When they got a few years on them most of them were like that.
Just like compactron sets ( GE, Admiral) you could replace most
of the low level tubes one at a time & see improvement step by step.
Problem was it got pricy & made the customer suspicious.
Actually had them come down & see on a few high tube count
jobs why.
After we pretty much stopped doing tube jobs the owner
took in a CTC36 charity case. He told me to use up all the tubes I
wanted for free since we would never sell them. Damn near
replaced all the tubes & it had one of the best pixs I have seen.

My only other major gripe with '36's & later hybrid RCA's was the rear
control assy,s were crap & they were awkward to do real work on.
We got the jig cables for them & just pulled the chassii to get
them right, saved time in the end.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Well, my name is zenithfan1, and I do love Zenith, they are very well made. I mean c'mon, we still are able to use them, and other brands 50 years after they were made. BUT, I have had the best luck with the CTC-9. My anniversary model has had around 450+ hours put on it since I recapped it and checked it out. Not one problem so far. The convergence has stayed spot on as well..and yes, I run it with a fan pointed at the back. I don't like to alter sets by installing one inside. I use a very quiet running Japanese made 1968 Sears oscillating fan on low. As far as my luck with Zenith, my unrestored 25MC33 "constantine" model combo is still working fine, after 100's of hours that I have put on it, I have no idea how much it was used in the past. The only repair tag it has is dated 1969...... :) My restored CTC11, blew a new cap that I have to replace. New parts suck....... :P Other than that, and a weird glowing 6BK4 issue that I have to track down, it has been a good set too.....My vote goes to the CTC9! Best so far in my experience. Not much of a fan of RCA after the CTC16XL. The later tube sets just suck in my opinion. Newer stuff, has to be a Zenith. (mid 60's to late 70's)

The OEM tubes had white printing, instead of red. IIRC, some were GE and Westinghouse, as well.

Oddly enough when they were popular I detested Magnavox colors. Hard to work on and always had tuner and vertical problems. Now, my T-933 is a workhorse (and my avatar). It has wonderful color and, once straightened out, very reliable. Original flyback and yoke and electrolytics! The vertical was recapped a while back and the picture tube was replaced a good while back.
Now, the GE KEII chassis was a good one to make a tech go nuts!

Tube Set Reliability
 

So, Kamakiri, did you original question ever get answered?

I would submit that reliability of consumer electronics has to be considered in relative terms. Can tube sets be made to work reliably? Yes, as long as one considers that these devices were relatively expensive, and unreliable compared with modern sets. I heard stories that 2-3 years was a common lifespan of early color sets (1950's and 1960's). That from a former professional repairer! it was not uncommon for a color set to go less than a year between repairs. When the frequency of repairs got to 1-2 months, or CRT replacement was necessary, many customers considered that unacceptable.

Of course, customers and repair professionals were all over the map in terms of acceptability of repair cost, and recommendations for set replacement.

Solid state electronics brought some improvement, but not to the degree that was promised. I heard and saw early SS adverts and science articles that suggested that SS sets would NEVER fail. Yeah, right! It appears that improvemnts in design, manufacturing techniques, and materials science produced the remainder of the gains, until low cost became the prime objective, bringing us to the time of the 2 year flat panel, where we are today. if that's the basis for comparison for reliability, then yes tube sets can compete... :D

I think the "flat screen televisions last only two years" cliche has been repeated over and over so often it is now believed as truth, and is now all but worn out. The early FPs may have lasted only two years or less, but today's flat screens can and should last much longer than that, especially when one considers that very large flat screens are very expensive--over $1k for 40-50-inch sets. The 70-inch ones go for $4k+, a large enough sum of money that most people can only afford to spend once (if that much) on a television. The smaller sets tend to last the longest. I see posts to Insignia's support forum from people who own mostly larger sets, 50 inches and up; very rarely do I see posts for service advice on sets 19 inches or less. My own Insignia 19" FP is just out of warranty, is in daily use for a couple hours each day (it isn't on eight to ten hours a day as some FPs are), and still works every bit as well as the day I bought it.

The brand name on the set may have some bearing on the TV's longevity. Polaroid, Craig, et al. flat screens may have very cheap electronics, cheap capacitors that will swell and bulge after a year or even less, but Panasonic and other well-known brands, including Vizio, should last somewhat longer than just two years. However, FPs are more sensitive than older SS and tube CRT sets to power surges, lightning strikes and the like, so perhaps some of the two-year life span reports are legitimate, coming from people whose FPs have been damaged or even destroyed by such (these sets are probably not protected by surge protectors :nono:, but plugged directly into AC outlets, which can and often does shorten the life of the set). I know someone who has several 52-inch flat screen TVs in her house, all of them well over two years old; every one of her sets are still working quite well, the last I heard. There are large FPs in use in stores, offices, doctors' waiting rooms, etc. that are on eight hours a day up to six or seven days a week; one doctor I see regularly has a large-screen Vizio set in his waiting room (used for patient information, not program viewing), installed just less than a year ago, and the last I saw it, it was working fine.

Sure did. And more importantly, I got to bitch and moan, and talk to others who understand....and I appreciate that more than words can say :)

That said, time to start rounding up some tubes for the CTC-36 :yes:

too many moving parts
 

Tube sets had two major areas that caused problems. First you have the heat build up and shortens the life of the set and then you have all the potentiometers and coils that can get noisy or just fail. And oh yeah don't forget about all those vacuum tubes.

Lots of comments about Sony and how dependable they were. They were a pretty good set, but they had their fair share of problems (I used to work on quite a few of them).

I remember I always admired Sony's build quality, but when they had a problem they were sure not the easiest chassis to troubleshoot. I also remember Sony replacement parts being way overpriced and not easily obtained like other brands. Not that it mattered much to me at the time......I made more $$ on the Sony jobs because their owners would spend good money to fix them. When a guy spends more to buy a certain kind of TV, he'll generally pay more to get it serviced.

Plus, I also got Sony repair work referred to me by my competitor (who wouldn't touch a Sony repair job).

I have found reliability of tube TVs to be a mixed bag. My Motorola 9VT1 8" electrostatic set has been very reliable needing only a few repairs in the 14 years since I first restored it. My 8" RCA metal portable has been even more reliable in about as many years. The Zenith color roundie (25MC33 chassis) has been a bit more maintenance intensive. I even considered getting rid of it at one point because I felt it needed too much attention. The color sets are always going to need more tlc because they are more complex and the is simply more to go wrong, need periodic adjustment, etc. I do like my Zenith as it is my only tube color set but I would not want to own more than one or two at the most. As it is the Zenith has always had a vertical problem where it looks like it is about to colapse for a fraction of a second. Sometimes it starts to roll or even goes to a line for a second or two. I still have not figured out what is causing that. Despite the maintenance would not want to be without tube technology in my life. Even my Bakelite five tube radios bring me so much enjoyment and they rarely have problems except the occasional need for a tube or at least a good chassis removal and cleaning once every couple years.

flat screens suck, color quality and burns your eyes, nothing like a crt tv. flat screens do only last 2-5 years because the power supply caps dont hold up they bulge and fail, ive fixed many of them, even the ones i picked up at the local dump recapped the power supply and sold them. got a 1996 rca 36 inch color and it refuses to die over all these years its needed 2 flybacks 2 1kv caps and a zener diode for the pip and the crt is so bright and crystal clear one would never think it was a solid state tv from 1996.

i love to collect antiques but i don't have any old tv set because it's useless and you can't watch it and it takes more power than other lcd and led

You do realize this IS a vintage television forum, right? :headscrat

I deleted the spam link in your signature, by the way. Either you're very creative at spamming, or you got off the bus at the wrong stop :)

Love this thread!
I've probably repeated this story many a time in different topics, but....
I worked with my Uncle in his sales repair shop in the late 70's early 80's.
We sold Zenith, but our county was RCA-land. My Uncle's bread and butter were RCA repairs. At the time, fairly simple, the usual 6GH8A's.. and summer always kept us busy with flyback replacements. Most of my observations have been stated in previous posts in this thread by the techs that worked during that era, and I can especially relate to Zenith26KC20's post about the dread of working on Magnavox, but have seen a FEW that still survive with NO issues (must have been a good day on the assembly line).
Never saw a Motorola color set that wasn't a POS.....
It was interesting to see how some of these sets were about shot in their 10-14th year (circa 1980)
IMO... all tube sets are gonna require continual upkeep at this point. (they were getting unreliable 33 years ago) For most trouble free, I'd stick with a Zenith.. a 4-tube hybrid would be ideal.
Also.. a bit off-topic, but it's interesting to see now that much time has passed, the quirks the solid state sets have.
Example: early RCA XL-100 and Zenith CC2 are somewhat of a pain now, due to how the modules are mounted, and Sylvania and Sony's didn't have the longest lasting picture tubes......

I had several Motorola consoles come through my shop... several were the same chassis that I grew up on... with zero repairs... these customer sets had issues with vertical problems, and color, from what I can remember. I'm still amazed that the set we had never gave problems, besides the dreaded 23V CRT failures.

RCA's were always the bread and butter. I tried to keep flybacks in stock for them.

The Motorola I'm thinking of is the ETS908, which is the first color set I owned. My family ran the set for about ten years, until the 23EG got pretty weak.
The tuner needed cleaning every so often and I replaced about eight of the twenty eight tubes used in that chassis. It still had the original horizontal output tubes, when we quit using it.
That chassis wasn't as trouble prone as the smaller nineteen tube chassis.

Diesel. did your Moto have the neat little 'color indicator' neon lamp on the front panel that turned on when a color program was being broadcast?

That was probably one of the big selling points! :D
IIRC, the set was built four months before Motorola quit building the chassis.
IIRC, the color circuit had seven tubes in it, most being 6BL8's, but wasn't hard on them. It still used a 6AL5, which seemed strange. :scratch2:

ZENITH's are the BEST
 

I had a 25mc33 bought at a thrift for $35 or something similair, cleaned the controls and used it for 6 months unrestored.

:thmbsp::thmbsp:

The RCA's I had lost interest in since they routinely fried resistors and tubes . Sold Zenith since had cheap cabinet, SHOULD of had custom cabinet made, best roundie ever had, great picture too.

RCA's have crapola designs pushing parts to operating limits one prolific collector I know restores them just to keep for static display,which is what RCA's basically good for......................... :tears::yes::no:

It is not necessarily true new sets use less power. My 2007 Sony LCD TV uses over 300 watts! Most color tube sets use 350. It depends on the size of the set of course(in both cases). The only difference between LCD and LED is the backlight. They are both LCD TV's. People often make that mistake. Yes you can still watch older sets with a converter box. Everybody here who has a set does.

That may be your experience but not everyone's. I have a CTC 9 that was ran from 1959 through the mid 90's with all its original parts(excluding CRT's and some tubes), even the original fly. I have not found one replacement cap or resistor in that set and I looked thoroughly.(I still use the set) Sure some RCA's can be more problematic than others(and so can Zeniths). I have a friend that watches his RCA's daily and NO issues so far. He had more issues with his 2 Zenith roundies

For me, it's a conundrum because in this house, if I have no intentions of making it work or it's too far gone to be fixed in some manner, I don't want to own it. I have a total of 21 vintage sets, of which 11 are fully operational and 3 just need some more TLC. Eventually, they'll all work, I figure I can knock off 4 or as much as 6 this winter if I get ambitious enough.

The CTC-25 stares at me quietly from my desk, not knowing its fate. It's made it this long, and I hate to see it go down without a fight. I tend to personify the damn thing and the scene comes to mind where Linus said "it's really not such a bad little tree, Charlie Brown.....all it needs is a little love"

I think that is the right dynamic for the road to a lot of headaches, but I'm prolly gonna take it anyway :D

Just think of Tom's Sylvania hybrid whenever debating what to do with the CTC-25.

Back in the seventies I fixed a nice looking CTC-25 for resale to a cousin and that set lasted another 10+ years. Serviced quite a few and they can look pretty good. Don't give up!

the CTC-9 is supposed to be a good chassis
 

You're right, Staton, the CTC-9 is supposed to be a good chassis. I could of snagged one a long time ago, cost to ship was ridiculous. I guess by then RCA had most of the reliability problems worked out from earlier models.

Most reliable color set I've got is a 1967 Airline(bottom left).
http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/...y/DSCN0429.jpg
That set was on the second floor living room of a mom and pop podetrist's(misspelled) office/home. It was used regularly for years, and it actually still worked fine there when I bought it. It is a Muntz made RCA clone. Several tubes are replacements but it otherwise looks like nothing was replaced. I've been running it occasionally as found only with some adjustments since then...Though I really need to fix or replace the bad vertical centering control so I can get good purity and vertical geometry without the bottom 1-4" of the screen not being scanned.

The 1965 Philco next to it would be runner up. It only needed the internal horiz. osc. adjustment tweaked....Though I did replace some caps to improve it and make it safer. It does have more factory original tubes IIRC though...

I've about had it with my CTC-36.

I've watched it for about 20 hours total. In that 20 hours, I've replaced about 15 tubes (went through multiple 5GH8s), blew a 1 kV ceramic cap, replaced the picture tube, and now that I've just installed 7 fresh tubes after getting a really dark raster, I have no raster and a buzz in the audio with no static.

I bet at least 2 of those 20 hours were trying to get some decent convergence on the #$%&@.

If there is anyone that can give me a reason NOT to send this set to the e-recycling station after being picked clean, speak now or forever hold your peace.....

My RCA "Hathaway" CTC-10C console has moved with me since 1976 from NC, to TN, then to GA, before coming back to NC where I am now. Other than an unneeded CRT replacement in 1983, (couldn't turn down a free brand new CRT) the back has not been off the set but once, and that was for a dirty focus rectifier tube socket.

It's only had one of the big filters replaced in all these years, and the two neon lamps under the chassis.

Is this reliable enough?

Ignore me. I'm a ham-fisted retard that had two tubes in the wrong sockets. What a third grade mistake.....I'm pretty pissed at myself :mad:

Set's working again :)

Were those tubes in the wrong sockets for all of those 20 hours?

Less than a minute. Now I have to play with the convergence and purity once again. It was screwed up before the last round of tube replacement.

That sort of thing happens occasionally.
I was never thrilled with the picture on those things. Those low voltage focus CRT's never seem to be that clear, when they age a bit. Other forum members recommended hitting the CRT, with a rejuvenator, set on low.
I have a CTC51 and a CTC53, same thing. Picture's clear enough, but not the way I like them.
They're OK to have in a collection, I guess. :scratch2:

It's probably a good thing I missed that 1966 or '67 RCA console that was for sale recently, even though it's the oldest colour set I had seen around here since my grandmother's '68 French Provincial console was disposed of in the early 90s.

I've got a CTC-53 with a great picture....convergence is about perfect too. This 36 has been nothing but trouble, but I like it :(

Had to cut my losses and dump the CTC-25 though. Lots of color issues, rusted chassis frame, cataracted picture tube, brittle PC board. But it still made a picture, albeit a purple green and white one.....

No sense keeping your worst stuff around anyway, I recently got rid of an XL-100 with a weak CRT, non-op OSD and cosmetic issues, not to mention broken latches on the control panel door.

That Silvertone metal-cabinet roundie Electronic M has reminds me of a set I had in the early 1970s. Mine was almost exactly identical to his (except for the push-pull volume control and power switch), but I had all sorts of trouble with it. I got the TV from someone in my old neighborhood; when I got the set home, I found a bad circuit breaker. I jumped the breaker (was just starting in TV servicing at the time--besides, I did not have a replacement handy); that got the set working, and in fact I had a picture and sound after that, but I was never able to get the convergence right.

I fooled with the set for three years, trying one thing after another to get it to work as it should, then things started going wrong. First, the color sync went bad, although I could get it to lock by turning the tint control back and forth a few times. Then the video output tube (I think) developed a heater-cathode short, putting a hum bar in the picture. The video output tube socket cracked out of the board when I tried to replace the tube (the only replacement I could find had a bent pin); this ruined the set. :no: I've been wary of PC boards in televisions (or any other electronic device) ever since.

I left that roundie behind when I moved in 1975, and replaced it the following year with another Sears rectangular color set which was actually built by Toshiba; that one was followed by a long string of color and b&w sets, all used. However, I don't miss the roundie one bit. Those phenolic-based PC boards may have been good when they were new, but after a few years of being subjected to heat from tubes and such, they became so brittle that changing tubes became a real problem--the least bit of pressure on a tube socket would crack the board, all too often ruining it. I would not dream of touching the PC modules in my flat screen TV (or either of my late-model CRT sets) these days.

Quality of PC boards has improved over time. I've never busted a tube socket through a board(knock on wood), but then again I know the strength of PC boards, and thus try not to put much force on them...A tube socket on a PC board can't take a person's full weight like a chassis mount socket can.

I try not to toss anything I can get any usable parts from, or that I can someday fix.

Don't worry about tube swap mistakes too much, I still make them occasionally. What drives me nuts is when I don't notice for a long time, or I make the dumb mistake of assuming a tube that was good before a breakdown is still good after the problem....I've wasted many hours chasing my tail on passive components when all that was wrong was a bad tube.

Convergence can be a real SOB on some sets.
On my roadside sylvania I finally got it back to how it was before the hv failure, but me and a friend decided to try and improve the dynamic convergence and only made it substantially worse....

Tube substitutions must never be done haphazardly. Putting tubes in the wrong sockets in a TV, radio or any kind of electronic equipment using vacuum tubes can have disastrous results; for example, the filament pins of one tube may well be the plate terminals of another, possibly causing circuit damage or worse (including but not limited to fire) if two or more tubes are put into incorrect sockets. I would never substitute one tube type for another unless I was absolutely certain the substitution would work. A good rule of thumb is to check a tube substitution manual if you are in doubt as to whether a particular substitute will operate properly. If you do not have such a manual, replace the tube with the same type already in the device you are servicing.

What he says.

Be absolutely sure that the tubes are in the right sockets before you do anything. I learned the hard way when I was checking out a set that used the 6DT6, 6AU6, 6AQ5 audio board. I was told the sound was fine, then nothing. Someone had switched the positions of the 6DT6 and the 6AU6, and I didn't look at the actual numbers. These tubes look similar, but are not the same.

I'm so glad that I have only one set that uses one 6GH8 tube. I never have good service from them, and they have caused more repeat trouble than I care to mention.

Back to the original topic of this forum-the tube type sets could be very reliable imho.My father bought a zenith roundie in the fall of 1966 that had nothing but problems in its first 2 years of life(almost always a bad tube).After its last repair of a new crt int 1968,it was played day in and out thru the end of 1979 without a single service call.It was still working when I bought him a new magnavox for Christmas in 1979 but with a weak crt.I mistakenly told him to throw it out when the new set arrived(wish I would have kept that set).The magnavox still plays today-never a service call!