Estate Sale Finds In 2008!

[bgadow]

An update on the Magnavox: I finally got enough junk cleared out of the way to bring the set inside. When I first plugged it in I was struck by the loud hum of the remote chassis. The set powered up but with a weak raster and no reception. I pulled the back and found the following: the tuner is a Rube Goldberg design. It uses a regular old click-stop tuner (with a knob hidden behind a secondary door) plus a limited number of UHF presets. The tuner is motor driven, as is the volume control. The tuner display isn't really LED-the segments are lit, apparently, by individual subminiature lamps. One is intermittent and one appears to be burnt out. The dust cover is missing from the tuner; I cleaned it but that had no effect on reception. The video module seems looser than it should be; I cleaned the contacts and put it back. The CRT is weak, but not dead. I ran it for an hour or so at 8v and that helped. Another more pressing problem is that there is arcing in the focus control circuit. One end of the pot goes to ground through a resistor and the wiper has a spark gap to ground. I'm getting a steady blue spark at the ground end, which I don't understand. Someone had unhooked the sparkgap, and hooking it back up basically killed the set, so I undid it again.

I don't know that I will put much more time into this. Maybe I'll give it until the end of the month and if nobody shows any interest I'll just junk it. The gimmicks are nice, but it is a largish set. One more thing: my stepmother kept commenting about how nice the cabinet is and how they just don't make things like that anymore. What she doesn't know: the cabinet is about 75% plastic, with most of the rest being particle board. As expensive as this set had to have been when new, I'm not sure it has any solid wood anywhere on it.

[drh4683]

Went to five sales today, one turned up a very nice 1969 Motorola Quasar works in a drawer. Found at a sale at 4501 Lee St. in Downers Grove, IL. I paid $10.00 for it. The TV was inside some unknown 50's era black and white TV cabinet. The TV appears to have been placed inside this cabinet from day one. The TV was already out of the cabinet by the time I got there (I saw previous pics of the TV on estatesales.net) The people running the sale figured the 50's cabinet was worth more than the TV so they figured the cabinet would have a better chance of selling if the old "POS" TV was out of it. Well they were wrong. The "POS" TV sold first. Ha! The Quasar's cabinet is clean, just dusty, but the inside is perfectly clean still. the legs were unscrewed and underneath the cabinet which was good to see. The original owner's name could not be missed anywhere on the set though. Edward Franta kind of went overboard with his name and address stamp. He stamped almost everything on this TV. back cover, inside of cabinet all over the place, on various parts of the chassis, convergence board, yoke, all the data and paperwork. I didnt count, but there are probably over 10 individual stampings throughout the cabinet. I must admit though, he or the service tech was very professional. Everything is intact, including hardware and the fact that the service literature was put back into the cabinet and pinned in place. The AC interlock for the first time was not messed with. Needless to say, I was pleased to see the original paperwork in there. I powered up the TV, sound but no HV. I pulled out the paperwork to check out the service data and out comes a few repair receipts from october of 1983. Apparently, the TV had a no HV condidion back in October of '83. Mr Franta had the Quasar service center, then still on Grand Ave in Franklin park come out to fix the set. The sweep transfomer was NLA as of 10-21-83 and he was refunded his $15.00. I find another receipt from the great and now long gone B-B+W electronics in Berwyn, with a a thordarson FLY-467 priced out a 36.66 from 10-26-83. It was bought by Miles TV and he most likely did the repair work. In fact, if Im not mistaken, Miles TV is still in business on Cermak Rd in Cicero. Im surprized he's still there as you'll get shot at in that neigborhood these days. I havn't pulled the chassis out yet to look, but he put all the wires back exactly into the wire ties which is rare to see on a serviced set.
As to why there is no HV today is yet to be determined. the original CRT tests 95% from cold start up, so I know thats not the problem. Lets hope the thordarson fly isn't the problem! Besides, I always thought quasar flybacks were considered to be of good quality and do not (often) fail?