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Found in my attic. Help!! - Printable Version

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RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - 35Z5 - 10-03-2018

(10-03-2018, 01:16 PM)morzh Wrote:  As fa as I remember, even old Soviet TVs did not need service every several months, and those were used daily, usually in the evening hours, though of course back then we did not spend as much time in front of it as we d now: there was not much to watch. Still 2-3 hrs every day and more on weekends.

I suppose the 85+ TV repair shops listed in the local 1966 yellow pages was just filling space? Many of those had three or four locations. By comparison in the 2005 YP there were 12, phonebook at least twice as thick with probably ¾ size print.

RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - Chas - 10-03-2018

Um, there are no TV shops in a 5 mile radios, only one I know of is Saber TV in Fall River. FWIK none from there to Provincetown. I think there are at least two maybe three shops in the Boston, metro-west area. One at least specializes in antique radio repair.

Massachusetts discontinued licensing of Radio/TV technicians at least 8 years ago. I don't know if the ETG Electronics Technicians Guild is still functional in MA. They were prominent in protecting the business of Radio TV technicians and were the lobby that got the licensing passed in 1964 or so. I just missed being grandfathered got tested anyway. Waste of money the hacks were still out there. They caught only a few over the years to make a show for the State House Icon_rolleyes

YMMV
]
Chas

RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - morzh - 10-03-2018

(10-03-2018, 02:56 PM)35Z5 Wrote:  
(10-03-2018, 01:16 PM)morzh Wrote:  As fa as I remember, even old Soviet TVs did not need service every several months, and those were used daily, usually in the evening hours, though of course back then we did not spend as much time in front of it as we d now: there was not much to watch. Still 2-3 hrs every day and more on weekends.

I suppose the 85+ TV repair shops listed in the local 1966 yellow pages was just filling space? Many of those had three or four locations. By comparison in the 2005 YP there were 12, phonebook at least twice as thick with probably ¾ size print.

 I said "Soviet TVs". We had 1 or maximum 2 radio repair shops in the city. Not that it was enough....guys like me were sometimes asked to fix a TV. Or a tape recorder.
But the 60-s TVs were very good, most common problem being drying electrolytic caps, scratchy controls and oxidized channel selector contacts.
Later when more modern TVs were introduced, especially the color type with semiconductor voltage multiplier which failed often....yes. But old TVs failed rarely. The flyback driver was a beam tetrode tube, no semiconductors......tubes lasted years. We owned two TVs, first we bought in 1965, worked fine though the channel selector knob broke within 1 year, the second we bought in 1972, also lasted all the way into 1979 when someone gifted us a color TV. No failures. BTW here I had an old Zenith color job, probably end of 70-s model, worked fine until I moved and did not take it with me.

RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - 35Z5 - 10-03-2018

(10-03-2018, 03:43 PM)morzh Wrote:  
(10-03-2018, 02:56 PM)35Z5 Wrote:  
(10-03-2018, 01:16 PM)morzh Wrote:  As fa as I remember, even old Soviet TVs did not need service every several months, and those were used daily, usually in the evening hours, though of course back then we did not spend as much time in front of it as we d now: there was not much to watch. Still 2-3 hrs every day and more on weekends.

I suppose the 85+ TV repair shops listed in the local 1966 yellow pages was just filling space? Many of those had three or four locations. By comparison in the 2005 YP there were 12, phonebook at least twice as thick with probably ¾ size print.

 I said "Soviet TVs". We had 1 or maximum 2 radio repair shops in the city. Not that it was enough....guys like me were sometimes asked to fix a TV. Or a tape recorder.
But the 60-s TVs were very good, most common problem being drying electrolytic caps, scratchy controls and oxidized channel selector contacts.
Later when more modern TVs were introduced, especially the color type with semiconductor voltage multiplier which failed often....yes. But old TVs failed rarely. The flyback driver was a beam tetrode tube, no semiconductors......tubes lasted years. We owned two TVs, first we bought in 1965, worked fine though the channel selector knob broke within 1 year, the second we bought in 1972, also lasted all the way into 1979 when someone gifted us a color TV. No failures. BTW here I had an old Zenith color job, probably end of 70-s model, worked fine until I moved and did not take it with me.

No you said "even old Soviet TV", which implies they were worse than US brands. 

I serviced Sears Warwick by day and everything else by night. Lets just say, a service contract was a good idea. 

I will grant Zenith were a step above most other brands but were not without failure. We had a '54 Zenith when I was a kid. Seems the 5U4G was always bad(I remember marvling at the first 5U4GB pop brought home) and 6BQ6GT Horiz output was notorious for lack of width.

RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - Arran - 10-09-2018

It looks like a basic B&W set, which means it's probably not too complicated inside, if the picture tube is good there is hope. I'm not so sure that attic storage would be worse then a damp basement, those things ran pretty hot inside when they were in regular service, so dried out electrolytics would be the main issue. Lets see, 1963, that was the post Predicta and FoMoCo takeover era, so they did tighten up the quality somewhat. If you want to keep it running on mostly original parts, well yes, it will need attention every few months, but if you recap (paper and electrolytics), and re-resistor the set like a 1930s radio that will eliminate most of the likely problems. The only other snag is the K-networks which would have to be reconstructed to get the most out of it , but it would likely still work without replacing those. Realistically the original poster was probably not thinking about turning this into a daily driver, something you would need a converter box to do now anyhow as the analog signals are mostly gone, and it's a B7W set, but probably more about getting it going just to show to friends.
  Brand Z TVs are a funny animal, the sets of the late 1950s through the 1970s are actually of better quality then the earlier sets. It seems that once they put Commander MacDonald out to pasture they cleaned up in the engineering department, dumping the weird designs, and stopped letting the bean counters design the sets. I've seen Chromacolor II sets from the mid 1970s that still work and have never darkened the door of a service shop, there was a reason why they were the last American company to make TVs in the U.S.
Regards
Arran

RE: Found in my attic. Help!! - 43ddoc - 08-16-2020

    Update!! 
Got it down. It works.