Nice rectangular Motorola on eBay

[Eric H]

http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-MOTOROLA...QQcmdZViewItem

[jpdylon]

damn shame its in chicago. That set has a nice lookin cabinet, and would be well worth it if the chassis and CRT was good.

[kx250rider]

Somebody here was looking for one of those... Anybody remember who? I'll post this also in the TV classified. Looks like a nice one (a nice version of the worst color TV???)

Well, it was good enough for Dean Torrence of the 60s surfer band Jan & Dean. (I fixed one for him in the 80s)

Charles

[blue_lateral]

I wonder if one of these could be made to make a decent picture with a different picture tube? All I have ever seen had shot CRT's, and I've heard quite a few rumors they were that way from day 1. As I recall these have a solder dipped point-to-point wired chassis like a Zenith. I think they have that bizarre one-tube color decoder like an Olympic. I wonder how that circuit would work if the component values were carefully selected and so on.

Did any of you guys ever try to squeeze accurate color out of one of these things?

John

[jroberts500]

I wish I could have been you then! I would have loved to meet Dean Torrence.
I love most people from the past and especially those who can accurately remember the '50's, '60's, and '70's.
Could you tell us the whole story of how you got the call. What his place was like. What was he like? Was he smoking weed? I seem to recall Jan was the one who crashed the Vette at deadman's curve? Why would he have had such a cheap old TV back then? Did you ask any good questions? Did you hang out and look at his photographs? What else was in his house?
Anything you could share would be great.
I would have tried to hang out with him!

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by jroberts500

I wish I could have been you then! I would have loved to meet Dean Torrence.
I love most people from the past and especially those who can accurately remember the '50's, '60's, and '70's.
Could you tell us the whole story of how you got the call. What his place was like. What was he like? Was he smoking weed? I seem to recall Jan was the one who crashed the Vette at deadman's curve? Why would he have had such a cheap old TV back then? Did you ask any good questions? Did you hang out and look at his photographs? What else was in his house?
Anything you could share would be great.
I would have tried to hang out with him!

This was in the early 80s... I was working part time after school for Harvey's TV in West LA. They get a lot of celebrity calls because they're located in that area. The TV was in the provincial cabinet with doors, and was HEAVY. So I was along on the pickup and delivery the first time. Evidently, Dean had unloaded the TV to his dad, at a house on one of the streets just west of Century City off Olympic Bl; maybe Benecia Ave. It was a typical 1930s 3 bedroom house, with 60s furniture. Nothing fancy, but $1,000,000 these days due to zipcode. I never met Dean, only the Dad. Dean had bought the set new, I think, and he paid for the repairs since it pooped out on Dad right away. Harvey's Xeroxed Dean's check and kept the copy, for a little collection of such. Dean was there and did hand out an autograph on a subsequent visit, but I wasn't along on that one. In the end, they gutted the cabinet and put a 23" Chromacolor II in there.... A wise decision after the Torrence doorbell began to overheat with all the Motorola repair visits

Charles

[jroberts500]

Charles,
That's a cool story. Thanks. I would have loved to see that house. I bet alot of stuff there including the Moto were purchased with Dean's original music money.
Was it a remote control set? Did it have a real good picture when u fixed it?
What kind of cars were at his house? As a teen did you think it was cool to be there or did you think he was a washed-up old man like most teens would think?
Thanks, John

[kx250rider]

Originally Posted by jroberts500

Charles,
That's a cool story. Thanks. I would have loved to see that house. I bet alot of stuff there including the Moto were purchased with Dean's original music money.
Was it a remote control set? Did it have a real good picture when u fixed it?
What kind of cars were at his house? As a teen did you think it was cool to be there or did you think he was a washed-up old man like most teens would think?
Thanks, John

It was a nonremote set, as I recall. Also can't remember any cars in particular. I was a Beach Boys fan, so I knew who Jan & Dean were as a contemporary band to the Beach Boys, and I guess I was always a bit fascinated with celebrities at that age. But as a nerd, I was probably the MOST excited by fixing two sets for astronaut Buzz Aldrin .

Then it was fun to hoist a big old metal Zenith over a row of Ferraris in the garage of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli... Or yell to at Motley Crue's Vince Neil for screwing up the convergence on bandmember Robbie Crane's Panasonic projection set in the early 90s. Or when I fixed a VCR from Ronald Reagan's post-presidency Century City office. Looking back on all that, it was fun at times to be a TV man. But I had enough I guess.

On the subject of celebrity housecalls, I have to say that the kindest and most non-stuck up of any that I met would be the late TV actor Don DeFore (Ozzie & Harriet, Hazel), and the other would be the late Martha Raye. Those two stand out as just plain nice people. And Conrad Bain (Mr. Drummond in Diff'rent Strokes) took it in good fun when I rang his doorbell and demanded to know why HE answered the door and not Mrs. Garrett

Charles

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by blue_lateral

I think they have that bizarre one-tube color decoder like an Olympic. I wonder how that circuit would work if the component values were carefully selected and so on.

Did any of you guys ever try to squeeze accurate color out of one of these things?

John

You could NOT get really good color out of the one-tube "SODPIL" (Self-Oscillating Detecting Phase Injection Lock) as they called it, becuase there was insufficient G-Y gain due to its being taken off the cathode of that tube. When you turned the hue control, the greens could be made to go from olive to bluish-green, but a real strong green was impossible. Of course, it made green faces less likely too. Some chassis using the tube had a third color control ("tint") that adjusted the R-B balance to compensate for differences in the DC on the two plates. You could adjust this even on black and white programs to get a sepia or blue-tone image.