Dos ANYONE here feel that our old "goodies" were REALLY meant to last 40-80 years??

[peverett]

I have to pretty much agree with Andy on this. TVs have generally always been made as cheap as possible(with Zenith being a possible exception). I Have TVs with the cheap wafer tuners that always need to be jiggled to make connection(even after cleaning). I also remember this being the case many years ago in the 1970s. Due to cost, almost all of the old tube type TVs have very poor FM sound detection systems(and the B&W sets lack DC restoration) as well.

As to modern TVs I still use my mothers 1980 Sears solid state TV in my workshop. Other than some buzz in the sound it works great with no repairs. My mother had a Goldstar(cheap Korean brand) that went 15 years until the CRT became so weak it was unwatchable(no repairs ever). I personally had a Mitsubishi TV that lasted about 15 years with not repairs(lightning got it). I presently have Sanyo that has lasted since 2004 with no repairs.

The old TVs are great to restore, but were not that reliable, even when new. That is the reason so many TV shops were then in business. As to the reason no one works on new TVS:
1. They are cheap. Pretty much no one worked on Transistor radios in the 1970s either. Also the complexity of the present TV (even CRT ones) design and manufacturing is many times what was done in the 1960s. Surface mount technology, multilayer PC boards, ICs with millions of transistors in them(This is a great bargain compared to 1960s stuff) make repair inpractical.
And this is continuing-I just recently went to a presentation that stated Intel and IBM are now putting billions(not millions) of transistors on some of their chips-These are for the internet server market, not TVs, but some of this will trickle down.
2. All of the electronics in now in the integrated circuits, which are not repairable and may be harder to get than 1960s TV(or even 1920s radio) vacuum tubes after 4 or 5 years. Luckily integrated circuits usually last many times longer than the old vacuum tubes(especially the power ones).

I like restoring the old TVs, but am glad they are not my daily watchers.

[Adam]

As far as build quality, I think anybody ever topped what you see in the old Tektronix 500 series o-scopes.

[ggregg]

I'm thinking along the same lines as Chad. We've come to expect cheap electronics, cheap everything practically. Much of today's stuff isn't even really designed to be serviced at all. You can buy a DVD player for $39. Down the line, if the laser gets weak or goes out, your chance of finding that part is nil and even if you could, it would cost something like $80-$90 probably because the only thing you could get would be the entire assembly. Very few places stock anything anymore. Repair costs exceed replacement costs and it's hard to find good old fashioned repair shops. Best Buy, forget it.

I remember servicing VCR's when they were heavy beasts that usually only needed idler wheels and belts changed, sometimes heads. The last one's I worked on would be worn out after two years of use. The mechanisms would be so sloppy, it would jam up. Mode switches failed all the time, etc. The design was actually much better than the earlier machines but the grade of parts, motors, etc., was so poor, they would not last. But they were one third the price they used to be.

TV's were the same way. Remember the RCA/GE's with all the board shield problems? Never would have happened if the components would have been separate, instead all on the same board. Also wouldn't have happened if some genius could have figured out the metal and plastic don't expand and contract at the same rate when they are hot/cold. Something has to give and it was solder joints which would sometimes take something else out with them. The fix was to resolder all the shields with new flexible solder. But this design became popular because of the lower cost it took to produce it. Today with the new flat screens, it seems to be power supplies that pack up. My Phillips is an older one (2003). I brought it to a tech because I didn't want to mess with it. He went through the power supply and replaced all the caps and diodes, not just the two that failed with stronger parts. He said it will outlast the display and I believe him. He also said the the newer, inexpensive ones are difficult, if not impossible, to get unique parts for and are a bitch to work on.

In the old days, if you bought a cheap radio, you probably paid up to $19.99 for it. Seems cheap but translate that into today's dollars. $100? $150? more? Still seem like a good deal? Any appliance was a major purchase whereas today you can pay more for a movie than for the player to play it on?????

OK, off soapbox, ranting stopped (maybe), sorry if I went a little off topic.

[peverett]

I also remember GE's cheap TVs in the 1960s, all tubes, including horizontal output and damper on the PC board. Motorola and Philco also started doing this at some point. After a few years, the PC board was charcoal and the TV was unrepairable. Some manufacturers were cheap back then too.

[wa2ise]

Oh, there was cheap crap sold back in olden days, but you rarely see any of it because 99.9% of it has been tossed long ago. I did find, when we needed to sell my grandmother's house, a really cheapo photo enlarger for a home dark room. Used corrugated cardboard for positioning lenses. Probably sat in the attic, where we found it, forgotten for about 40 years.

The Japanese made really crappy AA5 radios back in the 50's, before they mastered quality manufacturing. You rarely see any of them today.

[mbates14]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

Oh, there was cheap crap sold back in olden days, but you rarely see any of it because 99.9% of it has been tossed long ago. I did find, when we needed to sell my grandmother's house, a really cheapo photo enlarger for a home dark room. Used corrugated cardboard for positioning lenses. Probably sat in the attic, where we found it, forgotten for about 40 years.

The Japanese made really crappy AA5 radios back in the 50's, before they mastered quality manufacturing. You rarely see any of them today.

Crown brand? I think i have one. and of course, it doesnt work.

[Kiwick]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

Oh, there was cheap crap sold back in olden days, but you rarely see any of it because 99.9% of it has been tossed long ago. I did find, when we needed to sell my grandmother's house, a really cheapo photo enlarger for a home dark room. Used corrugated cardboard for positioning lenses. Probably sat in the attic, where we found it, forgotten for about 40 years.

The Japanese made really crappy AA5 radios back in the 50's, before they mastered quality manufacturing. You rarely see any of them today.

Another oldtime POS japanese product were those junky portable rim drive tape recorders, they were useless even for speech recording right out of their boxes, and usually failed real quick due to crappy capacitors/motors/mechanical parts and so on...
Yet loads of them are still around, and they're often popping up on Ebay...

Some vintage stuff was also quite unsafe, flame retardant materials weren't used back then, many sets were housed in flammable wood cabinets, AA5 radios and other hot chassis designs often had hot parts easily accessible to the user.
The WORST vintage electric chair of all times would have to be the Italian-made Geloso G255 hot chassis tape recorder from the mid 50s, this thing was insanely dangerous, the microphone socket's ground was tied directly to the hot chassis, you had to use the supplied isolated microphone but it was made of crappy brittle plastic that broke easily and then you got exposed hot parts, also some people were reportedly electrocuted to death when they plugged a regular metal cased microphone into one of these things...

[andy]

...

[DaveWM]

That really takes me back, what a time for the hobby. Top quality gear being sold in there as well (scott, Mcintosh HK). Prices were not cheap like the garbarge you find for sale now and what a huge selection of items being sold. "the shack" has really really gone to the dogs.

[TerrySmith]

Just last week I picked up a LG 42" plasma TV non-working off of craigslist. Ended up needing the ICM, which is the large module on the Y-sustain board. It was a royal pain in the a$$ to unsolder! Flat screens woudn't be so bad IF they would use better quality components namely CAPACITORS!

Summer of 1980 I stopped by a repair shop that was going out of business and got a 19" Zenith CCII with the 4-lead cap problem and the neck burned off the CRT. I replaced the capacitor an scrounged a 19" CRT from a junk set (not a Zenith) and stuck it in. Convergence was close enough, focus was a little off but had a decent picture! I used it for another 10 years and gave it to a friend who used it 5 or so years more. He gave it back and it was really beat up so I set it outside for another year or two and one day I decided to power it up- and it still worked! I really miss Zenith quality!

[ggregg]

Originally Posted by andy

Check out pages 8 and 9 for some cheap radios. They go as low as $2.99! That's about $20 according to the inflation calculator. I've never seen a 2 transistor ratio, but I bet they sold a lot of them.

http://www.radioshackcatalogs.com/ca.../1965-a_small/

I was thinking more of in the thirties instead of 1965 but I get what you are saying.

You know stuff has really gone to the dogs when we are talking about the quality of Lloyd's. I know, much it is not too bad, especially compared to what came after.

[DaveWM]

My clock radio is a zenith 6 tube set with an large ferrite rod antenna with some kind of noise cancelling going on, it has connection to the chassis thru a shielded cable. Great set and very good AM dxing. The chassis is classic zenith hand wiring. The only weak point is the dial string which just broke the other day, but of course an easy fix. It has the built in coffee pot outlet, and a sleep timer so I can plug in a TV or stereo, and have it auto shut off after about 45 min.

[Dave A]

I counted 48 different AM/FM radios in the 1965 Radio Shack catalog. Now that would be 48 different cell phones. And don't miss the
"Americana AX-100" amp with 100 transistors and no transformer.

1965 was a time when we were flooded with a variety of economic choices including the good, the bad and the ugly. The bad won. Ugly is seasonal depending the designs showing up. BPC one year, silver the next, translucent next.

Then I went through the catalogs for the elusive 15GP22 and a few others...and they had them! One of few color tubes they ever sold. And not under the Lifetime banner.

1957 $235/$1881 today.
1958 $265/$2121 today.
1959 two different prices but with the same stock number. Also appearing for
the first time are the AXP and CYP at the lower price.
GP $235 and GP/AXP/CYP $128.
1960 $128/AXP only. GP gone.
1961 $108/AXP only. GP still gone. Nothing but BW after 1961.

And in 1961 you could still get that 19AP4 for your DuMont for $23.50. I quit after 1962 as I was too depressed to go on.

Dave A

[Glenz75]

Yep I couldn't agree more these Tek scopes are a something to behold in regards to build quality...

Originally Posted by Adam

As far as build quality, I think anybody ever topped what you see in the old Tektronix 500 series o-scopes.

[peverett]

The Tek scopes could also not be beat in terms of weight also. They weigh a ton! Probably the cause of many back problems for engineers!