A few more European sets.

[AndrewM]

I was fortunate to get hold of several old TV's just weeks before they were due to be thrown out. I discovered them while searching for parts for some of my other old sets. They all came from a TV repair business which is in the process of having a big clear out of their old CRT TV's and parts. Sadly, I have missed out on rescuing some extremely rare Australian sets from the mid 70's and a lot of parts that have already ended up in the bin.

Amongst the rescued sets are these rarely seen 1975 model Blaupunkts and Siemens sets. They all share a common chassis the only difference being appearance and features. Two of these sets have ultrasonic remote control but I don't have the remotes for them.

I may have the names and models mixed up as the backs for the sets have been swapped about at some time.
This first set is a Blaupunkt Manila. Tuning is via the touch sensitive numbers on the control panel.



This next set is a Blaupunkt Colorado, a top of the line set with remote control. This set has a very modern look to it despite being 34 years old.



The next two sets are the Siemens versions models FC396 and FC399






A view of the chassis:

[Sandy G]

Kewl....

[tritwi]

It seems we in Italy had very similar tv sets. I have a Colorado Blaupunkt but it is quite different in the control section. It has remote, 19 channel presetting and it can be programmed to turn on and off by itself or turn on or off a lamp connected to it. Are Telefunken and Grundig tv sets also popular in your country?

[AndrewM]

Hi Tritwi, the scans you have posted look to be of a later model chassis using an inline gun CRT as I can't see any convergence circuitry. Also the magazine is dated 1979.

It is interesting to see how the Colorado model evolved over that period of time.

When colour TV was introduced here in 1975 a lot of European models were imported as they used the same standards. In many cases they were expensive compared to the locally made and Japanese sets so they did not get a large share of the market.
The European brands continued to be sold since the 1970's but only in limited numbers compared to the dominant market share held by the Japanese manufacturers.
Some of the European brands sold here (many till quite recently) include:
Autovox, B&O, Blaupunkt, Graetz, Grundig, Korting, Loewe, Luxor, Nordmende, Philco, Radiomarelli, Saba, Siemens, Telefunken,

[tritwi]

Hi Andrew, I think we had the same brands during those years. Since we introduced color in 1976 we have very few color tube tvs here. Do you have any color tv based on hybrid chassis? I particularly love the Telefunken sets. I would love to see more of your collection...

[dr.ido]

In my experience - Keep in mind that my perspective comes mainly from the early 1990s onward by which time these sets (and Australian and Japanese sets speaking more generally) were already old, but at the time any working color set was still relatively valuable and many many 70s sets were still in use:

These European sets seemed to show up in "pockets" in some areas more than others (though I have never personally seen a Philco or Radiomarelli). They had a reputation of unreliability with many people, though I can't say that this was deserved. They seemed to have a polarising effect on people. Some prefered them over all other sets, others outright refused to work on them. While I have known quite a few people who absolutely hated Sony sets and refused to deal with them, I've never met anyone who hated all Japanese sets.

The only hybrid sets I've ever seen here were those using the Decca 33 "Bradford" chassis sold under Healing, Decca and possibly other names (I'm thinking HMV and Baird, but I may be wrong). There may have been others that I have never encountered.

As a kid back in 1990 I remember buying such a 22" Healing along with 3 random hybrid B&W sets at a junk auction for $8 (my parents weren't happy). This was a testament to how much the techs in the area hated Hybrid sets as at time any other dead color sets would bring at least $30-40. Around this time I saw a fire damaged (charred wooden cabinet, melted plastic parts, but still producing something of a picture) Philips K12 bring $80.

I never did get that Healing/Decca going (though I did have varying degrees of success with the B&W sets). They are all long gone now and while I don't really miss those B&W sets I wish I still had that Healing.

[tritwi]

Hi! Philco color sets here in Italy were initially made by Salora then Blaupunkt. They started with the well known FM100 chassis driving PIL tubes. They were quite reliable. I couldn't say the same for Radiomarelli and its cousin Magnadyne (Seimart). Since they are italian brands they were quite popular even if people having to invest a huge sum of money for the first color tv was more oriented to german brands (Grundig, Telefunken and Saba, just to name few). We had very few hybrid color tvs and most of them were located in areas where you could receive color programs from foreign countries. We in Tuscany could receive Secam programs from the near Corsica, while in the north of the country the channels from the near Switzerland (Pal) and Telemontecarlo (Secam) could easily received. Most of the early color tvs sold here were from Philips and were multistandard. A friend of mine gave me a beautiful and rare Braun FS1000 hybrid color television but I was a kid and I completely destroyed it... It had two transformers in the horizontal/hv stage and one of these (the one who generated the high voltage) was shorted. I remember this tv was really huge and had a white cabinet. Here in Florence there also was a company who used to buy and modify tv sets from Zenith so we had few (useless at that time) color roundies and bw sets. On some bw models he used to make its own cabinet and install a Zenith chassis inside. They had a completely european appearance but were Zenith in the circuitry. They were also branded Zenith or more commonly Radiobell and Bell Telephone.
Amongst the most popular italian brand are Indesit , Brionvega ,Rex/Seleco and Mivar. Brionvega have a special (in my opinion not deserved)fame for their design. In the pictures above few of my sets

[tritwi]

In the pictures: Philips Mediator (chassis K6), Loewe Sensotronic, A bunch of portables, Toshiba-Itt Schaub Lorenz-Telefunken (Chassis 712)

[tritwi]

In the pictures: Zenith roundie, Nordmende dual screen, Bang&Olufsen Beovision3

[marcel]

Hello Andrew,

Many Blaupunkt folders on this website.

http://wegavision.pytalhost.com/blaupunkt.html

In the Netherlands are this sets rare, i found 1 in the last 20 years.
This is the first Blaupunkt with a full transistor chassis.
http://www.marcelstvmuseum.com/photoalbum87.html

Regards,
Marcel

[dr.ido]

Many of the sets that you have were sold here at least in limited numbers, though you do have some unusual sets that I have never seen before. Nordmende was one of the more popular European brands at one time, but I have never seen one of their dual or quad screen sets. The earliest Philips sold here was the K9.

One of the reasons that more sets weren't directly imported was that we used to have some TV channels allocated in the FM band. These channels were only used in rural areas, those of us in the cities did not have this problem. European (and foreign market in general) sets could not receive these channels unless their tuners were either modified or replaced. Indeed all the photos that I have seen of the Philips K9 from elsewhere had pushbutton tuners while ours were fitted with a local VHF turrent tuner. Up until the early 1990s it was quite common to see TVs and VCRs marked with warning stickers stating they could not tune these channels.

As we are essentially a big island in the middle of nowhere there was no way to receive color TV from other countries before the introduction of color in March 1975. As such I doubt I'll ever see a roundie or any other 1960s set here (well unless I import one myself from somewhere, but I am not that rich).

There is a Bang & Olufsen Beovision MX 2000 at tonight's junk auction that I will hopefully get. If I get it, it will be my first B&O set. I have seen them before, but in the past they were too expensive for me.

[tritwi]

Hi dr. Ido,
I simply love all Philips sets. While nowadays chassis K6,K7,K8 and K9,KM1 and KM2 (I own all of them)are quite difficult to find,they were once popular especially K9 and KM2. K11 is very similar to K9 but with all the alterations needed to accommodate the new 20AX tube. They were wonderful sets and despite they are now more than 35 year old they still have incredibly good pictures. K12 and K12Z were even more popular but in my opinion not so reliable. Bang & Olufsen is one of my favorite brands. Their sets are incredibly reliable and well done. Unfortunately the model you hope to get has just the appearance of a real Bang & Olufsen. The chassis should be the F11 or F14 from Nordmende. At the time the MX range was introduced they had not a suitable chassis to fit in that cabinet so they adopted the compact Nordmende-Thomson chassis. They altered it to make it work with B&O remote (beolink 1000/beovision video terminal) but the results were not so good in terms of reliability. MX1500 (the only portable B&O has never made) has instead a Philips (anubis?)chassis. If you're searching for real B&O sets remember that the only not completely genuine B&O are the following models:M20,MX1500,MX2000,MX3000,MX4500,MX5000,MS50 00,ME6000,LE6000.
The older models are all original B&O as from MX5500 ahead. You recognize "fake" B&O if have a look at the back. In non B&O models the scart socket is placed horizontally. In original models you have two scart sockets placed diagonally and also din connectors for motorized stand, powerlink connections and y/c connector.

[AndrewM]

You have an impressive collection tritwi. You have some nice early sets which never came here to Australia. The only exception is some early 1970's sets that were privately imported.

As mentioned by Dr Ido, the only hybrid colour TV here was the English Decca 33 chassis. They were available as fully imported Decca models and were also sold here under the local HMV and Healing brands in 20", 22" and 26" screen sizes.

I actually have a Healing Chiltern 22" that uses the hybrid Decca chassis. I've posted the pictures of it below. It was in a bad way as can be seen from the pictures. I've managed to get it displaying a white raster but it still needs a lot of work before it's operational. Around 70% of the resistors on the timebase panel have needed replacing due to being out of tolerance. I haven't even checked the other panels yet.

[AndrewM]

Marcel - Thanks for the links, it makes interesting viewing. I now know a little more about the early Blaupunkt chassis.

Tritwi - I am a fan of Philips sets myself and have a good collection of them ranging from the K9 (the earliest available here), K11, K12 up to the KT3 and KL9 (K30 equivalent) models. I'll start a new thread one day on the Australian variants.

The Philips K9 came here in two versions, the earliest was the K9A (Australian made chassis had the A suffix) using a VHF rotary tuner and the later K9A-2 which is the same as the European K9 with push button tuning. It took a while for an Australian version of the electronic (varactor) tuner to be developed hence the use of a mechanical tuner.

If you go to this thread, http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...d.php?t=230182 some of the Philips sets I have as well as the Blaupunkt Toronto.

Here are a couple more sets of European origin. I think they are getting quite rare as I haven't seen any information on them online.

The first is a Korting 20". This set was missing a power regulator module but after much searching, I have been lucky to find one recently.



The next set is a Swedish Luxor Dukat 20". I rescued this set despite it missing the timebase modules, due to its rareness. I may one day find modules for it, otherwise I will attempt to build replacements myself.

[AndrewM]

Marcel - I have been a regular visitor to your site for about a year now and I am very impressed with it. It is an excellent online record of European sets.
You say that you have found only one of these early transistor Blaupunkts in 20 years. I had no idea they had become so hard to find. I feel fortunate to have saved the ones I have. Have you seen the Siemens versions of these sets in the Netherlands?