Early tv techs faced color challenge
 

When color came out, one of the challenges was to have trained techs ready to service the new technology. For the most part Rca did an excellent job of preparing Rca authorized service techs to face the new technology.

If you were just some guy changing tubes in the field, color weeded out the men from the boys. Just the set up adjustments for color was enough, let alone learning the chroma circuits and what made them tick

I have oftened wondered what percentage of radio repairmen went out of business rather than go into TV repair, and what percentage of TV repairmen were never able or willing to go into color repair. There were certainly a lot of color books in the fifties but I wonder how many readers "got it"?

Or how about how many gave up when radio and tv started going to solid state?

I'd bet the switch to color had a much slower impact, since it didn't explode in sales very quickly like b/w TV did. Of course it's not like color tv wiped all repair-needing b/w tvs out of peoples houses, nor did b/w tvs eliminate everybody's broken radios that needed fixing. However I can see where if you decided you were only going to fix radios or b/w tvs, you would start to lose existing customers to someone who could service the things that you couldn't.

I often wonder what it was like for guys repairing sets back then. As much as I like watching early color sets, I do prefer working on b/w, which is why my ctc-10 has been sitting for so long while I've fixed b/w sets all summer. And by the time they went to solid state I don't like to work on them at all, I really don't have much idea what I'm doing anymore, and I can get just as good of a picture if not better out of the tube sets. I've wondered if any of guys back then thought like I do and got out of tv repair in the mid-70s when everything was going solid state.
It's interesting to hear how people were so excited by color tv when it was new, if anything I've had the opposite experience, when I first got interested in tv's in the mid-80s I thought it was exciting and different to have b/w when everyone else had color. But when I get my ctc-10 going I'm going to get some early 60s color shows on dvd and try to recreate the experience of early color. Now if I could only get a few modulators that operated on different channels, then I could still get some use out of the remote, I find that I hardly ever use remotes anymore because I'm always running my sets either off a dvd player and rf modulator, vcr, or uhf converter.

Where I live it seems that ALL TV technicians from the old days became EXTREMELY happy with the fact that at some point there were no more tube type televisions to repair. I know a bunch of them, some are still in business, other are retired, and they all but one seem to absolutely despise tube televisions. It is rather frustrating and irritating, really. Since I know just a little of electronics, I need someone with knowledge to put my sets working again. Those who are collectors and/or restorers of these old beauties lives just very far from me - in other states, so I would have to ship sets to other parts of the country. The old techs near me all seem to think that tube TVs only gives troubles, and that SS are way easier to repair. In no way they want to repair any tube type TV set anymore. I think that they are ungrateful, because, in my understatement, the period on which TV techs made more money were the days of tube type televisions. According to a fellow vintage TV collector "those were the days when the TV techs made a lot of money, these sets needed frequent maintenance [ he said that the average 50's TV received the visit of the tech something like 5 times a year ], a guy repairing TVs could easily [ his words ] pay his house, educate his children and get a car" .

I just remember the conversation I had with the man who was the first Admiral authorized servicemen here in my city. It was years ago, when I began my collection, I had just bought my first antique TV, the 17 inch bakelite Admiral from 1953, and I was very excited. Talking to him was like getting a cold shower - with my clothes on. He scorned the brand, saying: "Admiral? It was something to ADMIRE when it worked right!" And then went with the same bla, bla, bla, that I would became very used to hear on the following years that "those sets are worthless the trouble to repair, etc" . Last question I made him had also a sad answer - It was a long time since he sent to the dump all promotional material from Admiral he had from the days he had his shop.

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Well for what its worth, in my experience with modern, so called "tv tecnicians" only a very few these days even have the board/component level skills to even remotely repair a set. In the late 70's and 80's, you just changed the modules. Of course it was easier and of course they made more money on SS due to the designed simplicity of the module system. Tube sets took patience and solid troubleshooting skills to track down a problem therefore it took more time and money to locate that problem

Of course there were many techs who knew better and repaired the module but the system was simply designed to cut down on labor costs. Now of course, there is no repairing modern sets and they are just throw away at this point. They are such junk anyway, who would want to repair it?

Many of today's techs are no better than the old B/W tech that just swapped tubes. Not trying to offend anyone, that is just my opinion from my experience.

Of course, tube technology was not as reliable in reference to mean time between failures, but often it was just a tube and you moved on, continuing to enjoy the television set.

The few techs that do still know how to repair at the board level, don't want to touch a tube tv due to our very litigious (sp) society. I remember a tech that used to help me with my CTC-21 back in the 80's. He constantly told me to "get rid of that damn thing, it is nothing but trouble." He often got burned on repairing a tube set and after he repaired the failure, a short time later, something else failed, ususally a cap and he got griped out as if it was his fault. Ultimately, since he was trying to give good customer service, he would have to go back and pick up the set or chassis and find the problem. The customer didn't and often doesn't understand the reality of aging electronics and would gripe him out about having to pay for an additional repair. He often ended up making the repair either at a minimal cost or free of charge and ended up losing money on the repair. He finally quit accepting tube sets period and was so hacked off with the situation, he wouln't even talk about tube sets again.


Just my two cents

I grew up watching Admiral sets.. the tv repairman made a small fortune off my parents. When he got divorced my mom stated that they payed for the divorce. I watch a 1954 Admiral as my main old set, very reliable. But I have to admit, I still call the tv repairman by first name, and he is still in business, and must be close to 80. In fact he recapped my Admiral when I got it last year. I collect old radios also and there were probably 10 tv/radio repair shops in Quincy IL in the 1970's when I started collecting. Now there are 2. And neither repairs radios anymore.
Dan
ps I still have a Motorola portable purchased by my parents in 1962 to fill a void of a dead and being repaired Admiral. It has been a great set and I still watch it a few times a year with no service done on it in 40 years at least.

Probably the most commom early 50's TVs here in Brazil are those bakelite Admirals. It looks like they were imported by very large numbers. Most important, the bakelite cabinet, being termite-proof, ensured that they survived in much greater numbers than their wood cabinet conterparts. I have been warned that the 17 inch models indeed have terrible performances, but that the 21 inch version was quite a good set.

I am not at all convinced of what the old man said, that "Admiral was something to admire when worked right" , because if that was the case it would not have been such a successful brand here - they sold so many TVs in the early 50's that around 1958 they actually opened a factory here, that produced not only TVs but also refrigerators and air conditioners. In fact, I remember that when I was a small boy, on the early 80's, I still saw some 1960's Admiral TV sets on the living rooms of some neighbors, and old Admiral air conditioners were something commom to see in use.

When I worked in television shops almost 30 years ago, I was sent out in
the field with a De-Gaussing coil and a tool roll for playing around with the
screens/guns/convergence, Etc. I'm not sure how good I did but the people
seemed happy :) .... I'd flip ye ole set-up switch in the back or get the
bar generator out an play around for awhile ---- Darn those old flybacks
could bite though !!! ---- That darn De-Gaussing coil made me so much
easy money, and knowing to flip that set-up switch did too --- Then there
was the usual, horizontal output regulators/Vertical and retrace regulators...
You really couldn't go wrong with the SAM's and the fricken library in my town had so many ......... Those were the daze ...........
http://www.childrenfirst.nhs.uk/teen...v_homepage.gif

They weren't very good sets, they were just cheaper to buy. A lot cheaper than RCA or Zenith.

AWE-YES ---- Then there was the illustrious BeamScope !!! ---- That 25 inch diagonal magnifying glass that had prism like grooves in it......
The claim was that you attach it to the front of your tiny little black and white portable TV and it would enlarge the picture and make it color too !!!
All the guys at the TV shop that I worked at laughed themselves silly over that one .... I wound up with one and tried it out just for laughs :)
It magnified the picture all right, and there was this colorful corona over all of the images and around the edges of the television set... truly an under-
appreciated device :lmao::lmao::lmao: I took it outside and melted a hole right through a popcan with it !!!! .... Then I melted a lead tire weight !!!
I set it up on two chairs and barely focused it on a griddle with I cooked
everything on that either turned out totally scorched or half raw......
I forget what happened to that gem ??? ...:thmbsp:

Yes, we had an Admiral refridgerator, I believe 4 Admiral tv's and seems we had a fan that was an Admiral also. I know my Dad was the type to buy what was built in Illinois, and I believe most of that stuff was built in Chicago.
Dan

Some "old radio guys" in this area sub-contracted their color repairs to guys with the training. My Dad fixed color and solid states sets for two other shops, both owned by guys that went into radio repair after WWII, but never got beyond tube-swapping in B/W sets. When color (and later solid state sets) came along, they got others to fix them - and for Dad it was good money - the set always got picked up and paid for, much better than some of his own customers that cried the mantra "I'll be in on Friday to pick it up." Most times, that Friday never came!

Some guys got by with minimal training and equipment - mostly by tube substitution. Some others here (mostly younger guys in start-ups) bought into the "gotta have every gizmo" to fix sets and quickly went under when they couldn't pay for their equipment.

Still others (and most of the successful ones) worked for shops gaining experience before striking out on their own. They then networked with the other shops for advice, parts, and loaner equipment. This worked well in this area - Dad and five other shops all worked together to help each other out.

It sure was a fun ride - now it's all factory-authorized shops that are thriving, thanks to RPTVs, LCDs, Plasmas, the need for specialty eqipment (Thomson Chipper-Checker, anyone??) and the high cost of service information (Sams only goes so far these days).


Cheers,

I had a friend that closed his TV & radio repair shop in the early '70's because of the switch from tubes to solid state. His health was declining and he said he just was not up to being re-trained in solid state & having to buy new test equipment. Also, he was starting to have trouble with people not picking up their sets.

I remember reading a description of techs who didn't know how to really fix things: "tube-pullers and knob-twiddlers". :)

Was there really that much tube failure in the old days? I find most old sets don't really need many new tubes, when I repaired my 721TS, I mainly just replaced capacitors, a few wires with the insulation comming off, 3 toasted resistors, and only one tube, the 6K6 audio output, and it even worked ok with the super weak one that was in there. And I've been watching my little 1956 8" RCA in bed every night for a while now and many of the tubes in that set are original. I will say that color sets always seem to need more tubes replaced, particularly tubes in the color circuits are often bad - those 6GH8s are usually bad among others.

I do think that when the sets were "younger", tube related problems were the most common, as other components had not aged enough.
Usually the biggest problem today is age-related problems like bad capacitors, bad wiring, etc. and tube related problems are fewer as the sets have been idle many years and have not been using the tubes.
TV sets seem to be often designed right to the edge of tube capabilities and when the sets are run for 10 or 12 hours at a time every day, some tube failures seem to happen after about a year or so of this kind of use.

I remember reading somewhere that more tubes were sold in 1957 than any other year. Interesting in that solid state was at least another 1o or so years down the road. Also remember reading that the average consumer back then averaged slightly more than 2 service calls per year on tvs.

I wonder if the peak in tube sales was due to the radios beginning to transition to solid state. The sales of 50C5s and 35W4s(the most commont tubes to fail in table radios of the time) would have began declining.

KIeep in mind we run our tube equipment very little today. So as Chad said age related problems are what we face. We changed a lot of Horiz outputs etc as I remember in the 70's. Even the Zeniths needed about one service call a year if it was used hard.

But conversely today's components don't fail as much as the solder connections that hold them together. Back in the day it was pretty unusual to find cold solder connections, today it's not that uncommon at all.

I do agree that back then most of the problems were 1st echolon problems such as tubes, crts, dirty tuners and controls. I don't expect that the designers had a clue some of these guys would be alive and kicking today.

I worked at an Rca parts distributor as service manager. The most popular tube was the 6gh8, followed by the horz out and damper tubes and of course the 3a3 and 6bk4

Oldtvman, in the TV repair field your list is exactly what I would expect. Although I worked in a TV shop for a very limited time in the 1970s, this is exactly what I remember.

I was just speculating that since radios were becoming solid state, the sale of the few 50C5s and 35W4s used in radios would be decreasing. I thought that this might explain why 1957 was the peak year of tube sales.

A couple of other things going on were:
1. Car radios were transitioning from tube to solid state. I had a 1960 Falcon-it had 12 volt tubes and 1 transistor. I also had (and have) a 1963 Falcon, it has a solid state radio. (My grandfather's 1953 Ford was all tube with a-almost always non-functioning-vibrator).
2. The low voltage rectifier tubes, 5U4s, etc were being replaced by diodes. The same is true with some of other diode type tubes such as the dual diode used in some TVs horizontal sections. (However, I would expect the increase in tube count due to color sets would more than offset this).

A couple more items were also changing in the late 1950s.

1. There were more multi-function tubes being developed such as the compactron and many 9 pin dual section tubes. Where a TV previously had a seperate tube for the sync seperator and video amp, one now might be used.
2. Higher gain tubes were being introduced. Where a TV might of had 3 IF stages (some had four), in the middle 1950s, by the mid 1960s, many B&W sets had only two IF stages.

I suspect that these also contributed somewhat to declining tube sales (in raw numbers) in the 1960s.

I'm not sure. I think its probably dependent on a lot of factors. My experience is that its always a bad cap, almost never the tube. In fact bad caps blow tubes. Rarely the other way around.

I've got a little Portacolor on my desk at work that I bought from Adam over a year ago. Its sat there running everyday for 14-16 hours a day and still operates the same as when I got it. I use it to monitor the station I work for. But, other than snickering from some fellow employees I have had no problems with it. So I guess millage will vary.

David

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/att...3&d=1186555107

-And no, I don't work for KTLA, I made that picture from a broadcast commemorating a local news anchor passing away.

It has been my experience that component construction, especially capacitors, improved greatly after around 1960. The "orange drop" type capacitors, etc began to appear.

This is probably one reason that the little Portacolor keeps on going. I also have one, a 1977 model, the works fine after clearing up a carbon trail in one of the adjustent conrols.

(GE was kind of strange when it came to CRT construction-I have seen some of the CRTs, from the Portacolor and some B&W sets with huge cathodes-these tubes seem to last forever. I have seen other B&W crts from them with little tiny cathodes-these are almost always very weak).

It's good to see that portacolor is still working, I bought that in a thrift store in MI a few years ago, and I don't think I ever even had the back off, it probably still has original caps, tubes and everything.

---

still have my porta-color from 1965
 

I still have one of the first porta-color sets up in the attic from 1965, I remember I paid $249.95 for the set. Those old Ge sets would run forever.

I used to see a lot of PortaColor's and most of them were easy to fix. I should have kept one of the late '76 models I once had since that was the last American tube TV. I think the best Solid State GE chassis was the PC chassis of the '80's. I used to drag a bunch of those home and mostly what was wrong with them was a 100 uf cap in the vertical circuit or bad power supply caps.

When I worked at the local RCA/GE distributor (they were still their own companies back then) we sold TONS of 6GH8A's, usually a sleeve of 5 or more to some shops. We were also a PTS module distributor, and I can remember the top selling modules for most sets - JA modules for Motorola, MAD001 and MAG001/2 modules for RCA, 703644-2/-3/-4 modules for Magnavox, and 9-92 and 9-86 modules for Zeniths. We'd run out and have a backorder on most of these. PTS had a policy of limiting us to 5 each when we ordered.
I also remember selling CRTs - 23VAL/23VAT and 25A/AX series tubes, and the occasional 19" tube. We carried Empire and Channel Master - both great tubes, but man those Channel Master trucks were a B*TCH to unload when the boss bought more than 20 or so tubes. Empire came UPS.:D

Cheers,

crt's stacked to the ceiling
 

I remember the area where the crt's were stored, it was a really big area with tubes stacked to the ceiling. The roundies 21jf's and 25axp22's and whatever else.

I remember replacing or repairing the MAD and MAG modules in our industrial RCA Lyceum TVs around 1982-84. CTC68 chassis.

Well guess what. I shouldn't have said anything. One week later and the Portacolor is having problems with vertical lock. :thumbsdn:

I don't think its a tube though. I think radiotvnut hit it on the head with the 100 uf cap in the vertical section, but we shall see.

Since he needs work now, maybe he's a good candidate for the dc restoration project...

David

I think I confused you regarding the 100 uF cap. That was only used in the '80's GE solid state sets. On your set, I would check:
1. The vertical hold pot. It may be dirty or defective. I think GE had a problem with some of those pots failing.
2. Check / resolder all the connections in the vertical circuit.
3. Clean the tube socket for the vertical tube(s).
4. Check the caps in the vertical sync circuit.

I'm wondering about the vertical hold pot on it. It decided to be good today, ran all day without any problems. Do those pots have to be replaced or will contact cleaner do the trick?

David

You can try contact cleaner; but, you may eventually have to replace the pot. I had a GE set once that had the vertical hold, vertical height, and vertical lin pots on one assembly. Cleaner didn't work and I had to replace the assembly with individual pots.

Thanks for the info.

David

now you've got me interested. those portacolours are cute... gonna have to be on the lookout for one