an old guy that lives across the street[i help him out from time to time]has an old quasar color tv thats nearing 40 years old.i wouldnt even mention it but the picture is unreal!he has a set of rabit ears on top,gets 4 channels,and he thinks this is gods creation!i have to admit, the picture this old set displays is wonderful.is this the norm for old quasars?if so im going to keep my eyes open for them.

I know nothing about TVs, but in the 70's a HS friend's father who owned a large retail appliance store told me that Quasar was the best---period. He sold many brands, but he had 3 Quasars in his house.I have never owned one, but I pass this on. He knew his stuff and I certainly wasn't in the market for one ( being 15 years old), so he had no reason to bs me.

Ray

thank you for the imput juncers.what amazes is that he says hes watched this tv every day and never had the back off.you know,quality really was important back when.

The Qausar concept was a continuation of the Motorola products, as I have said in previous threads, one of the reasons for it's success was the smooth, no detail pictures that Motorola's were famous for, I had a chance to work on several of those beasts, they had a lot of solder problems on the motherboards, causing all kinds of weired symtoms.

As far as quality of products for the period, Even though I was an RCA guy, I think the Zenith's were the best built sets back then

I would have to agree about Zenith. That's why you see so many around. Those early Motorola "works in a drawer" (they came out in 68 and were still labeled as Motorola before switching to the Quasar badge a few years later) were VERY pricey. They were not cheap sets by any means. Your neighbor is lucky if the back has never been off and he's had no repairs, as that is NOT the norm for that set. (hell... ANY set for that matter) You won't find many around tho.... they were pricey to begin with, so there weren't alot in homes, and they were plagued with problems, and even pricier to repair. Most tv shops HATED them. I've seen a few with fantastic pictures, but again that is not the norm for ANY Motorola set. I had one that has just been shipped out to a fellow Aker. Had the most beautiful cabinet on any set I've owned, and it had a fantastic picture. However it broke after a few days use, and even with the help of a fellow Aker I was not able to get it going. (I have limited repair ability) Hope the Aker who it was sent to gets it going tho, and will post pix.

My friend that had the local tv shop here tells me that the Quasars he sold years ago were great. He said they rarely came back for repair.

On Quasars, the 19" sets with the plastic front overlay (1975 or so), for some reason in my opinion, have a BEAUTIFUL picture. Color actually looks like the early phosphor RCAs with I & Q demodulation (CT-100, 21CT55, & ilk), although the Quasar is neither. The chassis wasn't too nice though as I recall. Lots of intermittent problems and bad connections. Poor alignment was always a problem (tunable ghosts, beat patterns, etc) But it was only that particular 19" set with the smoke plastic that had the incredible picture. All the others seemed to have a flat picture with mediocre detail. And my other Quasar COMPLAINT was the sharp edges on the chassis metal, and the works-in-the-drawer that always jammed. Slice your finger on the springsteel "blade" catch to release the drawer, then poke the module contact pins deep into the flesh of the thumb :rant:

Charles

Motorola sold their TV business to a Japanese company in 1974. The Quasar from 1975 is likely a Japanese set.

The mid-70's and later Quasars were made by Matsushita, the company that makes Panasonic...however I believe they were still made at the Franklin Park Illinois factory where the Motorola Quasars were, weren't they? All of the Matsushita ones I have seen seem to be still working OK or have easily repairable problems. They still kept the Motorola names "hue" and "intensity" for the color controls even on the Matsushita sets.

Chad

When Mashushita (quasar) took over the motorola tv's there was a clear quality increase. But I stand by my original assessment that the Motorola color sets were less than spectacular.

The one I'm talking about doesn't look Matsushita.. It had the copper colored metal chassis with a lot of modules. Wasn't the first Matsushita the Supermodule set (c. 1979)? Then all the ones before with the JA, F, and etc modules Motorola?

Charles

I worked at a Zenith dealer in the early 80's that had been a Motorola/Quasar dealer earlier. I saw a lot of old quasars come in for service. The first ones after the Matsushita takeover were pretty much the same. Then there were some ones that looked like a cross between a Matsushita and Quasar, they still had a similar drawer, but had different modules. Then some completely Matsushita things came along in the late 70's. Thats when this particular shop switched to Zenith I think.

There were three kinds of Motorola Quasar AFAIK. THe first ones had a wide drawer and were all solid state (in the mid 60's!). After that came a narrower drawer with about the same electronics in it. Along with that came the "Quasar II", a low priced set with 4 tubes in it. It was built in the same kind of drawer as the newer solid state set. I should mention that all there sets had a power supply chassis in back that was not part of the drawer. The Quasar II had a damper and HO tube back on the power supply chassis. There was also a module in the drawer with 2 sync tubes on it. There were 19" table model versions of all of these with no drawer, too.

All the boards were removable, and you could fix most problems by unplugging the modules and plugging them back in. The solid state ones would blow up the horizontal output module a lot. The Quasar II would just pop HO tubes. They would break the glass! This seemed to happen more when the set got older. It would be really expensive now. Nevertheless, IMHO the Quasar II was more reliable that the more expensive solid state set.

I owned a Quasar II myself for a while, and it had the most bizarre failure I have ever seen. A carbon resistor shorted. Anyone ever seen that? Anyway it put some fairly high voltage (400v?) from the tube circuitry on the 21.5v regulated b+ line. The solid state parts didn't like that too much. I actually fixed it (with a big bag of transistors from Radio Shack), but it didnt have any chroma after that because it blew up a couple of IC's. Later on I found it a chroma module.

Those sets matrixed the signal back to RGB and fed it to the CRT grids, rather than mixing chroma and luminance in the CRT like most old sets did. I never saw one with a picture I would consider outstanding.

Charles- Yes, those modules you mention are the Motorola ones.

John

Have year, model or picture of 60's solid state drawer tvs?? Pictures please.

1968 Motorola model WL859FP, Granada Pecan cabinet. Retail 679.95

This Moto was assembled in April, 1975. Has a sticker that says assembled by Matsushita electronics Franklin Park, Illinois. Has all identical components as my Motorola made one from early 1974, it even still says "Quasar a product of Motorola, INC" on the front control door. Matsushita must have been using what parts were left over instead of switching over completely to their designs in late 1974.
Maybe someone here can clarify this, but about 20 years ago I was told by a retired Motorola engineer that Matsushita had suddenly canned most of the engineering staff as well as people in r&d and assembly soon after the buyout.
They originally said the jobs were secure then let the hammer fall after the purchase. I was told it left a lot of hard feelings and people out of work.
The fellow that I heard this from had retired several years prior to the purchase so I am not sure of the facts and would like to hear from someone that is "in the know"

Motorola Quasar sets get my vote for the first really reliable color tv. They came out in 66 or 67 and were 'way' ahead of the market. Maybe not the best picture, but easy to service and many are still out there!! I sold a ton of them. Wish I had one for my collection.

I had a late model Motorola Quasar 19" hybrid. Unfortunately it was too far gone for me. Lots of rust & corrosion on the chassis plus the crt was real weak. It had a black matrix tube which should have made it capable of a great picture. But that chassis sure seemed rinky-dink. Inside it was sad looking, really. Not much of a chassis. Later I found an early 80s Panasonic 19" in a ditch. From the outside the 2 were very similiar. The sticker on the back said it was assembled in Franklin Park, though I found another sticker inside that said Mexico. Anyway, the newer set wasn't modular & it, too, went to the dumpster.

I had assumed that Motorola was making its own picture tubes but apparently not. The older set had a tube with an EIA number that comes back to Westinghouse. I didn't know that they ever made color tubes. As for the newer set, that crt was from Japan.

I saw that exact early Solid State WL859FP model as in Captain's post, sitting in the day room of a nursing home... Is it worth going there to see if it's still there? Doubt it is still there, as this was 1991.

Charles

You never know Charles, might be worth looking into! Sometimes those old sets get put in a storage room or basement and forgotten. Then again, minutes after you saw it, it could have been tossed in a dumpster! Like my stuff in NC!! :sigh:

Here is a pic of the '68 working today, my youngest was watching sesame street on it!
It works pretty good, but my Zenith combo is the preferred everyday set in the basement...

This is our second-row daily watcher, a 1972 Metz color tv set. In Germany Metz is a very reliable brand. This model is a hybrid set with a 90° delta shadow mask (A66-120X) and was famous for its fantastic contrast-rich picture. Our first daily watcher is a Metz color tv set too, bought in 2003. Today, Metz is one of the two brands which produce tv sets in our country.

P.S.: it is a PAL color tv set with a tint control. NTSC is greeting :D

Today, Metz is one of the two brands which produce tv sets in our country.

The other one would have to be Loewe, Grundig are now out of the race but I still own one from '94 & it needs some work on it.

This is my daily watcher & I'm working on a Philips '29 Flatscreen circa 2000 to be the main set.

Been workin on quasars since about '81. That one in Captain Moody's post is a TS-915, Moto's first SS set that orig. in '67. It marked a return to RGB drive to the crt and good dc restoration. A variation of this is the 21" TS-919 in a table top cab. that uses the same modules as the 915 except sans drawer - the modules are on a flat slide out fold down chassis kinda like first gen Zenith chroma - only not. These sets have only a coupla ic.'s and a ton of fairly generic type xstr's - even the hot's are nothing special. They are fairly reliable and can make a good picture when tuned up - the agc - noise gate adjustments are real interactive though. There is also a resistor in the brightness control ckt. that goes bad alot. I'm starting to see alot of leaky old Motorola transistors on the IFpanels lately. Next up is the TS-929, 931, 934, 938 series sets. These are also known as "Quasar II". These are easy to spot as they are a 4 tube hybrid set with a completly new set of modules and a lot of changes during it's life span. The oddest being the TS-938 that borrowed it's vert. and horiz. modules from the TS915/919 chassis and had no tubes and a completly solid state switching power supply, the first one I remember seeing in a domestic set. These were kinda rare even 25 years ago - I got One!The final Motorola Quasar series was the TS-94x sets. These had a whole new module complement and were probably the most reliable. I've got a 942 port. with no back i use as a module tester. Actually all my Quasars see some duty as module testers. This series of sets was in production when Matsushita took over. I haven't kept up with those later sets. I've actually been collecting these things for about 20 years. Why? No idea. (well, they were plentifull at one time)

Bringing back an old thread here. Im curious if anyone has a TS-919 chassis. Ive seen pics of one in the service manual and they look really neat. Id like to see one of those. Ive really become interested in motorola TV's over the last year. Im trying to learn all the details of the different chassis. Id really like to see one of those WID hybrid Quasar II's someday as well. Ive got a few color motorola's, two TS-915's, two TS-929's (4 tube hybrid type), and an all tube type TS-921. I really enjoy these sets. The picture is very nice on them too, so I can't knock Motorola's as being TV's with a blah picture. Then again, my eyes are getting worse. My glasses are getting thicker everytime I go for my annual eye exam...........

I forgot about the 919 - I seem to recall it was a set of way too expensive modules trying to be less costly by using a smaller picture tube.

The first all solid state set had patented color demods that processed the luma and chroma in a single circuit where the luminance was the common-mode current and the chroma was differential. There were three independent sections for red, green and blue. This was theoretically fine, but in reality there was non-linear interaction that gave a different "gamma" curve to the picture luma and chroma. As a result, the pictures had color that was different from anything else on the market. Not bad, just different.

Quote - Captain Moody 1-16-2006 9:14am

...Maybe someone here can clarify this, but about 20 years ago I was told by a retired Motorola engineer that Matsushita had suddenly canned most of the engineering staff as well as people in r&d and assembly soon after the buyout.
They originally said the jobs were secure then let the hammer fall after the purchase. I was told it left a lot of hard feelings and people out of work.
The fellow that I heard this from had retired several years prior to the purchase so I am not sure of the facts and would like to hear from someone that is "in the know"

My apologies for being sentimental with these threads. Captain Moody is not wrong, middle management was hit hard because there was a glut of middle management before the buy-out, but the real story is still more complicated than that. People were very racist about the Japanese in the early 70s and what the Japanese brought to Franklin Park was a steady progression of strict discipline. I heard that before Japan's 1974 purchase and management decisions, the Motorola workers in Franklin Park on the line were subjected to some really rough conditions. Things I can not describe on this public forum. There isn't a company today that deals with buy-outs, fairly, in my opinion. But the 1974 buy-out was horrible for those workers who were let go because life long employees in a single company, and post WWll pride was still the norm unlike today. Lay-offs were unheard of at middle management level.
Obviously no union to protect them. It wasn't emotional fair.

Subject matter interesting and very topical. The fact is that in the years'50 and 60 'the TV SET, like other equipment, were built to last over time. I imagine that, especially the RCA them built with specifications "MIL" that is, as if they had equipment for military uses. And I am convinced that the selling price of TV SET CT 100 was below the real cost. in practice they were made only 5000 units and virtually "on hand". a craft production. unthinkable for a giant like RCA. were real masterpieces.
it should be noted that many brands build their own individual components. resistance from within the electrolytic capacitors, valves, transistors, IC, etc.. etc.. , Here in Europe were philips and telefunken, then there are the industries which assemble. that is trying to market individual components and then built apparatus as saba, nordmende, grundig to name a few.
There are positive and negative things about these two philosophies, Who manufactures everything from whether the resistance to kinescope, could have someone they are not up to quality. who assembles what they found on the market may be free to choose what is best quality. That's why we have TV SET 30 to 35 years that work perfectly today. but we know it's all theory today. today the factory with the concept of savings and limited duration, is unthinkable today manufacture a TV set that lasts 50 years and more. a real disaster for the factories, is news these days hesitate for a TV SET sealed. that is, you can not do the service for repair as impossible to open. then we think the manufacturers of components, or build circuits "custom", that is marked with symbols that did not match or shortly after the cease production and thus forcing you to throw garbage in your equipment.

Actually, in-home consumer electronics design differs from military in a couple of ways:

Military gear must stand up to much rougher environments (similar to automotive electronics). Home consumer gear, on the other hand, should last a decent length of time in a home environment without needing repair.

In designing TV sets, it is necesary to trade off cost vs. lifetime. By comparison, military gear must perform flawlessly for a short period of extreme stress, and regular maintenance can be planned to keep it prepared.

A prime example of the difference is plastic-encapsulated transistors, which initially met some mil specs, but (some) were found to fail in too short a time for consumer gear. This lead to the development of "pressure cooker" tests and revised epoxy formulas to qualify these parts for both consumer and military use.

Hi,

The early TS series Quasars were truly engineering marvels. They had quite a few finicky issues regarding repairs. Also, many TV shops then weren't very ready for repairing these early transistorized sets. The test equipment needed for troubleshooting these sets cost boatloads of cash. The sets got more reliable later in the line by the 1975 Panasonic takeover. I feel like Zenith in the era was more worth the prices these sets sold for new. I still love Motos and vintage Quasars.

A major difference in electronics(in general) now than the past is that most of the critical functions are in integrated circuits(some containing millions of transistors). These are not repairable(but luckily-very reliable). The good thing about this is that modern electronic items can do many more functions than was done in the past. Try to build a VCR, personal computer or cell phone using vacuum tubes(or even individual transistors). There has been gain, even with the reduced serviceablity.