no colour models came with stereos built in etc.
Some of those have survived, I don't have any in my collection but do have a photo of one that I found in a second hand shop a couple of years ago, see below...Cheers!


Very fine example of an NZ portable TV from the '50s-'60s.

I noticed a space between channels 3 and 4 on the channel selector knob of your portable. Was that a special channel for public service, police, etc., or was it just a blank spot, a printing error at the factory (or Pye's parts distributor) perhaps? DuMont TVs of the late 1940s-early '50s here in the US had continuous tuners (which DuMont called Inputuners); the standard FM broadcast band was right in between channels 6 and 7. I wonder if NZ TVs of the same vintage had such tuners as well. Your set may not, but I'm thinking some of Pye's high-end consoles might have had continuous tuners covering the NZ FM band as well as local TV channels, and also a turntable. Were there such things as "entertainment center" 3-way TVs in New Zealand in the '50s-'60s as we had here in the US during that time frame?

The majority of our b/w sets had mains transformers but there were some that were also transformerless as well. The cabinet is wooden with black vinyl wrapped around it :) Yes I suppose the designers were thinking about heat dissipation on this model..rather than a bent charcoaled circuit board with bad solder joints and lifting copper tracks! :D Cheers.


It is true about the 8" RCA sets. I have one and it is probably the most cramped tube set i have ever serviced. That Pye 16" portable is very smartly designed with the high heat generating components on the metal chassis so as not to cook the circuit board. Also, it appears to have a mains transformer built-in. Most American portables of that era were transformerless. I too am curious about the gap between the channels and it also looks like it has a channel one. Is that a wood cabinet?