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

[old_tv_nut]

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.

That and the Bell Telephone System central office equipment.

[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...

[radiotvnut]

I know I've mentioned this somewhere before; but, I have a '48 Decca children's 78 rpm record player that has one side of the AC line connected directly to the chassis. The ground shield of the cartridge cable, which (of course) runs through the metal tonearm, is natuarlly connected to the chassis; thus, making the metal tonearm "hot". And, of course, the volume control shaft is hot. The only thing protecting the user is the knob. All it would take would be for the AC plug to be inserted the wrong way in the socket and for someone to have one hand on the metal tonearm and another body part to be in contact with a ground point and that would be all she wrote.

Something like this would never pass UL inspection today; and, I don't know how it passed back then, either. Especially since this item was marketed to children. To make it safer, I installed a line isolation transformer inside the case.

[zenith2134]

That was a wise thing to do. Some of these stories amaze me...unsafe products are an unfortunate reality.

I told this story on the A.K. site but I'll tell it again here. Growing up, my father had a fair amount of stereo gear set up around the house. 2 systems. Anyway, the garage/workshop system was based around a Carver 'The Receiver' (the one with sonic holography or something). Well, his unit must've had a fault somewhere because I was barefoot in the shed and the volume knob gave me quite a jolt. All metal knobs, which explains it...and why I should wear shoes out there .! I was like 13 at the time BTW.

Re: Our goodies lasting 40-80 yrs.: The way I see it, vintage color TVs are still around because their big-ticket item, the CRT, is often of high quality & can endure countless hours of operation. IMO, the reason why N.O.S. audio tubes(USA) are worth big$$ is because they were/are mostly a high quality product.

From experience, I have 'fixed' many many sets by replacing about 10 bucks worth of parts and putting in the labor. They usually stay good after that

[Electronic M]

Kiwick, there was insulation in some (very few, but some) american radios, they called it asbestos. I've only had two sets out of the approximatly 100+ radios I've owned that had this insulation(needles to say the sets don't have insulation any more). With all the hazmat I've been in contact with I would not be surprized if I start glowing in the dark Before I hit 25.

Tom C.

[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

[Kamakiri]

It's interesting to think about it in reverse, and consider what people will be restoring in years to come, or what will be considered made very well now, that in the future will be made cheaply.

Think about the year 2040. Will people remember those well-made iPods, yearn for the days of Windows 2000, or do a ground-up restoration on a Hyundai Elantra?

When talking about the collectibles of the future, I predict two things will become very desirable: sneakers and import hatchbacks. Cars like the Acura Integra and Subaru Impreza are destined to become the next '57 Chevys, and if you want to have some cash onhand for retirement, buy a pair of purple leather Jordans and stash them in a box in your closet. I came across a rare pair of UK market orange suede Puma California sneakers at a thrift recently, in great shape. I always keep my eyes out for mint and unusual sneakers when I go thrifting.

[DrRick]

Where did you get the ICM?
I have a 42" LG plasma with a shorted ICM on the Y-sustain board.

QUOTE=TerrySmith;3002706]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![/QUOTE]

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by Kamakiri

It's interesting to think about it in reverse, and consider what people will be restoring in years to come

Probably the cheap garbage thats been made since the 90s!!

Quite sad.........

[old_coot88]

In the TV Sales&Service business in the 60s, 5 years was considered nominal service life for a color set, once it's nursed past the warranty.

[JohnCT]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

In the TV Sales&Service business in the 60s, 5 years was considered nominal service life for a color set, once it's nursed past the warranty.

We had very few sales on 5 year and under color TVs. In the mid 70s when I took over the bench work for our business, I was working on a lot of early 60s TVs routinely.

But, we were in a decidedly middle class city so that could have a lot to do with it. There was guy who set up a TV sales/repair shop in a large exclusive retirement community in a wealthy low population suburb and those people would buy a new TV if their 3 year old TV conked out.

John

[old_tv_nut]

If I recall correctly, the major manufacturers aimed for 10 years service at 2000 hours per year, with "normal" maintenance. Much of the passive component life depends on time and temperature. Higher rated capacitors and resistors would price a maker out of the market. Of course, competition for selling price prejudices component choice against considering total lifetime cost of operation/maintenance. Contrasted to this, the telephone monopoly expected equipment to last 25 years with essentially zero failures.

There's also a peculiar effect of component manufacturing tolerance. Carbon composition resistors cannot be manufactured to a tolerance of 5%, so 5% tolerance resistors have to be selected at the end of the process. This means that 10% resistors used by the smaller TV makers tend to be toward either the high or low end of the tolerance, so that individual TV sets are closer to drifting out of design tolerance as they age.

Big manufacturers like Zenith could get a reasonable price for the tighter tolerance components due to large volume purchases, while smaller makers like Motorola used 10% parts unless it was determined that it would result in too many rejects at the end of the production line.