Vintage TV Job

[cadman]

The comment about tubes....

I think the big rift here is that back in the day, the wear-out items were the tubes, and the sets got USED. Hence, that's what got replaced to bring the set back to operation.

As a collector, even though I like to use my sets, they never really see the heavy hours that were put on back in the day. And while tubes don't have a shelf life, capacitors surely do. 90% of the time I never have to lay a hand on the tubes to bring a set like this back to operation. The caps have failed, or are failing, as a matter of age. -Cory

 

[countryford]

The issues with this set is it does not have a picture. I am getting sound but thats it. It appears that I'm not getting any High Voltage. Having noticed without taking the chassis out, one of the caps has blown already, and a resistor broke in half. Both are in the High Voltage section. One of the first things I always do with a tv is to check all the tubes, and that includes the crt. I have a crt tester and therefore can tell if its bad or not. But since I already know of two other issues those will be addressed as well.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

We had 2 GE TVs just like that in our family.  They both worked into the 1980s and had a very sharp picture.  I used the one in my room until the picture tube go to be so weak that I could only watch it at night.

 

Ken D.

 

[paulg]

TV man here

I too am an electrical engineer who once repaired TVs in a TV shop but now work for a manufacturer. Ah yes, I do my fair share of tube TVs to this day. Only for myself ! Too labor intensive.
I do remember fixing some tube GE sets of the same era and they did have a super sharp picture when running well. I remember some ancient Westinghouse and Emerson TVs that just blew me away.
Every tech has their technique for repairing and none are better or worse than another I suppose.
One of my tricks is to look at the CRT to see if the brand matches the TV. If you see a non-GE CRT in a GE TV it probably was replaced before and MAY have a better chance of surviving.
I agree with the notion that tubes aren't bad as often as you think. When I open up a failed TV I determine what section is not working (ex; HV), and just test the tubes in that section. Afterward, out comes the meter, scope, schematic and a hot cup of coffee and I dig in. Not so surprisingly when the circuit is working I put the (tested) original tubes back in and the sets often work well. Why waste parts?
I suppose my method comes from working for a reputable TV shop. It was common some time ago for reporters to rig TVs with faults only to see what excess parts the shop installed. We were targeted but passed. However I was trained to only replace what was necessary and no more. I still do...

 

[whirlaway]

GE

After you get it going take the glass off of the front of the pic tube and clean it,it appears to have a seperate plate of glass in the front of it and dirt between the two.If the horizontal ocillater tube burns out,it will cause the horz output tube to glow red and burn out.Also if a cap fails in the horiz circuit and throws high voltage across the plates of the Horizontal tube,it will burn the tube or if left on long enough crack it.Any case replace those tubes,Horiz output,and damper tube and ocillater tube,please excuse my spelling.Some sets use a sandbar resistor as a fuse,they get hot and sometimes fail from age.That is a very late 59 set due to the squareness of the pic tube,most companies didnt change over till 60 or 61. Thanks Bobby

 

[tolivac]

Horizontal osc failure yoke cap failures-turn off the set right away to prevent damage to the damper and Horizontal out tubes----also prevents damage to the flyback transformer primary windings.the plate current for the HOT tube flows thru the flyback primary winding-if its too high--can burn out the flyback as well as the tube.Some HOT tubes have a pigtail fuse on the tube socket that blows to protect the tube and flyback in case of faults.Whirlcools entry jogged my mememory on that.Try to get a Sam Photofact or schematic on the set before working on it.Helps you futher in determining what parts to check.an Oscilloscope and multimeter are good tools to have on hand,too.

 

[ovrphil]

Crapstatic programming

Overall, I have to agree with Maytagbear...what happened to radio and tv programming? Commercials!

Carol Burnett once said, it would be prohibitively expensive to bring her show to air today - out of the question. So, maybe it's all about costs...and creating anything great is too expensive. The number of commercials on tv and radio is staggering, compared to the 50's-70's era.

Console tv's remind me of another time when we fought over which tv show on which station to watch. We had one tv - and my dad dominated it with watching Gunsmoke, Wyatt Earp, Bonanza, Tombstone Territory, Bat Masterson, Cheyenne, and the Rifleman, and some others.

Nostalgically speaking, they're still cool...lotta good memories, and you can rig your set to work and watch old shows on a much less refined tube image.

When Johnny Carson said "goodnight " for the last time, it seemed like the close of the great tv era programming. Reality TV? For someone else, not us.

 

[ovrphil]

PaulG : Like your style! My uncle repaired tv's, and I messed a little with tube radios, in my teens.

I'm not a tech, just willing to try and fix anything - those old tubes I had in a large Zenith AM-Shortwave console (floor model) were overall, reliable. But as anyone who grew up with tubes should know, some tubes just lasted longer than others(maybe the variable heat that some generated more than others).

My parents watched alot of tv, but no where near the amount of our neighbors who watched daytime and night time shows. Some TV's got a helluva work out, tube-wise!

 

[lordkenmore]

The ads did seem like they got more numerous as the years went by. I actually once timed a news broadcast, and if I recall right, it was about half ads. Actual content was probably less than 50% of the time, once the ads and junk material like the news anchors babbling about nothing was subtracted. One thing that really got me: they even had ads for the news programming. "World's best local news!" Seeing an actual attempt at doing good journalism would have impressed me more.

Ads aside, though, I have noticed a real decline in the quality of content of the actual programming. As tiresome as ads get, they sometimes are more enjoyable viewing than the actual program.

Of course, some older programs were not that great. I cannot remember the title, but someone described one program (short lived, I believe) in the 50s that--if the description was right--made today's programming look good, as hard as that is to imagine.

Still, overall, I find that older TV shows generally had better content. And this is not just nostalgia--I notice this on older TV shows that, until recently, I had never seen.

 

[whirlcool]

I have made the following observations in the past 18 months or so:

The dawn of synchronized commercials. When a commercial came on you could jump to another station to avoid it. Now when you do that you just see another commercial!
All stations seem to run commercials at the same time.

New shows this year have had their intro's shortened to just the title, that's it.
Reason: more time to show commercials.

An hour long program has 20 minutes of commercials in it, a 30 minute long program has 10-12 minutes of commercials.

I generally stay away from products that generate lots of commercials and usually write the network telling them so!

We have stopped watching live TV all together. We record everything on our VCR and hit the "commercial skip" button while watching. We spend so much less time watching TV but see more actual content.

And reality shows suck big time. Lots of times they are the furthest thing from reality. Lots of them are totally scripted! But they are cheap and draw a lot of advertisers.

I predict that within the next two years you'll be seeing 35 minutes of commercials in a 60 min show.

 

[travis]

I have no doubt that many of you remember testing tubes and finding a bad one in your childhood.  The fact remains that tube equipment has now reached an age of at least 40.  Failures now are likely caused by leaky or dried out capacitors or resistors that have drifted out of tolerance.  Just like people, failures over the years are more involved.

 

This stuff was well built, but not intended to last a lifetime.  To get reliable service out of a 1959 TV is going to require recapping it along with replacing any bad tubes.  Sometimes you get lucky and find a piece of equipment that has been in use through the years that requires less, but not often.

 

[mark_wpduet]

It's funny that there wasn't very much change in commercial times from the 50's the in some cases to the 80s.....How could three decades go by with not much change.

A good example is I Love Lucy. It was like 25.3 minutes long on average.

Golden Girls in the mid-1980s was around 25 minutes as well - so I'm guessing most sitcoms in that time frame were about the same.

Two sitcoms.......over thirty years later, ran about the same time?

 

[rp2813]

The Tonight Show

-- With Johnny Carson -- was the last bastion of the NBC "living color" peacock sequence prior to the start of a color telecast.  Long, long after all programming was offered in color and NBC had dropped the peacock (remember that awful -- and thankfully short-lived red and blue "N" logo from the 70's?), Carson I presume insisted on continuing to run the peacock sequence ahead of his show.  Once he retired, so did the animated peacock, for good.

 

This was the NBC logo of my youth.  It would reveal itself in a single stroke, starting at the lower left corner of the "N" (well OK, it backtracked midway through the "B") and finishing off with the "C."

 

[lordkenmore]

Tubes wear out...but so do capacitors. I'm not sure about TV, particularly late tubed TV. But older radios used many wax and paper capacitors that were not, from what I understand, particularly reliable even new. These days, people restoring radios get rid of these ASAP. It often fixes the radio without doing any more work, and, even if it doesn't, it can get rid of many potential future problems.

 

[lordkenmore]

Back to ads

one thing that was interesting with some programs in the early days was how the ads at least sometimes got integrated with the show itself. I've seen with at least Burns and Allen, and I think Jack Benny. There would, for example, be a part when Carnation Milk would make some sort of appearance on Burns and Allen. In a way, this would be the advertiser's dream, because people would be more likely to stay, rather that bolt to the kitchen for a snack.

 

[lordkenmore]

This may be legend

but I heard a story that Alfred Hitchcock once told his TV show audience a story about having dinner with a boring person, but putting up with the boredom because that person was paying for the dinner. Then, of course, Hitchcock's program went to ad time....

I haven't seen that, so it may be a mixed up story I heard. But Hitchcock definitely had some things to say about advertisers on the shows of his that I have seen...

 

[supersuds]

Hitchcock kidded his advertisers in every show, so I would believe it. It was a running gag.

Integrated commercials, or commercials featuring the star of the show, were common in the Fifties. It tended to die out as TV time became too expensive for just one advertiser.

Here's Lee Marvin for Pall Mall cigarettes, for instance. (You might recognize the theme music for his show, M Squad, which was recycled for the Police Squad/Naked Gun TV shows and movies.)

 

[rp2813]

Integrated advertisements

Speaking of Pall Mall, I remember the something similar from The Beverly Hillbillies, with Irene Ryan (Granny) advising that Winston tastes good, "Like a cigarette had oughtta,"  putting her own spin on Winston's "Tastes good like a cigarette should" slogan.