Rants of a 1970's Era Repairman

[DavGoodlin]

If only I could write a book based on experiences of tube and solder jockeys, I would travel all over to do the interviews. Most of the TV-Radio guys in this corner of PA were veterans who learned electronics during WWII and Korea. I learned alot from these fellas as the vast majority were honest and shrewd buisnessmen. The 50's-70's really was a good time to make a living doing this. A new B&W cost $170 and the average repair was 35 bucks, the 19" color sets started at $380 and most repairs were under $100. Many stuck it out when transistors/modules replaced tubes, but left the business in the era of one-board chassis and black box TV's.

I also installed many antennas as I was the "young-un" that was crazy enough to climb roofs and towers. A Winegard antenna with a Blonder-Tongue mast amp and Alliance U-100 rotor was the workhorse setup that lasted. Rural areas were "cabled" in the mid-80's and that ended quick.

I first worked on TV's that were tossed in the trash dump or at the curb in mid-70's and soon after worked in "the business". I first worked for place that sold GE because they also sold appliances and sold Magnavox along with thier furniture. I also worked at places that sold Zenith, RCA, Sony, Panasonic, Sylvania and Admiral (until '77). We still looked at anything that was brought in. We dreaded anything from a department store like Sears, etc. Even the RCA's sold at discount stores were a variant of the ones sold by RCA dealers.

We called GE: "good enough" or "generaous electric"and porta color was "sorta color" GE got by on reducing component counts, compactron 12 pin tubes and cutting out some functions altogether. One positive, you could always get parts at a reasonable price and they were so simple you could always fix em. The CRTs always went soft early.

We called Magnavox: maggotbox due to the generally fuzzy pictures and poor color due to soft CRTs, The later chassis from 1976-on were better and usually only had bad solder joints.