Magnavox Astro-Sonic Combo Is Complete

[blue_lateral]

Thats a beautiful set. Nice work.

John

Im still having trouble with blue tilt in the top portion of the screen, I can warp the lines like a sinewave but never quite get the vert convergance perfect. I spent the better part of the day going through the procedure, replaced the caps and a few resistors but nothing helped. Oh well I might have to live with it or play with it more when the snow flys.

109

Got the issue solved and if anyone else is having a similar problem replace the "diode cube" on the convergance board, replace it with single 1N4007's following the schematic.

One benefit of my combo is the amount of heat generated by the set. I got to watch a solid 3 hours of TV this evening and noticed the temp in the house went UP by a few degrees. Figuring the 550 watts thats sucked in maybe 2-5% is actually in the form of CRT light and sound to the speakers with the balance coming out as heat I figure this to be in the area of 1800 BTU of useful heat energy. Sure keeps the living room toasty especially now that our local temps have fallen into the 40s at night.

109

[Zenith26kc20]

Looks like a T933! I just sent my CRT to Scotty at Hawkeye after it got tired (original one). Watch your horizontal output current. If too high it'll be slow death for the flyback! I find these sets have a "sense of humor". Mines had some quirky problems and seems to enjoy making me work for a solution. The best was a intermittant short in the third IF tube. Off channel snow would come and go! Some fun!!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by ARC Tech-109

My motto is simple: If it works why replace it? 109

Your Magnavox Astro-Sonic TV looks great, and I bet it sounds wonderful as well. Magnavox really knew its onions when it designed those Astro-Sonic consoles back in the day.

I'd keep that set as long as it works. Is it all-channel or just VHF 2-13? I'd say the latter, as the radio tuning dial is marked with kc and mc rather than MHz and kHz. The latter replaced kc and mc in 1967, so I think your console must date back to the early '60s.

If the CRT is good in your set, it should serve you well for many years to come (even now that all TV is digital, your set should work very well with a converter box). They don't make them like that anymore, like Zenith TV and stereo. These were two of the best TV and combination manufacturers before they went overseas. We will never, unfortunately, see the kind of quality (of build, sound and picture) found in old Magnavox's or Zeniths again.

"If it works, why replace it?" is my motto as well. I have a 14-year-old Zenith Sentry 2 19" TV in my bedroom with original CRT, never any service done on it, and an excellent picture, a 9-year-old RCA XL-100 CTC185 (also with the original tube and a great picture) and only two small (but expensive) repairs done on it, in the living room, a 9-year-old Aiwa all-in-one bookshelf stereo with CD player (only thing wrong with it is the cassette decks quit a couple years ago; replaced them with a 30+-year-old Radio Shack SCT-11 stereo single-cassette deck), my computer (and its Win98SE operating system) also has nine years on it and it still does everything I need it to do (including playing my CDs through my Winamp 5.35 media player) even though the computer is slower than molasses in June, so I have no intention of replacing it any time soon, or at least as long as it works. Every bit of this stuff was brand new nine years ago (bought it all the year I moved to this apartment) and, surprisingly, as I said, most of it still works almost as well as when it was new. I intend to run it "until the wheels fall off", as the expression goes.

[rockin1150]

bitchin' I can see the appeal here.

[zenithfan1]

Jeff, this set is from 1968. I used to have the EXACT same one, I miss it. For some reason, Maggie decided to hold onto the old markings for AM and FM longer than other manufacturers.