[Jeffhs]

I had a Sears-badged (the set was likely made by Warwick) 19" roundie table model in the early 1970s, a trash find in my old neighborhood in suburban Cleveland. To my surprise, the set only had one thing wrong with it when I found it: the push-pull power switch was bad. I jumpered across the switch and the TV turned on immediately (well, after a short warm-up period for the tubes). It made a very good picture for a set from the mid-1960s, using a pair of rabbit ears as an antenna (this TV was made, IIRC, before April 1964 or so; I am guessing at the manufacture date since it did not have UHF).

This TV worked very well for me the next couple of years. Due to circumstances far beyond my control, however, I had to move in spring 1972. I brought the set with me and, to my relief and surprise, it worked very well at my new residence.

However, the set developed a problem (a bright white hum bar traveling vertically up the CRT) a few months later. I tried to repair it by changing the 6AW8 video output tube; this probably would have worked very well and cured the problem in a blink of an eye, except the only replacement 6AW8 I had had a bent pin. When I tried to insert the tube into the 6AW8 socket on the video PC board, I must have pressed down a bit too hard, as the next thing I heard was a sickening crunch as the tube fell to the bottom of the TV cabinet. The socket had broken out of the video PC board, so the TV was junk from that moment on.

This experience has, to this day, made me extremely wary of PC boards, especially very old ones which have become brittle due to heat. I do not want to go through it again if I can help it. I was very upset for a long time when this happened to my Silvertone color TV (my first color set) and, of course, I will keep my hands off PC boards from now on. These things are too darned delicate, especially when they get a few years on them. PC boards are good, but when they age they get brittle, eventually getting to the point where the least bit of pressure on them will crack the board in almost no time flat.