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

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by centralradio

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.

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...

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

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...

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.