68 Maggie remote on eBay

[Eric H]

I know somebody want's this?

http://cgi.ebay.com/68-MAGNAVOX-MAGN...QQcmdZViewItem

[jpdylon]

Very cool. Sucks that it has the wonderfull 'green halo' but I'm sure that can be remedied. That must have been a pretty snazzy set to have the color adjustable by remote. Would this be an infared or ultrasonic? I forgot which year the IR remotes were first introduced. The sliding doors are a nice touch too.

I hate that someone will say that it is working, but won't even pots a pic of it lit up... at least show the panel lights or something...

[jstout66]

I've got one of these Maggies. Mine's is a similar cabinet as well. The remote is Ultrasonic and uses one of those odd round 9 volt batteries. Mine had an RCA Black Matrix picture tube installed in 1974 so I don't have the green halo. Mine works pretty good, except the remote functions are glitchy, and I've got a brightness problem that I had been meaning to post about. The picture is pretty dark, even with the brightness maxed. Picture tube tests good and has fantastic color otherwise. All tubes test good as well. What do I need to be looking for that causes this? Have any of you run into low brightness levels on a set before?

[captainmoody]

Check your B+ boost voltage, it could be low causing that problem.

[kx250rider]

That was just about the top of the line (not counting TV-stereo-phono combos).... Notice that this is ANOTHER antenna-less eBay seller.

Battery-powered ultrasonic remote similar to the RCA of the 50s and 60s. On the B&W and lower-end remote color sets, Magnavox had the 2-button "whistler". It has a pneumatic bellows, not a tone bar & hammer. Kind of unique, and I think only Magnavox had that system. It only controlled channel, on-off-volume, and phono reject on some models. The one on this eBay ad does EVERYTHING, even UHF channels!

I think there are still a few of those in daily service. I know of at least 2 or 3 as of a year ago. There was another one of about that year which was in an upright cabinet with tuner above the CRT, same tambor doors, and it has a really neat gothic trim piece with two spires that was ontop at the back. I probably would grab one if it turned up!

Charles

[old_tv_nut]

This set has the same features as the foo-foo French-cabinet '67 Maggie I got about a year and a half ago from DRH. By the UHF UP/DOWN buttons, it looks like it also has automatic signal search, like mine. Doug said he had to work on it quite a bit to get the search functional. It works just about OK with the AFC engaged, but sometimes coasts a bit too far or not enough and you need to touch up the fine tuning.

Regarding dark picture, if you can't go through the setup procedure and get a normal result, and supply voltages are OK, try changing the video output tube - I found huge differences from tube to tube, probably because this tube runs nearly wide open with little cathode degeneration.

[Ronald1973]

I remember having a Magnavox TV when I was a kid that had the ultrasonic remote-I thought that was the neatest thing!

[Randy Bassham]

Those sets put a lot of beans on my table in the 70's. They've got a lot of nice features with that remote setup. They use search tuning (signal seeking) and have an automatic off feature that turns off the set after the stations went off the air. It samples sync pulses and uses them to hold a transistor in cutoff, lose sync pulses and the transistor conducts charging up a capacitor, when the voltage reaches the firing voltage of a neon lamp it triggers a relay and turns off the set. Low contrast, dark picture is a symptom of the second video tube failing, it's usually a 6EA8 or in later sets a 6LM8, it's the last tube on the right of the IF strip. That particular set probably has a T920 or possibly a T931 chassis which was a real workhorse for Magnavox and was used with refinements through the 1972 models when Magnavox went solid state. The remote is ultrasonic and uses an Eveready 206 9 volt battery. It's located about 500 miles from me and I'd like to have it but with $3.00 gas going after it would get kind of pricey....