1996 Magnavox 13PR12 OEM?

[Trance88]

Hey guys!
I picked this little set up for 5 bucks a couple days ago at a local thrift shop. I can tell it's a low hour set. Very nice bright picture tube and came with the original remote! Funky looking thing. Does anyone know who the OEM was for Magnavox sets during the mid 90's? It was assembled in Mexico so I don't think it's a Funai.

[zeno]

Being mexico its probably a NAP set.
Only others I remember were Funai & a little 9" set
made by an unknown to me outfit. A few Euro NAP's also
were sold. If you are lucky its not Funai.........
A pix would tell the story.

73 Zeno

[davet753]

It's either a real Phillips/Magnavox or a Funai. A lot of the 13" sets they sourced from Funai were easy to recognize because the speaker grill was very small and at the bottom edge of the cabinet (the speaker itself was mounted at a downward firing angle).

[Trance88]

Here's some pictures of the TV. The speaker is mounted on the side of the cabinet.

[radiotvnut]

I believe that's a real NAP set and they're are good TV's.

[Trance88]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I believe that's a real NAP set and they're are good TV's.

Awesome! I'm guessing NAP stands for "North American Philips"? So far, this TV is excellent. The only thing that would make it better would be A/V inputs.

[radiotvnut]

Yes, NAP is North American Philips; and, at one time, they owned the Magnavox, Philco, and Sylvania brands. They eventually licensed the Sylvania (and Philco, IIRC) brands to Funai. So, a Sylvania/Philco TV made during the past 15-20 years is nothing more than a Funai. What a sad change from the GTE-Sylvania and early NAP-Sylvania days.

[davet753]

That's definitely a real Magnavox, with an X6 chassis.

Even if it works great, I would pull the board and resolder the 4 connections (top and bottom) of the horizontal driver transformer. They were notorious for developing cold solder joints which can cause the horizontal output transistor to short out. It's been years since I worked on one of those, but I believe the X series still used the transformer that was troublesome. It's easy to recognize as it is built on a square plastic form with a metal pin in each corner (windings solder to the top of the pin and the bottom of the pin solders under the PCB).

[zeno]

I will give the third vote for real NAP. No question.
About 50 times better than Funai.

73 Zeno

[KentTeffeteller]

200 times better than Funai. A real NAP chassis. One of the last of their kind too.

[Jeffhs]

The laundromat in my town, up the road from me by about a mile, had a 13" Magnavox-branded color portable, wall-mounted (on a swivel mount such as is commonly used with flat screen TVs). This set had the speakers directly below the CRT, as were the control buttons for all major functions, although the button for the power switch was missing, and I don't even know if it worked as I never saw it in operation; I have a feeling that this TV was made by Funai, though I have no way of knowing how old it is. The set was removed and replaced recently by a 13" Zenith (likely with an off-brand chassis, can't think of the brand offhand) color portable. That set has about the worst color picture I have ever seen on a color TV; I saw the set in operation a few weeks ago, and man alive, the picture was awful. The color was way off (green faces, etc.), as if no one had bothered to reset anything when the set was reinstalled (the Magnavox was probably only a temporary replacement for the Zenith while the latter was being repaired). When the Zenith set was reinstalled on its mount in the laundromat, the person/people who reinstalled it must have simply put the set back up on the mount, reconnected the power cord and cable, turned it on once to see if everything worked, and left it set at the factory defaults for color, brightness, contrast, etc. Either the default settings themselves were off or the TV may have had a chassis problem; either way, as I said, the picture was awful. The only time I ever saw a worse color picture on a TV was about twenty-five years ago; the people who owned the set obviously did not care about picture quality or whether or not the colors were accurate, as the picture on that set was terrible. Green faces, blue water, red trees...good grief. One correct primary color out of three is not acceptable.

On the other hand, the poor picture on that TV may not have been the owner's fault at all, but it may well have been due to any number of things--weak CRT, gray scale tracking off by a mile, magnetized CRT shadow mask...who knows? After all, this was at least 25 years ago, and I think the person who owned that set may have junked it and gotten a flat screen since then. They may not even remember what a goshawful mess the picture was on the old set, and they probably don't care at this late date.

[Trance88]

Originally Posted by davet753

That's definitely a real Magnavox, with an X6 chassis.

Even if it works great, I would pull the board and resolder the 4 connections (top and bottom) of the horizontal driver transformer. They were notorious for developing cold solder joints which can cause the horizontal output transistor to short out. It's been years since I worked on one of those, but I believe the X series still used the transformer that was troublesome. It's easy to recognize as it is built on a square plastic form with a metal pin in each corner (windings solder to the top of the pin and the bottom of the pin solders under the PCB).

I'll definitely give it a look. Hopefully this is one of the lucky ones that doesn't have that problem.

[davet753]

Originally Posted by Trance88

I'll definitely give it a look. Hopefully this is one of the lucky ones that doesn't have that problem.

It's not really a big deal. I never recall seeing a bad transformer, just bad connections on it. Usually, you will notice rings around the connections on the bottom of the PCB.

Back when Magnavox came out with that transformer, I replaced several shorted horizontal output transistors that shorted back out in a few weeks. The "tech team" in the Greenville, TN service department printed a service bulletin about the issue, and advised resoldering all 8 connections. Once I picked up on that, there were never any more problems.

If I remember correctly, they started using that type of transformer near the end of the "C" series chassis, and kept on using them until close to the end of production.