First Quasar

[julianburke]

In all of my years in television, I have had only one Quasar TV. (the first one and sold it about 22 years ago) I used to get second generation sets fairly often and come to think of it, haven't seen many of those in the last 25 years! What happened to them? They did sell quite a few of both and they were good sets not to mention expensive. I would like to have one of the first generation sets. Any out there???

The other day a friend of mine said he had a "tube caddy" Quasar kit that he wanted to sell me. When I got it, I was surprised it was a kit set for the first generation and haven't seen any in quite a while. A nice find indeed but I want a TV!!!

Any help is appreciated.

[bgadow]

I still have a couple chassis which I think are first generation...I don't really know when the dividing line was? I suspect it is one of those things where, sometime in the 80s or 90s, the sets needed servicing and the repair shop told them to junk it.

[radiotvnut]

I had, I believe, one of the first Quasar's. It used the works in a drawer chassis and was all solid state except for the HV rectifier. The CRT wasn't great and it had a green halo. That was so many years ago that I don't remember what I did with it. That was before the internet, AK (or VK now), and any desire to collect older TV's. Like I've said before, it would be nice if I could re-live the '90's. There was a lot of interesting old TV's that came my way during that decade. I think that was the decade when the last of the tube sets were dying and their owners were getting rid of them in favor of a new TV.

[bgadow]

I saw some great stuff in the early 90s. I had quite a collection of late 60s color sets for a time. I never had a Quasar, just a couple "hand-wired" Motos. Mostly just memories now.

[julianburke]

The first generation had slide rule controls at the top with a dark green background.

[zenithfan1]

I had one on 2003 or so, it was a works in a drawer set. It was ugly as sin and beat up. I sent it to tv heaven. I'd like to find another decent one. Doug offered me a '69 Works in a drawer set that was remote and working......FREE. My dumb ass says "I'm out of room, no thanks" Duh, I should have made room for it. I think he ended up selling it on the bay for a decent amount.

[Robert Grant]

Note that the Quasar was at one time a -line- of color TV sets under the Motorola brand.
Later (mid-1970's) Motorola decided to get out of consumer electronics and sold their consumer electronics division (but not the Motorola name) to Matsushita, who used the Quasar name for the whole brand, B&W as well as color, radios as well as TV sets (in much the same manner as Chrysler used the Eagle name [originally one AMC model] for all of the AMC passenger cars after they acquired AMC).
With time, fewer products were sold as Quasar, as Matsushita's other brands (especially Panasonic) were seen as more attractive.

[zenithfan1]

Yep, I had a Matsushita built Quasar as a kid, it was ok until it died. Even those are scarce now. I've also seen the Quasar name still used on Matsushita built sets as new as my '98 Panasonic, of course the only difference was the name badge.

[Don Lindsly]

I have a nice all Motorola-built Quasar 19 inch "portable" dated about 1974. It is 100% solid state, works well and has a decent picture tube. It was my bedroom TV and has been not used regularly for many years. It is checked and played ocassionally. Service manual included.

It probably weighs about 65 lbs.

Please send me a private message if interested.

Don

[Reece]

Remember?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Cd6Qu0bI90

Reece

[bgadow]

I had a Motorola Quasar hybrid 19" from '74. I suspect it was among the last-there was a paper tag that made reference to Matsushita. I really wanted to keep that set but it was in bad shape-had seen lots of weather, original Westinghouse built crt was totally shot, arcing in the HV. Not many tubes, maybe 4.

[zenith2134]

I only have experience with the solid state Matsushita's.... I had two 1981 Quasar color 19" tabletops, both were good solid sets that ran until their crt's were very dim. And of course I owned a white and a pink version of the mid 80's swivel base ones with the remote that is a miniature of the tv set.

[radiotvnut]

I also had a couple of those early '70's Quasar 15"-17" hybrid sets. They only had 3 or 4 tubes. My Mother had an '89 19" Quasar that I ended up with and then sold to a lady. The last time I saw it, the CRT was almost totally dead.