This could be the end of consumer electronic repair

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by vintagecollect

Most of the existing TV shops promote a throw away situation . I brought an older toshiba solid state to a shop for repairs, the repairs weren't done, and the the guy complained it was an older set, rude attitude for older repair guy with experience, talking himself out a job. The era for most people to find a Great TV shop that will at least try to fix just about anything seems mostly long gone. I'm amazed at the big money people spend on newer TVs when there's hardly any repair shops left and few companies probaly offer long term support for parts. Most great sets from the seventies are just existant in brochures and catalog pictures only.

I miss the days from the late '80's to the mid '90's when I would walk in any given TV shop and the place would be packed with TV's of all brands and ages for repair.

What shops we have left were not around in the '70's and wouldn't know what to do with an older set if they had one. Even when there were older guys left around here, they did not want to work on anything over a few years old and would usually turn people away at the door. Most shops around here stopped taking in tube sets by the late '80's or early '90's. I have a friend who recently got out of TV repair after 35+ years and I'm always joking with him about getting help to fix my tube TV's. He lets me know real quick that he's not interested and that he forgot (on purpose) what he knew about the old stuff. He probably has too many memories of fixing older sets just to have them come back in a week with a totally different problem. Many times, the customers think the whole TV should be guaranteed, not just the work performed.

From what I can tell, most shops left in my area only take in large screen sets (LCD, plasma, RPTV, DLP, etc). A large chunk of their money is made on up-front check-out fees. There is one shop left, that I know of, that will still take regular old CRT sets. I get all his "junk" and it's almost never anything over a few years old. Back when I was getting junk there from the mid '90's to around 2000, 20+ year old sets were more common than newer models. I guess that was the time period when customers were refusing the repair estimates and letting the shop junk the set. The owner told me that older TV's are rarely brought in anymore.

[zenith2134]

I once asked a repair shop on LI if they had any tube tv's for sale. They showed me some modern CRT sets, and I replied, "No, I mean tube-chassis sets".

The owner says, "Tube-chassis? Are you kidding? No, haven't seen one in over 20 years!" And laughed at me, lol. It was memorable for me

[bgadow]

I know of a couple guys about my age who are in the TV repair business and I really feel sorry for them. One of them is in a family business and they did finally get in to major appliances so that should keep him going. Most of the repairmen I've met (and we should all go out and meet them while we can!) are at retirement age or in many cases well beyond. I think some of them just keep at it for something to do.

The age of the disposable car is on the way, don't worry. The average 5 year old American sedan isn't worth repairing after what I would consider a "mild" wreck. Chinese cars are coming. Good luck finding those parts in a few years. Chrysler & Ford are now discontinuing parts ASAP. Last week I needed something for an '01 Cherokee and it's NLA.

Personally, I've fixed several things around the house lately that were quite easy. Replaced the oven element in the Whirlpool electric stove; replaced the front lower drum guides on my old GE dryer. Easy to find the parts online, plenty of DIY'er information out there. Compare this to trying to get my refrigerator fixed a few years back, before all the frozen food thawed out. First guy, who drives by my house on his way home every day, said the soonest he could stop by would be mid-morning the following day. Second guy, a customer of mine, gives me the same story. Either could have made some money off me that night, with a little gumption.

[radiotvnut]

It's sad to say; but, most of the old TV repair guys / antique radio collectors that I knew have now passed on. Most of them were able to keep their hobby going up until they died. About the only "old school" TV repairman I know recently got out of the business after about 35 years. He's in his mid 50's now. He has little to no interest in the old stuff, though.

Since just about everyone I knew locally is gone, I get to pester the people on here, LOL!

[caddisgeek]

[QUOTE=radiotvnut;1985636]That's a good point about automobiles being one of the few things that people choose to repair. Most people don't have an extra $30K+ stashed under the mattress to go buy a new one. I do wonder when we'll see "disposable automobiles". [ /QUOTE]

We already do

Called Daewoo and Hyundai

Cars used to be made to last 40 yrs, these will go for 10

[radiotvnut]

I know this elderly lady that still drives a '68 or '69 Dodge Dart. She bought it new and has no plans to get rid of it. She also has a late '60's H.H. Scott stereo that I repaired years ago and now it's back in my hands for repair again. Her son tried to talk her into buying a new car, stereo, etc. and she told him real quick that she wanted no part of that until her old stuff could no longer be serviced. She has no old TV's, unfortunately.

[merrylander]

We were sticking with CRT type TVs until the local eleactric company fried two by pushing the line voltage to 149 volts during some kind of change over. I repaired the 20" Toshiba simply by replacing the whole main board. I figured it had been stressed enough that even if I replace bad parts more would fail. The big 27" Sony is sitting beside my workbench simply because no one would service it here. They all said bring it in - the damn thing weighs 85 pounds and I had our handyman carry it down to the shop, I can't pick it up. One shop offered to pick it up for $100, but advised me that in all honesty it would likely end up costing more than a new set.

We have a GE freezer downstairs that is older thn dirt - still runs. The dryer is a 22 year old Whirlpool that I recently overhauled. Rebuilt a 25 year old garage door opener last year. Great place for parts www.repairclinic.com, even got parts for our neighbors 30 year old dishwasher - she is 86 so we kind of look out for her.

The big box stores pi$$ me off because they sell brand x this year and brand y next so you can never get parts.

Regarding the 'people being meaner' post, as one who used to be a road warrior you can't pay me to get on a plane anymore. You would have to put me in irons to get me on Southworst. If we can't get there by train we don't go.

[radotvguy]

The days of a tv repairman are long gone . There are no more guys here in NJ that even know of tube chassis tvs .Most of them are either retiried or dead . There are two shops that i know of still repairing stuff , however its newer stuff and mostly warrenty work . One of the shops plans on closing soon . I think the problem is , you have to remember a shop has overhead like paying rent(which is high here ) and other related buissness fees . So a repairman cant repair a tv for 20 or 30 bucks . If you give someone a bill for like a hundred bucks , they are probably going to say keep it and they will buy a new tv at walmart for a couple of hundred . Recently newer tvs have come down in price and most people feel if they get 3 to 6 years out of , then junk it and buy another . Thats just the way it is now , a throw away society . Make it cheap and inexpensive . I dont know of anyone making a good living repairing tvs except for guys that are doing it out of their houses and even that is not a great amount of money .

[B Stable]

These posts have been very interesting to read. I discovered what most of these posts have said many years ago. The best thing that you can do for yourself is what i do. (1) Do a little research before you buy certain (expensive) items. I realize that can be tough to do but there are ways. A certain consumer mag has a computer generated chart that tells you various areas of a car that prove reliable or unreliable. These charts are generated by people that actually owned that car. You will quickly see a pattern if a certain area (part) is bad it is usually is bad for several model years. There is a reason why certain Japanese makes are highly rated. Compare a Toyota Siena to a Chevy Astro. Remember these are NOT opinions, but actual results of what owners dealt with. (2) the less obscure an item the easier it will be to get parts/repair/someone who knows how to fix it. (3) I THINK THE MOST IMPORTANT...Learn how it works,read the owners manual, and maintain it properly. As most of you have stated "Things just aint built the same anymore" So you can't abuse them or you will be buying a new one & those hassles. You have to change your oil more than once a year, and that new home theater 7.1 won't last long with that stack of People magazines ontop of it.

[jhalphen]

Hello Gentlemen,

The four previous pages i've just read are some of the most depressing reading i've done in decades.

Wouldn't it be great if some movement came along totally boycotting purchases of modern junk with everyone buying up quality vintage items from E-Bay or elsewhere....

Well, anyway, many of you know that i live in Paris, France. Since the 50s we say that France follows America with a 10-15 year lag in time, so some things that have disappeared in the US still exist here.

Picture this: a family run Radio/TV repair shop which has been in business for 40 years +. Father Jean-Pierre is 60-ish, son Frank is just short of 30. Their bread & butter business is being the Revox* (Swiss-built Hi-Fi) Service Station for the country, but they will accept tube radios, 150 lb ultra-hi-fi PWR amps from the 80s with weird schematics, and little old me's weird stuff, all the way to NTSC TVs.

Now i know that people like this are a dying species, and like the Panda, must be preserved. So:
- I supply the schematics
- Weird parts, like obsolete SONY ICs found in China
- Far out (for France) test gear i.e. NTSC 3.58 TV Test Gen.
- Pay handsomely (cash).

For them:
- I scour the Internet for schematics for weird stuff brought in by customers
- Occasionally purchase schematics & parts for them overseas as the shop has no CC on its account and they don't speak English.
- My expenses are deducted from my repairs.
- Take them out to lunch 3-4 times a year.

All in All, a win-win situation, i often have a workload for weeks on end where i don't have time to touch a soldering iron, they help me gain time with for instance tedious electrolytic cap changes. This is my small contribution to keeping a very precious activity in operation, if possible, for years to come.

Last Esoteric repair: 2 Indextron TVs, 3rd one is a stinker (dead PWR IC + corroded PCB tracks) but they will fix it in the end, not bad, eh for a French repair shop?

Here are some pictures of the shop for all you nostalgic actors & readers of this soon-to-be-forgotten trade.

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

*Revox, high quality Hi-Fi made in Switzerland since the 1950s (G-36 recorder for instance). The Brand is well alive and kicking, has a cult following of afficionados, famous for its line of 2/4 track 1/4 inch 3 head-3 motor reel to reel recorders, outstanding performance FM tuners with several "firsts" in the field such as digital tuning in the late 70s (Nixie tubes!) and Pulse-Counting FM demodulator.

Revox has a sister company specialized in Pro audio gear for Broadcast/Recording studios: Studer, complete name Willi Studer A.G. To this day, Studer A.G. manufactures some of the most sophisticated Pro-Audio mixing desks in the business, just have a look at the "Vista" series.

http://www.revoxonline.ch/

http://www.audiopro.de/live/studer_index.html

* I do not work, nor have ties to any of these two companies

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[mhardy6647]

What do people in France do with NTSC TVs? :-)

[bgadow]

If somehow I was in the neighborhood of that store I would have to stop in, even if I couldn't communicate with them! The "15 year lag time" might just be right. There was a similiar shop in the next town, with their showroom stacked full of tube radios and early TV sets. Probably the first time I'd seen a 630ts. Then one day I drove by and the place was empty. Sadly, I never introduced myself, just browsed the showroom then went on.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by jhalphen

*Revox, high quality Hi-Fi made in Switzerland since the 1950s (G-36 recorder for instance). The Brand is well alive and kicking, has a cult following of afficionados, famous for its line of 2/4 track 1/4 inch 3 head-3 motor reel to reel recorders,

Back in the mid seventies, my college radio station WCPR Hoboken had a really nice Revox reel to reel machine. A top brand back then.

[Kiwick]

Originally Posted by waltchan

It's not that the consumer appliances or electronics are falling apart, but it is the whole society itself that is falling apart. Picture this, our living standards back in the late 60s were much better off than today. People today are much more ruder than before. In addition to lower quality appliances, we are also experiencing lower quality music records. I'm a musician, and to me, music records have gone downhill quickly since Radiohead's OK Computer in 1997. I think the downhills in our society has got to do with the invention of Internet.

I totally agree... but what's falling apart is not just the American society... the whole world is falling apart...

Originally Posted by MRX37

First off, quality started going downhill well before the internet took off. Zenith in the early 1990's is a great example.

I think that reliability problems in older products were rarely intentional/planned, and were usually the result of hidden and often unpredictable manufacturing problems... 15GP22s anyone?

Here in Europe, Philips had a big problem in the mid-late 80s with their 45AX CRT, their first tube with square corners, it was meant to be a high quality product, yet many of them failed within a couple of years due to shorts and weak cathodes and some developed extremely poor focus in a matter of months due to an internal leak...

The difference is that those failures were not planned, they were the result of unintentional manufacturing problems, Philips quickly corrected them and offered free replacement CRTs even for out-of-warranty sets... the later improved 45AX was in fact an excellent, durable, successful CRT that was still used by many quality European TV manufacturers in the early 2000s

The other big difference is that, apart from the CRT, 90s Zenith and 80s Philips sets were nice, solid, well made sets... modern sets are 100% cheap junk... cabinets are made of thin junky plastic, CRTs are junk, speakers are junk, capacitors are junk, PCBs are junk, flybacks are junk, everything is poorly engineered and poorly put together with terrible ROHS lead free solder, and there are cheap nasty SMD components all over the place...

[jhalphen]

Hi mhardy6647,

You inquired:
"What do people in France do with NTSC TVs? :-)"

Well, if you want to collect TVs of any era, France does not offer too much choice! The country used first 30/60/120/180/240 lines but no sets survive except very, very few in museums or private collections. 441 line TVs are rare but can be found, then 819 lines with Positive video RF and AM sound, then 625 with the same RF scheme no one else uses, then color with SECAM. So either you limit yourself to an all-French collection, or you widen your choice by accepting the Euro-standard used by most other countries (625, B/G and I, UK) and of course NTSC sets.

By the sheer luck of birth, i have family in the US and first saw color TV in 1957 or 1958, which decided of my future career right there and then.

Thanks to modern wizardry such as the Aurora products (Darryl, how can we ever thank you enough!) and affordable digital standards conversion, it becomes possible to operate all the major TV standards anywhere on the planet.

Also, a TV is more fun when it works. All modern Western nations will be shutting down analogue transmissions between 2009 (USA) and 2012. Even if dual illumination is prolonged a bit because of political agendas, the global shutdown will take place fairly soon*, so i'm ready with a full array of LPTV transmitters + spares to face the great blackout.
I've chosen NTSC/M, PAL B/G + I in UHF and SECAM L
Vintage standards are 819/E and 405/A (modulators only, not broadcast)

*Interestingly, France and England faced the same problem 30 years ago when the 819 line (Fr) and 405 line (UK) services were due for closure. Both countries maintained dual illumination of the old + new standard for a full 15 years before ending the service. I can't see that happening in today's fast-paced world.
Final closedown of 819 took place in 1983, yes, it was that late!

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France