The last tv set Made in U.S.A./the influece of Asian made tv sets
 

When where produced the last tv sets Made in U.S.A.?
What was the ifluence of Asian made tv sets on the electronics industry of the U.S.A.?

Depends on your metric. If it was the last American engineered sets made with a large portion of American parts, in America, then Zenith in the late 70's would be it...They moved the last of their consumer production to Mexico in the late 70's, and were probably the last old American consumer electronics firm in business to be American owned when Goldstar took them over... Other makes took Asian chassis and stuck them in American made console cabinets with American CRTs, and many Asian makes shipped kits to the USA for 'Assembly' plants to build to save on tariffs (I believe this is still done).

But in 1975-1977 there was any U.S.A. set with U.S.A. made components? :sigh:

Zenith sets DID use American components in that time frame. There were some euro-sourced tubes and some other parts (certain cap and resistor types) but they used as much (mostly) American parts as they could while maintaining their quality standards.

You can find some euro parts in some American sets going back to the early 50's...When the Korean war caused parts shortages we bought resistors from Germany, and used mislabeled domestic resistors of correct electrical value to fill in gaps. It was not uncommon to source tubes from Europe or Asia and relabel them with a domestic brand....Ever seen a Zenith tube with Holland written on it?

No, never seen one.

The use of imported components really grew in the late 60's/early 70's with Japanese capacitors, tuners from Taiwan or Hong Kong...but final assembly in the US. Aside from smaller screen sets (13" or smaller, generally) picture tubes tended to be made in the US well into the 90's.

Zenith was probably the last major American-owned TV manufacturer, but among their later sets only the consoles were assembled here, and using imported chassis'. RCA & North American Phillips may have been packing more American-made content in their sets in the early/mid-90's than Zenith was; they were both foreign-owned companies by then, of course. Later, the NAP factory in Tennessee was run by an American company, assembling sets for other companies, and I believe there may be at least one American-owned company assembling flatscreen TV sets here right now. But like Tom said, it's just final assembly. I'm sure some components are still sourced here.

Here ya go.

@ bgadow : but the rest of semiconductors, the circuit boards where Made in U.S.A.? :scratch2:

Not to sound like anti American but those American made TVs looks like they were designed by drunk engineers as you see the rats nest of wires and idiot house numbered stamped parts.Some were not bad and some were a disaster to work on.

Thank goodness for Panasonic/Sony/Toshiba came in to clean up the rats nest of wires and easy parts numbering systems. And also more reliable then the American sets.I'll take any vintage Sony, Panasonic or Toshiba over a Zenith,Sylvania or RCA any day.

Good tangent there! Zenith and some others like Fisher needed long-lived tubes for their high-fidelity console "stereos", so they went to Amperex and Mullard for tubes:thmbsp:

This applies to some of the TV's too. A good example is the 6EH7, 6GJ7 and other frame-grid tubes made in Europe that Zenith, RCA, Motorola and others used. Japan supplied some tubes to manufacturers in the 1960s as well.

Depends on the vintage....Many tube and hybrid color Japanese sets were a cramped pain in the but to work on, with as bad or worse a rats nest as any American made color set of the time....Whats more parts and connections were often hidden and or buried under other parts and connections.....One of the more annoying examples I can think of is my early 70's Panasonic 6 tube hybrid....I've been putting it it off since it had lytic type hum in the sound, and the main cans on the chassis may as well be a permanent part of the chassis....They are packed in on all sides such that I can't remove them without basically tearing the chassis in half and disconnecting tons of soldered wiring...I can't recall if I can even access the terminals, but I KNOW they did not leave me enough room near them to mount new ones....So if I need to replace them I'm going to have to get VERY creative and or work VERY hard...I'd rather do 10 similar cap jobs on Service Saver Zeniths, RCA tube/hybrid sets, or Admirals of the day...

You're talkin about tube/hybrid sets or also solid state ones? :saywhat:

Yes those Japanese set had their share of rats nests.Probably had the same drunk engineers designing them.I remember those Panasonic's since my late sister had one.One good thing even with the rats nest in the Japanese sets is they used the standard Jedec part numbers then the crap house numbers the US TV's used.

More likely Solid State sets.The hybrids were a mess including the overseas sets..GE comes up on the top of the list.The GE Port a Color I have here was my late step dads set which is the only reason I kept it.The Motorola works in the drawer were great except for the board connections.

I see in some stores (even a very famous chain) new "Element" branded flat panel sets that claim to be "Made in USA".

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.

///

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.

Agreed highly, and schematics, service manuals, parts and service support from the manufacturer was way better from the USA manufacturers than the import sets of the era. Panasonic and Sony were OK, but parts were slower to get, and service support slower in coming when these sets were new, and reasonably recent. This aspect got better by the middle to late 1970's.

Pioneer and Trio-Kenwood made tube receivers. Sony didn't make one or didn't offer one in the USA until the TA 1120 integrated of 1965, a silicon transistorized amplifier and the 1967 STR 6120 receiver, the best receiver Sony ever made. :tresbon: Are the Fisher 500C. 800C, or the HH Scott equivalent any harder to repair than a Pioneer or Trio-Kenwood or Sansui tube equivalent model?. I suspect no worse once you understand their quirks and differences, which is the USA tube equivalent.

In the context of this discussion it's probably worth putting a link here to the PBS Frontline documentary Coming from Japan.

This film is 30 years old now, and chronicles the decline and fall of the American TV industry (and consumer electronics as a whole). Spoiler: it was a long con by a group of Japanese companies, led by Matsushita, planned and executed for years: high prices in their protected market to offset losses from dumping products in the US, buy up the American companies as they began to fail, and shut them down. It was a brilliant plan that worked perfectly. The final nail in the coffin was when the Nixon administration traded the TV industry (via not enforcing tariffs) to Japan in exchange for permission to put a military base there.

This is, to me, a heartbreaking film. It's full of candid interviews with executives and employees of Zenith and Motorola/Quasar who are first sounding worried, and then alarmed, and finally defeated as their entire industry is dismantled around them.

So many great brands, that were part of communities, and stood for something, gone. Zenith, Motorola, Packard Bell, Admiral, Sylvania, RCA, Magnavox, GE...each of these were factories where American people worked, who bought parts from American companies, and employed American ad agencies, and transport companies, and on and on.

I saw that documentary when it originally aired, and it severely affected my view on Japanese consumer electronics. It doesn't account for the success of Sony, which had a technical advantage (the trinitron). It is hard to feel much sympathy for the Japanese companies now as they fail in the face of Korean and Chinese competition.

These are my 50 Cent for that case:

If you take a look on the japanese electronics industry you have to take a look on the history of Japan, too.
Japan was a closen country for hundreds of years, no one in, no one out, like North Korea today.
Japan began to open step by step after an american agression with a battle ship entering the
harbour of Tokyo saying if you don`t deal with us we will shoot down the whole city made of paper.
That was around 1880 or so.
That leaded to a 100 – 110 Volts power system, followed by the american TV standard.

In the thirties the german radio service magazine called „Funkschau“ warned Germany and
the rest of the world, that japanese technic students spreading signs that they want to rule the
world!!!!
Yes, that was in 1935 or close by!
During that time american electronics companies were giving the japs the shoes to learn to run.
One of the examples for these kind of „joint ventures“ was Nippon Columbia, started with TV-
production in 1953 at Kawasaki.
Btw. Japan is still a closen society by the culture and the market.
This is visable for tourists and collectors of vintage radios and TVs.

I own a fine collection of vintage 30s-50s original jap radios incl. hornspeakers and 50s TV sets
incl. some roundies.:tresbon:
Tubes and chassis constructions are typical american based. Even the cabinet style is about 90%
american based. Only a few sets have a european style or something japanese (like a temple).
About 97% of all japanese pre-war radios were one circle radios.
Unusual is the american writing on sets, ON/OFF, VOLUME; SOUND, BRIGHTNESS etc. is standard.
I asked a jap friend about it and he told that english was "hip".
They never produced sets with scales and japanese letters for the stations! Most radios have only
the frequencies on the dial, only very few giving names of stations.
It is uncommon that consumer products were in that time offered with user informations in another
language.
O.K., today everything is in english here in europe.
Japanese electronics stuff was always back in time, with the victory of the transistor in small radios
at the end of the 50s and in small TVs in the beginning of the 50s, they started the fight.
Japanese radios used up to the mid 50s old american tubes, the ones with the 2 thick pins. Up to the
late 50s Octal tubes were common.
The main used CRT diameter was up to the beginning 60s 14“, in western Europe 21“-24“!
It is hard to understand that this industry was strong enough to knock down the whole world!:nono:

Something about japanese pricing:
It is for sure, that selling electrical sets cheap, but selling spare parts expensive when no
alternative is given, is a way to take the customers cash!:naughty:

Example jap trap 1:
My father brought me a big Sony Stereo amp from curbside. It was only 5 years old in 1982.
The amp was kicked out in the street because of the expensive service costs!
I by myself paid for 2 original Sony output transistors close to 80,- Deutsch Marks!:cry:
For one of these transistors was a similiar american/european transistor available, price: 5,50 DM!

Example jap trap 2: One of my father`s employees bought himself a Datsun Sunny station wagon in the mid 70s.
This car was not a luxury car!
A short time after the end of the warranty the tail gate wiper motor went south!
The price of the replacement (made of gold) in 1978: (800,- Deutsch Marks – in words eigth
hundred!) :rant:
What do you think you could have bought for 800,- DM in 1978?
For just 798,- DM you could have bought a luxury DUAL record player CS 721 incl. Shure V 15 III
What did you pay in ´78 for a tail gate wiper motor from a mid 70s Chevy or Ford wagon?
Now its your turn!
Talking about rat nests, who ever opened a luxury Marantz (ex US company!) Esotheric amp?
My brother picked up one once curbside!
Two well educated professional TV repair technicians lost their interest to repair it.
Both burned down 2-3 sets of output transistors on their own costs.
Couldn`t believe that someone will place so many caps, resistors, transistors on that small
solid state board!
CRAP!:dammit:

Regards,
TV-collector:stupid:

Recall working on Zenith System III and that it was well designed and advanced. Some repair shops made a lot of money by repairing the modules, rather than just replacing them. Also recall RCA at the time of transition from GE ownership to Thomson. Huge change in design.

CRTs for the last of the large RCA TV sets were made by Hitachi in those days, IIRC around the early to mid 1980s. There was an issue with how the new CRTs where run in the sets in the quest for more brightness - the high brightness areas would bloom and look 'ugly' for lack of better explanation. I worked for an RCA distributor at the time and was asked to look into it because sets were coming back. I found that the problem happened during high peak beam currents. The factory enginers said that the high currents were heating the shadow mask causing deformation. It was hushed up for the most part and some changes made. The CRTs were recalled and internal changes made for the new replacements by Hitachi, and none should be out there but If one happens to have one of the sets with the troublesome CRT just lower the peak beam current.

I'd rather have the last of the US-made RCA sets than any other. They were assembled in the states with the Hitachi CRTs and other parts manufactured in Mexico, USA, and Canada.

IIRC Sony was not named in the dumping law suit. In the mid 70's. Sony
made a profit selling sets. others didnt. They did it through image.
Prices were high to. A base 19" Sony listed for near $600 & sold in the low fives. A base RCA or Zenith could be had for under $400, a GE under $300

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I STILL say WE did it to ourselves in killing off our consumer electronics industry.. I remember going w/my parents in say late 1969, early '70 to a furniture store that sold Home Entertainment centers, "Occaisional" furniture, stuff like that. It was NOT an "El Cheapo" kind of place. They had a pretty good line of RCA, Zenith, Sylvania, Motorola "Consoles"... The QUALITY on them was ABYSSIMAL, even to a kid of 12, 13 like me. Wood was all either plastiwood, or fiberboard, hardly any of it on any of these high-zoot-$1K-"Home entertainment Centers" was even approaching REAL. The plastic knobs, buttons, all that was cheap, nasty feeling "Carnival grade" plastic, that I managed to barely touch, & SEVERAL of 'em came off in my hand. The RCA IIRC was sposedly their TOTLfanciest color set, the others were, too, but their pic quality left a LOT to be desired. The "Stirreos" sounded cheap, tinny, boomy-ass bass terrible separation, and the RCA, even on the local FM station was deaf as a stone. Like I said, these were all TOTL "Consuls", I wouldn't have given you a plugged nickel for the lot of 'em. The finish/varnish, IIRC on one of 'em was oily, greasy feeling & STUNK-Kinda smelt like they'd mixed Bat Guano in w/the varnish... If THAT was the best the mighty Amurrican Consumer electronics industry was capable of making, well, Methinks we are better off w/o them. Oh, & yeah, I think none of the TVs were "Soiled State", they were all, mebbe not the Sylvania-STILL largely Tooobs.

If only Philco had persevered just a little longer...

Here in Britain we had almost all our TV market to ourselves as no other countries set makers could be bothered to make 405 lines sets, the only one AFAIK was Sony. This changed in the early 70's when we went over to 625 lines when everyone & their dog started exporting TV's to us. Some were tweaked to work in the UK by having the sound carrier frequency increased to 6 Mhz & the VHF tuner removed, on my parents Sony KV1800 there was a blanking plate where the VHF tuner should have been. Don't know what the last British made TV set was...