[JCFitz]

BTW.Another weakness of the MItsubishi sets from the early 90s to mid 90s was electrolytic capacitor leakage.They actually leak out of the bottom of the capcitor usually on the negative lead.By the time the set develops a failure usually lots of them are leaking.I've changed 50 plus on big screen and 35" Mitsubishis and it's not uncommon to have to change 30+ on those as well as clean up corrosion and repair damaged circuit traces on those.BTW the 80's sets didn't suffer from this problem.I haven't seen leaking ones on 1996 and newer Misubishis but I had to change many high esr electrolytics on a 99 model last year.BTW my mom has a 1987 Mitsubishi that is still going strong.It came out of a beach condo in 2000 after the HV bleeder failed.So it wasn't played much until my mom started using it.It has been played 14 hrs a day or more for mearly 6 years now and the tubes are still going strong. The big tube 35" Mitsubishis seem to have much better tubes than the projos.I've seen many all the way back to 1987 with excellent pictures on them.I only saw one worn out 35" tube and it still had a good enough picture to bring $100 at an auction.I get used projo tvs all the time for nothing and sell them for $300 plus.I've had a lot of Magnavoxes where nothing was wrong except contaminated coolant fluid(big problem with Magnavox).The late 80s ones were problematic with high falure rates for the flybacks and having to replace the whole sweepboard to get it and another problem with the mid-late 90s ones is that now the high voltage divider blocks are starting to fail and they're NLA.Stay away from 2000-2001 Philips Magnavox.They put nearly all the small signal processing on a tiny board that is very high failure.Now the high voltage blocks mentioned from RCA for 169 chassis have become not available in OEM and the generic replacements are problematic.And mid-late 90s Zenith have a good picture but they are junk when it comes to reliability.Also they have poor high voltage regulation and the picture tends to bloom on bright scenes especially if the orginal flyback has been replaced.You can't get the exact one that was in there.All replacements are just that,not OEM.Sonys from the mid 90s had good pictures but the tubes are short lived.The worst ones are the 2002 models.If you see a 2002 Sony and it has solid color pin bases rather than clear and a 1.2 filament resistor near the flyback instead of a 1.8 ohm RUN as fast as you can.There was a bulletin and all the CRTs had to be replaced as well as the resistor mentined plus 2 tiny surface mounts.If the mods are done with clear color base tubes you're probably ok but the flybacks and HV dividers are high falure regardless.Sony has great picture quality but their reliabilty has gone to the dogs.