'70 Zenith 12" tube type B&W

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by OvenMaster

. When the picture started to have the CBS eye look like an egg, I tossed it.

Tom

You didn't necessarily have to discard that TV if it had vertical height and linearity controls on the back (if I remember the layout of my own 1978 Zenith). If yours had a vertical oscillator and output tube, a replacement should have cured the problem. However, if the tube was one of those oddballs they don't make anymore, and with vacuum tubes being so difficult to find these days, or if the problem with the set was caused by a chassis fault such as an off-value resistor or capacitor, it wouldn't be worth trying to repair. Today, a TV repair shop (what few of them are left) will charge an arm and a leg just to look at the set; the repair charges (parts, labor, overhead, etc.) on top of that could be high as well. I once took my Aiwa bookshelf stereo system in to a local TV repair shop for repair of a problem with the cassette decks. The estimate for repairs was $175. I got the unit back from them the next day, not wanting to spend that much money on a stereo system that was already obsolete (my system was already six or seven years old at the time). I would not dream of spending any more money on this system today, as it is now nine years old and definitely not worth repairing. I bought a used stereo cassette deck a few months later (after the decks in the stereo quit completely) and patched it into the system. Works great. I don't use it much except to transfer cassettes to CDs, but it does what I want it to do. I only paid $20 for the deck (got it from John Kendall's Vintage Electronics: http://www.vintage-electronics.com), which beats paying $175 to have the stereo's internal decks repaired.