SA find: '77 13" Sharp Linytron color TV

[radiotvnut]

Found this '77 13" Sharp color TV for $15 at the local SA. It plays pretty good; but, needs a greyscale touch up and other minor adjustments. I actually got excited before I tood the back off. There appears to be an ultrasonic remote sensor with the words "sigma sonic" on the front of the set; but, there is no such circuitry inside. I've worked on a couple Western Auto Truetone sets like this; but, never a Sharp brand. I do know that the Truetone's were made by Sharp. Anyone had any dealings with these?

[wa2ise]

That shot of the weather map with Philadelphia looks wrong. Philly is next to NJ and the Delaware River...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

That shot of the weather map with Philadelphia looks wrong. Philly is next to NJ and the Delaware River...

That map is correct. There is a city named Philadelphia in Mississippi as well as in Pennsylvania.

[radiotvnut]

OK, I made some adjustments and got a very nice picture out of this set. The CRT test around 55% on all 3 guns. The only thing that bothers me is some slight "noise" in the picture. This TV has both a VHF 75 ohm coax input and a VHF 300 ohm twin lead input. Most sets like this have some sort of switch to select between 75 and 300 ohm. This one does not. The garbage in the picture is mainly visible during a total black screen; but, can be seen on normal video if you look close enough. I tried moving the DTV converter box around as well as using a "real" coax interconnect cable (not the cheap cable supplied with the box). I guess for a Sharp set, it has a decent picture. I think Sharp was a little better during the '70's than they were in recent years.

[zenith2134]

Nice! I'll pretty much take any set with an ultrasonic remote.

Funny that I saw this when I signed in today....I was away for a couple of days and found a May, 1977 Sharp 12" B&W....took it just for laughs. Its on the side of my house awaiting trash collection.

But I have to agree with you, that Sharp products weren't half bad in the mid-late-70s (at least still made in Japan).

[mr_fixer]

That is a cute lil set! Nice picture too!

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by zenith2134

Nice! I'll pretty much take any set with an ultrasonic remote.

Funny that I saw this when I signed in today....I was away for a couple of days and found a May, 1977 Sharp 12" B&W....took it just for laughs. Its on the side of my house awaiting trash collection.

But I have to agree with you, that Sharp products weren't half bad in the mid-late-70s (at least still made in Japan).

I think I know the 12" Sharp B&W that you have and I'll bet it has a bad flyback. A friend of mine who used to repair Truetone TV's gave me a few 12" and 19" Sharp built Truetone sets and they all had bad flybacks. He said those B&W's ate flybacks like crazy.

By the late '80's, Sharp started going to the dogs big time. They may have been OK if it wasn't for bad soldering and lousy cabinets that became brittle and fell apart. I recently trashed a late '90's Sharp 25" in a trash bag, literally. The cabinet had become brittle and would shatter if you touched it.

[zenith2134]

This one's got a bad horizontal hold coil, of all things. I took it apart and one of the leads was charred and had disconnected from the board. But yeah, it's a single PC board chassis, crummy tuners and very crummy cabinet. The CRT is a Toshiba branded Sharp (which says, "do not use ion trap!") and the HOT is a Hitachi to-3 package.

I'd save it but it has other problems. When I resoldered the windings on the coil it came on with reduced width and a snowy raster. Bet the flyback is indeed about to go up in smoke.

I had 2 other Sharps that I can remember...both for free... an '87 knob tuned 13" and an '86 knob tuned 19"... same type of sets, flimsy cabinets, cheap controls, and single-board, boring internals. They make a halfway decent picture when working but they were crap IMO.