Fun with Griplets!

[dishdude]

What the heck is a griplet?

[walterbeers]

A griplet was a type of soldered rivet that connected traces on both sides of a double sided circuit board. For some reason, the heating/cooling of the set caused the connections to break and these GEs were full of them. All kinds of intermittent problems, especially with the video. I used to go over on service calls of customers who had those consoles, and spent sometimes hours or more soldering and repairing those simple griplet connections. Problem was you couldn't make any money at it, except for labor, as there were no parts to make a profit on. Just time, solder and hook-up wire. Sets were fairly good performers once all of the griplets were taken care of. Of course there was always the one or two that I would miss, and then had to do another callback, finding one more that was giving trouble. These were the type of sets too, that if you gave them a good thud with your fist, it would work again, (well for a while). Never the less it wasn't one of GEs good ideas. I think also they were found in other makes and models as well, but mostly in GE.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by captainmoody

A picture of the 1981 GE, still working great.

Thanks. Nice set for sure. Tin can cabinet?

I reckon a lot of the GE sets whose griplets failed early on were properly repaired and survived. I would guess that even then most people didn't want to toss sets quickly.

[captainmoody]

The cabinet is plastic all the way.. Metal would have cost too much! LOL!

The first one I bought in 1982 looked just like this, but had the dark, almost black woodgrain finish. It was less than a year old. I spent a whopping $75 for it, resoldered the connections, and resold it for $150.. Then, that money was spent at the local police auction on several cars to resell!

I guess I was a young Mr. Haney back then! LOL!

I didn't learn about the term "Griplets" until the mid eighties, at the tv shop I worked at before opening my own. I just called them feed through rivets.

[rrrhre2s]

Griplets, the technicians nightmare.

The only way we ever got these sets reliable was to take a small jewelers screwdriver and make a small hole for a wire to run down the top trace and connect all of the circuit together and only solder the bottom side. Just resoldering them was futile, would fail in a very short time.

The EC chassis with the power supply behind the chassis and directly under the neck of the CRT had to be removed and redone.

The griplets were everywhere even in the tuner circuitry, Workman (WEP) even made a repair kit for the Wide Band Amplifier module.

Before production ceased on this chassis there were replacement boards from GE that did not have the griplets. I think the deflection and video had been redesigned to use bare wire jumpers instead of griplets.

Worked on a lot of those sets pretty good performers but most people just tossed them when they gave trouble out of warranty.

The Horizontal circuit gave some trouble with the Flybacks.

Like everything starting with the YM chassis.

You had to get a "grip" after a day of griplets !

Sure glad we had other brands to work on to break the pattern.

rrrhre2s

[zeno]

The other common sets with double sided boards were
mid 70's Toshibas. They put a stake through the board instead
of gripplets. Both the mother board & modules had them &
lots of intermitants showed up in a few years. They changed
to hard wire in a short time. RCA had some but they used plate through
& only problem I seen was a few burned. Also Maggy tuner
pkgs on C1 & C2 chassii IIRC. I know there were others but cant
remember now

73 Zeno

[Findm-Keepm]

I found these notes my Dad had from the days of Griplets. I can interpret if needed.

These cover the EC as well as the AA and AC chassis griplets. Pretty self explanatory if you have the set in front of you, gibberish if not.
EC Chassis





AC - AA Chassis





Unsure, probably AA/AB/AC chassis:

[Dude111]

Originally Posted by captainmoody

It sure produces a nice picture though..

Ahhhh I reckon it does!!

Good for you......... I hope she works along time

[holmesuser01]

These GE's bring back memories. I made a load of money off of them. Most of the ones I saw just needed the feed-thru stakes soldered or hardwired.

I think I still have an EC chassis set in my storage building. I don't know why it's even still here. Maybe I missed it during one of the purges.

[bgadow]

In the 80s I use to have a lot of GE's given to me, generally with an intermittent no-power problem. Back then I had no idea what to do with them and junked 'em all. I recall one particular console that, a couple times, worked when I picked one end up a few inches and then dropped it. If I'd known then what I know now I could have actually fixed some of them and made a few dollars.

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by bgadow

In the 80s I use to have a lot of GE's given to me, generally with an intermittent no-power problem. Back then I had no idea what to do with them and junked 'em all. I recall one particular console that, a couple times, worked when I picked one end up a few inches and then dropped it. If I'd known then what I know now I could have actually fixed some of them and made a few dollars.

I only ever profited from fixing one TV, time will tell if that ever happens again.

[DavGoodlin]

Captian Moody, I recall unpacking those in 1981. Fantastic value and saw many back in about 3-5 years for the inevitable failure of GE's wave-soldering to fill the feed thru griplets.

The place I worked had a solder station and bench spot just for griplet service.
Since I was the junior tech, I always got this job. Our standard griplet service included etching the trace adjacent to the griplets and we never saw one back afterward.

AA-AB-AC was the most popular Griplet set as it was Porta-color evolution set and likely got bounced around more.

EC and PC was definectly the "Griplet Plus" I think we used to count them when done to make sure we got them all.

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

Captian Moody, I recall unpacking those in 1981. Fantastic value and saw many back in about 3-5 years for the inevitable failure of GE's wave-soldering to fill the feed thru griplets.

The place I worked had a solder station and bench spot just for griplet service.
Since I was the junior tech, I always got this job. Our standard griplet service included etching the trace adjacent to the griplets and we never saw one back afterward.

AA-AB-AC was the most popular Griplet set as it was Porta-color evolution set and likely got bounced around more.

EC and PC was definectly the "Griplet Plus" I think we used to count them when done to make sure we got them all.

PC Chassis doesn't use griplets. GE used jumpers to connect across the top of the board. There are no copper runs on the top of the PC chassis boards like the AA-AB-AC and EC chassis.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm

PC Chassis doesn't use griplets. GE used jumpers to connect across the top of the board. There are no copper runs on the top of the PC chassis boards like the AA-AB-AC and EC chassis.

So that's why the console sets never did act up, just the vertical cap - trade secret.

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

So that's why the console sets never did act up, just the vertical cap - trade secret.

C621, 100uF/50V, replaced with a 100V cap for call-back prevention.