View Full Version : Sony KV-1205


zenith2134
06-19-2013, 08:16 PM
Has anyone got one of these Trinitrons? It's a pushbutton from '78... Scored it last summer at my deceased doctor's estate sale. It was a bedroom set hooked up to its built-in dipole, so it saw little use after the DTV changeover, and little use in general.
Tube is razor sharp, bright, and the guns all track evenly.

Ran into a little trouble with intermittent start-up. The channel indicator would light, and HV would attempt to come up, but then fail. The second attempt always turned it on.
The fix was to change out a 10uF electrolytic near the horizontal output transistor.

I went ahead and reflowed the soldering on the video out board when I acquired the set, since my KV-1215 and KV-1510 both needed this done.

But all in all this thing has a great pic.. the most contrast I've ever seen out of a vintage TV.
Photo is from the 1988 movie "Pulse"

Sandy G
06-19-2013, 08:31 PM
Sony CARED about quality then...And had a World-Beating picture to show for it..

zenith2134
06-19-2013, 08:34 PM
True! I wish my camera had the correct color gamut to show it off. I'm using a cell-phone camera. But yes, these Trinnys really do impress. I once had a Sylvania 25" metal cabinet from about '74 which had contrast like this one's got.. It was a delta gun configuration with black matrix face.
Most of my later TVs don't have the level of color depth and contrast that this little Sony does.

colorfixer
06-20-2013, 12:37 AM
I have the same set. It sat for a long time in the box in an AV room. The picture was very red before I re-did the white balance and testing the guns gave me excellent emission on all 3.

Dburger
06-20-2013, 12:13 PM
So this is what my TV's successor looks like...

zenith2134
06-21-2013, 04:40 PM
How is the KV-1201? Never owned one of those.
My favorite old Trinitron has been the KV-1712..that thing had some nice picture on it! (as my grandfather used to say lol). That one was a trash find years ago right at a beachfront house..Insides were quite corroded but it still worked. The horizontal size would tweak out erratically and I never did anything with it.

kx250rider
06-22-2013, 10:51 AM
The KV-1712 was probably the best picture I've ever seen on a Trinitron too. That one had a rock-solid power supply with 2SC867 regulator and only one SG613, as opposed to the hated one with the pair of SG613s (one regulator & one horizontal output). And if you upgraded to the 470FWB22, it was much brighter than the 470DLB22 original.

Charles