Salvation Army Sony

[crh4881]

I was surprised to find what looks like a mid 80s Sony KV-1970R at the Salvation army thrift store today.

[CoogarXR]

Originally Posted by crh4881

I was surprised to find what looks like a mid 80s Sony KV-1970R at the Salvation army thrift store today.

I see you have a fancy-schmancy Salvation Army that actually runs the TVs. Out of the 20 or so thrifts I go to, there is only one that actually has running TVs on display.

You would think the cost of running a bank of 10 or so CRT TVs would quickly negate the $5-10 they get for them.

[Jon A.]

Looks like the KV-1926R I had but that was all black. The tuner in that thing went all the way up to 999; it makes no sense, but that's Sony for you.

[radiotvnut]

I've had several of those, over the years. Back around 2001, I was given one by a repair shop because lightning had struck it and the customer didn't want it fixed. It only needed poser supply diodes and a resistor. After those parts were replaced, the set served me well for several years and it was still working when I sold it.

The last one I had came from the Salvation Army. It was back when they still had the cool manager who would make me deals on stuff and I was sitting on the floor, looking at records, when I saw one of the workers carrying the set to the back. I stopped him and asked what the deal was with it. He said the picture tube was blown and they were going to toss it. I told him that I'd give him a few dollars for it as-is. He asked the manager and I ended up carting it out the door for $5. When I plugged it in, the relay buzzed like crazy and the problem was a bad capacitor in the stand-by power supply (common problem) and after I replaced the capacitor, the set worked fine.

I always liked getting broken TV's directly from the thrift store and from individuals. Those sets had usually not been to a repair shop; so, a lot of them were easy fixes. A lot of what I was getting from the repair shops were either dogs or not worth fixing.

[Jeffhs]

Those Sonys were excellent TVs. My great-aunt owned one that lasted 20 years; when it finally quit, she bought a new, larger one that lasted until her death in the early '90s. I guess she was sold on Sony.

I can't imagine why the UHF tuner in Jon's Sony TV goes to channel 999. Those sets were made long before today's digital cable, which does have channels in the hundreds and even thousands (the ones in the 1000s are often HD channels). The UHF tuner in my great-aunt's Sony tuned to channel 99, which was some 17 channels above the top of the UHF TV spectrum at that time ('70s). I never knew or even gave much thought to why the tuner in her set went so high; again, as with Jon's TV, it didn't make much sense that the tuner went so far above channel 83. Perhaps Sony was designing its '80s-vintage TVs for an expanded UHF spectrum that never materialized until two decades later.

[andy]

...

[Marco-nix]

Originally Posted by andy

Those Sonys let you enter any channel number from 0-999, but nothing above 125 for cable, or 83 for antenna is real. You couldn't add any of those invalid channels. It was just a bug in their software.

Unfortunately, we don't have the antennas signal. we need to have a cable box for watching tv probably due to the HD tvs.....

[colorfixer]

I remember these in Canada when they were new. Figure about 1987-ish. There were a number of these in different cabinet designs. There were ones with wood cabinets, plastic wannabe wood, silver and finally the ones with the all black. I wonder what differences there were between these versions

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by CoogarXR

I see you have a fancy-schmancy Salvation Army that actually runs the TVs. Out of the 20 or so thrifts I go to, there is only one that actually has running TVs on display.

Yes I think running them would help sell them..... The salvation army near me sometimes has a movie playing on 1 of them.....

[Beachboy]

I had that same exact same model Sony I purchased new in 1988 and used maybe a total of 8 hours (long story). I recently donated it to a thrift store. I usually browse through Goodwill here, and they no longer accept CRT style TV's. A couple days ago, I went to our local Salvation Army for the first time, and noticed they had a price of just one dollar on any TV. There were mostly 13" and 19" BPC models there, but that's a raging bargain for anyone that needed a basic TV and wasn't too proud to use a CRT model.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by Beachboy

I had that same exact same model Sony I purchased new in 1988 and used maybe a total of 8 hours (long story). I recently donated it to a thrift store. I usually browse through Goodwill here, and they no longer accept CRT style TV's. A couple days ago, I went to our local Salvation Army for the first time, and noticed they had a price of just one dollar on any TV. There were mostly 13" and 19" BPC models there, but that's a raging bargain for anyone that needed a basic TV and wasn't too proud to use a CRT model.

How much pride is involved!
The so-called proud people live in a rented house or apartment and are in debt up to their eye teeth and living from check-to-check. They get no sympathy from me!

[ha1156w]

Hey, I've got one of these sets in a closet that's free for the taking if anyone wants it near downtown Dallas. Cabinet is in great shape and it has an excellent picture. Replaced many of the caps in it when I got it about 8 years ago from a yard sale to extend its life. No remote with it but a universal will certainly talk to it fine.

[TVTim]

Nice find!