Another local Hoffman! COLOR!

[Yamamaya42]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

I have a question in regard to your Hoffman Colorcaster TV. I looked at the photo of the service adjustments for this set (of which there must have been twenty or more, as I would expect in a 1956 color TV) and saw, to my surprise, a brightness control. My question is this: Why would the brightness control be located on a control panel which has mostly service adjustments, which of course are not to be touched by anyone other than a qualified service technician? Or was there another brightness control wired in parallel with it, the second control being the user brightness adjustment?

In any case, I would think two brightness controls would be one too many for any TV, color or b&w. I could understand this if the second brightness control has a definite function, such as setting the maximum range of the user's control, but otherwise I am at a complete loss to explain this. Most later color sets (late 1960s on) had only one brightness control. Was there something about 1950s color televisions which actually required the sets to have two brightness controls, or was the second control used, as I said, to limit the range of the user's brightness control?

Thank you for any and all information on this, as this TV is the first one I have ever seen (I have never seen a Hoffman TV in person) with a brightness control on a panel normally reserved for service adjustments. I also saw a few other controls on this TV's service control panel which are ordinarily service adjustments only, again to be adjusted only by qualified service technicians. Were these controls wired in such a way as to limit the range of the existing controls? If so, as I said, this is overkill of the worst sort, as most later color sets only had one control for most service adjustments. These controls almost certainly would not be noticed (and should not have been) by the average color TV set owner, anyway, as many color TVs of the '50s and even into the early 1960s had a warning label pasted somewhere on the inside of the TV cabinet, to the effect that service adjustments, tubes and other parts of the set must not be touched except by a qualified TV service technician.

I'm not sure which docs you saw, but this set has only one true brightness control, however I have seen a “ sub- brightness” on some sets, perhaps that's what you saw?

SAMS does list a potentiometer on this to set kinescope bias, but this chassis has a switch for that.
This I can only attribute to the SAMS being for a Hoffman MO# MS-7322 and seems I have a MS-7322 (B), and this one SAMS is the only one there is, and it's close enough.