I hated these Magnavox hybrid sets in the 80s when they were 15 and 20 years old... It has about 8 tubes (the RF-IF and chroma is Solid State, and the rest is tubes). My mother's Avon lady had one that needed weekly repairs. I finally sold her a nice CTC-38, and took pleasure in personally tossing the Magnacolor 15" into the hopper of the trash truck one gleeful Wednesday morning before school
Now all these years later, I was fascinated by this one. It turned up in an estate garage, and I had never seen one quite like this one. It looks like the common ones, but this one has a cheap beige cabinet and has no rabbit ears, no fancy woodgrain and NOT EVEN A HANDLE! There were 2 or 3 variations of the Magnacolor portable with this chassis, but all the ones I ever saw before had rabbit ears, woodgrain case, and most had a channel window with pilot light. (and the VHF knob was coming out the top where the "MAGNACOLOR" plackard is on this one.
This TV was SO HYPER-CLEAN and mint condition that I couldn't bear to junk it. So I saved it, and got at looking into it this New Years weekend. It had 8,722,502 cold solder joints (well, maybe a SLIGHT exaggeration). I fixed all those, and it came to life and the chassis actually works well! But the bad thing is that the CRT is defective.
The CRT problem is that the green gun filament is WAY WAY brighter than the other 2 (see photos). The result is that I can't get gray scale, and ofcourse the picture is way off color. And with how bright the green gun filament is, I expect it would burn open in a few minutes. I checked the tube with my B&K 470 to see if there might have been a problem in the TV causing it, but indeed it is a faulty tube. It's a 15SP22.
So I would like to either get a 15" tube for it if anybody has one, or get another 15" Magnacolor. This tube is weird in that the gun is "upside down". (Blue is bottom when anode well is ontop). This is a delta gun tube, and may be the same as the ones in the Zenith and RCA late 60s portable sets.
I think this TV is SO WEIRD AND UNUSUAL with the cheap cabinet, and being so clean, that it needs to be saved!
Charles