Early tv techs faced color challenge

[RCAkid]

Captain Video wrote: The old techs near me all seem to think that tube TVs only gives troubles, and that SS are way easier to repair. In no way they want to repair any tube type TV set anymore.

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Well for what its worth, in my experience with modern, so called "tv tecnicians" only a very few these days even have the board/component level skills to even remotely repair a set. In the late 70's and 80's, you just changed the modules. Of course it was easier and of course they made more money on SS due to the designed simplicity of the module system. Tube sets took patience and solid troubleshooting skills to track down a problem therefore it took more time and money to locate that problem

Of course there were many techs who knew better and repaired the module but the system was simply designed to cut down on labor costs. Now of course, there is no repairing modern sets and they are just throw away at this point. They are such junk anyway, who would want to repair it?

Many of today's techs are no better than the old B/W tech that just swapped tubes. Not trying to offend anyone, that is just my opinion from my experience.

Of course, tube technology was not as reliable in reference to mean time between failures, but often it was just a tube and you moved on, continuing to enjoy the television set.

The few techs that do still know how to repair at the board level, don't want to touch a tube tv due to our very litigious (sp) society. I remember a tech that used to help me with my CTC-21 back in the 80's. He constantly told me to "get rid of that damn thing, it is nothing but trouble." He often got burned on repairing a tube set and after he repaired the failure, a short time later, something else failed, ususally a cap and he got griped out as if it was his fault. Ultimately, since he was trying to give good customer service, he would have to go back and pick up the set or chassis and find the problem. The customer didn't and often doesn't understand the reality of aging electronics and would gripe him out about having to pay for an additional repair. He often ended up making the repair either at a minimal cost or free of charge and ended up losing money on the repair. He finally quit accepting tube sets period and was so hacked off with the situation, he wouln't even talk about tube sets again.


Just my two cents