Speaking of Japanese Rats nest wiring, but have you ever seen the inside of an old Pioneer or Kenwood-TRIO or Sony Tube powered Stereo Receiver or Amplifier or Tuner? Those things are a nightmare when it comes to having to replace capacitors or resistors or having to replace toasty wiring... :sigh: :thumbsdn: :no:

I wish I could see the inside of one of those. There are a lot more domestic ones in the US, but with the way the audiophools hunt that gear even the domestic stuff is hard to find and usually priced outside of sanity...

If you end up with tube audio gear that you can't fix please give someone a chance to buy it before E-wasting it.

There were plenty of pain in the a** TV sets imported here. I usually hated working on Sony stuff. I remember the parts were sky high (if you could find them), tech support was almost non-existant, and they had some weird engineering sometimes.

I was an authorized service center for Samsung and Goldstar in the late 80's/early 90's. You want to talk about crap, they turned out plenty of it in those days.

RCA, Phillips, and Zenith designed and built some lemon's from time to time, but until the early 90's they were as good or better than most of the imports. The downfall of the television industry in America had far more to do with consumer pricing and corporate profitability than quality.

"Samsung" tv sets imported in Romania before 1996-1997 were pretty good. Some worked for 18 years or more!

Most professional TV repair technicians would heavily disagree with you too. Most of these repair technicians chose Zenith for many years as their best set reliability wise and their easiest serviced set. And RCA also were pretty serviceman friendly. Sony sets had very expensive spare parts, difficult support from Sony, and much more difficult to repair back in the day, compared to most other set makers. davet753's perspective agrees with most every veteran repair technician I have known of. Zenith, RCA, and several other major American brands of sets had very good manufacturer support on training technicians, spare parts availability, technical support, etc.

That reminded me of something: technical support.

I remember going to one-day tech training sessions every time RCA came out with a new chassis. They would hold a class and invite all the authorized service center tech's to come and learn about the new designs. These classes were great for understanding the latest engineering. They also mailed out technical support bulletins that were a very valuable tool. Of course, we received an envelope of microfiche literature at regular intervals (microfiche.....God, that brings back memories).

Zenith used to do tech classes through their local distributor, but not as often as "dealer shows" for the sales end of the business. Graybar (and later on Cain & Bultman) was the local Zenith distributor, and they were always ready to facilitate technical assistance through their contacts at Zenith in Chicago. They also had a warehouse stocked with replacement parts. Whether a module, CRT, or a simple part, there was no waiting.

Phillips had the best tech support program in the biz. We could call the service division in Greenville, TN and a factory technician would answer the phone and take the time to help you troubleshoot a problem. I always found them to be the friendliest, most knowledgeable guys you could ever ask for. Parts orders were received the day after ordering, and their prices were reasonable.

My experience of import brands never came close to the level of support domestic manufacturers offered.

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I agree with you.My friend who is going to be 98 years young this month which I used his shop's name for my user name serviced Zenith sets for over 40 plus years and said they were the best sets made.He also serviced Sylvania,RCA to name a couple of US made TV sets he serviced in his shop.He was not a fan of the Japanese sets.He will kill me over what I said earlier about the US sets..LOL......................

My late friend fixed Sony ,Panasonic and other Japanese sets across town in his shop.

There was another shop in town that fixed Magnavox but I did not know him good.The same goes for a Motorola/Quasar shop in town too that I did not know him good..

The very-last "Assembled in USA" CRT TV was the 2005 Toshiba 34HF85 34" HDTV, assembled by Orion America in Princeton, IN.

http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net...rticleID=26684

Orion America was a subsidiary (now Sansui Sales) of Orion Electric Co., Japan. Sansui Sales USA is now a private company and no longer owned by Orion. They used to build a bunch of Emerson TV and VCRs back in early-90s.

It wasn't as much long life as it was low noise and hum. Some tube types were European only for the best performance and lowest noise/hum, some of the USA counterparts had industrial/military versions for that purpose, often different types.

But in terms of the minimal period in whic the tv set runded without needing repairs, in the yeard 1974-1982 which where better: Japanese brands or U.S.A. brands?

I think it depends on the brand. Zeniths of that era were very reliable, and easily repaired when needed. But that was the same era that Matsushita took over Quasar from Motorola and those second-generation Works in the Drawer sets with the SuperModule were fantastic.

Quite right on the Zeniths. I've seen many CCII and system 3 sets still in their original homes still chugging away good as new as the possessions of the owners they outlived were being sold off around them...

Some Sonys were long-lived (mostly small screen sets that didn't burn through their cathode material as fast).

Both countries had their crap and their champs the difference mostly came down to brand and sometimes chassis.

Growing up in the 80s, there were still plenty of US made RCA and Zenith sets being sold. But they more or less sucked next to the Sony Trinitron. I think they ended up leaving the 80s mostly competing on price, for the low end of the market.

The Trinitron had a brilliant picture with excellent black levels, good geometry, usually good speakers, and great looking colour. The domestic sets (when new) had inferior pictures. I don't know about longevity, but I've seen plenty of Trinitrons hit 20 years old and still look great. The sort of people who leave their TV on for 12 hours a day probably experienced earlier failure.

The other thing is, Sony was cool - they had the Walkman, the CD, the handycam.. they were leaders in high tech. RCA and Zenith were yesterday's news, more associated with grandma's console radio than futuristic electronics.

Not sure. I know my 1982 Zenith System 3 Z1 was made in USA, still going on and I'm using it now as we speak as I watch M*A*S*H. Yeah, she does have a few small issues from time to time but still in good shape for her age. She was made in December of 1982 and it says "Zenith RADIO Corporation" in the back. I do say Sony is cool though, I have a Playstation, a Sony B&W set from 1969 or so and a 1963 Sony Tapecorder 600.