Another question for those who were "there"...
 

It was only a bit over a year ago when I had to get out of my daily job of repairing flat panel sets--due to health reasons. There is a SMALL chance--that I may now get a "bit" of work to do once again.; I do hope so. I miss the job(of repair, that is--NOT the place I worked at !!), and also would like to make a bit of money before the coming convention next month.

Anyway....I DO remember just how MANY NEW sets we got at that shop. Sure a LOT had physical damaage like any flat panels would and such. But STILL a LOT had circuit problems, and being new sets--it was NOT often caps. Often thnigs like SMPS problems, sustain boards for plasma sets, T-con boards signal boards, a LOT of bad panels not from physical damage, and so on. All in all--flat panels sets are NOT very reliable--and certainly not durable.

Anyway--for those who were adults or near it in the early to mid-1970's...when the flat chassis Zeniths, 1st. gen RCA XL-100 vertical sets, Sylvania EO -1 to E48 sets, Magnavox T979, T989, T995...and so on..of the early SS color sets. When these sets were NEW--and still under factory warranty--did you all see a LOT of them--within that time, or did it generall take YEARS--before thngs failed ?" I know there were the " bad apple" sets, that were doomed from the start, and a few bad CRT's out of the box (see it, been there...done it..)..but were they generally reliable--compared to now? I know the tube sets needed tubes now and then--but what about the SS modular sets??

I "Was there" when the Zenith System three sets first came out and they had a ton of warranty failures at first, mostly the main board as I recall.

The shop I was at sold Mitsubishi sets also and the failure ratio was probably twenty Zeniths for every one Mitsu, The RCA's had some issues but nothing like the Sys 3 sets.

System 3 sets were NOTHING like either the flat chassis or even vertical chromacolor sets !! I can expect you all saw a LOT of triple-plus set failures. Not too mention that tri=potential tube was NOT in the same league--with the good delta Zenith tubes !!

Further--I expect when the 2nd gen. of the triple-plus came out-the 9-160 sets--the failure rate in warr. went WAAYYY up...

Thinking back ( Zenith - Admiral shop) The flat chassis had few problems.
Hybrids, 14 & 16" sets were more trouble. The upright chassis
(19EC45 etc) had lots of problems at first. Strange because except the vert it was mostly a re arranged flat chassis. Lots of vert boards, H outs,dampers, 24 V regs, & tuners.
System 3 was almost all 9-160 failures followed by
9-155's then selectors. after a while they got the bugs out & they
were more reliable.
9-181 sets were also troublesome at first but
shortly became very reliable. I will end it there. After that there we
too many chassis changes.

Admiral tube sets were dogs, I always hated selling them. The
solid state 13, 17& 19" sets were never any good. Constant vert
and pass transistors (2 of them) failures. Near admirals end they switched
to a non modular set that was very good. That continued for a few
years under AOC then the quality fell to very poor.
SS Consoles were super reliable and we saw few come back. As good
as any but they needed a CRT with more snap, the pix was not
up to date.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Wasn't there obviously but I figure that for the most part major design change=epic fail off the starting block regardless of maker. Same goes for software.

Very true. With transistors
you also have a different infant mortality rate. If one lasts a few
minutes the failure rate drops to near zero and only rises slightly
over the years. Thats why so many survivors with high miles usually
need caps, resistors & connections but rarely transistors/ IC's.
Most of our failures were out of the box either instantly or in a
few minutes. If it ran OK for a while you prob wouldnt see it for a long time.
Thats one reason we unpacked & tested most new sets as we sold
them.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Remember the Panasonic "Prism"! They had one model with a SMPS that was nearly impossible to work on. We kept at least 3 of each type 9-160 modules in the truck. Changed a good deal of opto-couplers in the Zenith sets. The lightbulb would fail. And all the sets would eat triplers! And don't forget the 13 inch Zenith with the power transformer. It weighed a ton and ate 24 volt regulator transistors. Quasar had the "JA" and the "CA" panels!

I "was there" when the listed Zeniths were new. Not much warranty work on the CC2's, and a few on the System 3. Biggest nightmare was the Zenith cap recall on the CC'2's.
Not one of the brands you asked about, but the circa 1979-1980 GE VIR sets were DOGS. Many yoke issues, and they would fail on the showroom floor. We briefly sold those as a secondary line.

Let's see.... GE sets with the griplets that had to be resoldered, The small RCA chassis with the flybacks failing like lemmings going over a cliff (If I remember correctly, RCA was sued and lost over those flybacks).

Aah! The Good old days:

GE 1977 -1980 Ate yokes and flybacks, The CRT's weren't much to brag about either.

Sharp of approximately the same vintage ate flybacks like kids eat candy...

Sony went through a rash of bad CRT's at about this time.

Zenith System 3 series one was OK but when the 9-160 series 2 sets came out was getting like 35 at a time with every thunderstorm, the hot / cold ground system did not like spikes.

Zenith system three version 3 with the 9-191 / 214 series of boards were better except the remote power supply was very likely to be damaged by spikes.

The last Zeniths I worked on was pure junk could not feel safe the CRT would no fail on the dealers showroom floor. The projection sets were bad to arc and destroy power modules...

Rarely seen a CC2 flat chassis except for the occasional triac failure on the remote sets.

rrrhre2s

I used to work for RCA at the Smirnoff Labs, and around the early 80's CTC101 sets had the infamous integrated flyback problem. Seems the problem was that the very high voltage winding was split into 6 sections, and diodes were supposed to go between each section, but someone cheaped out and only used 3 diodes and pairs of windings were joined together. This made for higher AC voltage at each diode, diodes were fine, but they used sharp edged stakes as terminals to connect the winding wire and diode leads. This made for excessive corona. And the epoxy eventually failed, shorting the flyback and taking out the horiz output transistor. Was a warranty disaster.