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most shops are a total joke today. They don't want to help you and most of the time, they tell you the set isn't worth the repair. I could never understand that. Do they want the job? Arn't they hurting for business? No wonder they're dissapearing. They don't want to work on anything!
I remember as a kid I'd call up shops asking for tubes. The old guys knew right away what you were working on just by saying the tube number. "I need a 6GJ7" and the tech was like "you must be working on a zenith color set". Then they'd tell you "no, we threw all the tubes away a few years ago, nobody uses those sets anymore, but I might have some at home". They'd take your number like they'd call you back but they never did. There were a couple shops that still had a huge load of tubes, but figured they were worth a fortune. Me spending $15.00 for a 6HA5 back in 1994 as an 11 year old was a huge chunk of change for me. (way before ebay and the internet proved to everyone that TV tubes were worthless for the most part).
I can't tell you how many nice projection sets I've picked up from friends, family and even neighbors who claimed "the tv man" said "the main board" was bad and that it was $500+ to fix. They said no to the TV guy, called me to ask if I want it for parts or fix and keep it. For some reason though, they'd call the TV shop instead of me, take his advice and then go buy a brand new set and keep the bad one for me to haul away to "fix". They always played me for a sucker, let Doug have it for free, (he won't fix it) and he'll move it out of here on his own and we won't need to touch it! win-win they'd think. The usual every time, the convergence IC would short out and the convergence would be all over. What, $5.00 for the IC, solder it in and reconverge which is simple on a projection set. You had a perfect set and it only took a couple hours and a couple dollars to fix it. They'd always ask "did you fix it". Yeah, it works nice and the part was only $4.99. They'd get sick because they just foolishly spent $2000 for a new TV they didnt need!
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