Bob Howe wants to know. What was the worst CRT TV to work on and why?

[slidertogrid]

Was that Grundig The one with the vertical chassis with a row of high wattage wire-wound resistors at the top centre ? I remember we had one come in for a insurance quote. It had a major burn up around those resistors and the panel had ignited we stated that the set was a write off as we felt the main panel was beyond repair and if we did mange to get it going it probably wouldn't be very reliable or last very long.
However the customer was insured with the C**P and they had different ideas !
The took the set to their Television repair department that did their rental repairs. The customer came back to us a month or two later to say that they sent the set back and it worked for a short time before breaking down again.
He bought a used set from us and i asked him what he had done with the Grundig ( I was curious to see their "repair" ) he said that he had challenged them about the set failing again and they had told him that as it had worked they had satisfied the insurance claim and the matter was closed. So he had taken it to the tip on the way to my shop.
He was of course going to change his insurance provider ! I commented that it was shame that he didn't accidentally drop it when he was disconnecting it!

On the subject of wire-wound resistors burning a hole in the main PCB does anyone remember the Sony that suffered in the same way? I think Sony supplied a small sub panel to mount the resistors on that you mounted over over the hole ... I think a very different view would be taken these days!
__________________

[Maarten]

That's just about what Bosch/Siemens did with their fiery dishwashers. Unless the PCB was actually burnt up, they hooked up an external relay board to the heater relay as a recall fix.

The Sony resistors, I think, had a wire that burned away so just resoldering wouldn't work.

[Welsh Anorak]

Sony supplied those vertical resistors which you had to attach with HMP solder - the Weller gun was dusted off for this! Yes - if the board was too far gone you got the little board, though quite a bit of filing needed to be done to the original carbonised board.

I got on quite well with the Grundig 5011/2210 sets, but there would be the odd nasty one. Frame roll was the odd BSR51 (?) transistor. We had plenty of these in stock as a friend had attended a Grundig course and they'd accidentally left a pile of them in the lecture room...

[Heatercathodeshort]

Yes Glyn, I think it was the Sony 2090 series that burnt that hole! I must be honest and say that I avoided these if at all possible. I was concerned about any post repair problems that I would get entangled with. 'It was OK till you repaired it and now it has burned the house down'. You know the sort of saga!

It was a diabolical nightmare especially when you added the mains switch episode into the bargain.

It follows on to that strange statement from Sony that ALL their CRT receivers were a fire risk! That was soon hushed up but feel that must have put many customers off buying Sony receivers, CRT or LCD. John.

[greg_simons]

Originally Posted by Heatercathodeshort

Yes Glyn, I think it was the Sony 2090 series that burnt that hole! I must be honest and say that I avoided these if at all possible. I was concerned about any post repair problems that I would get entangled with. 'It was OK till you repaired it and now it has burned the house down'. You know the sort of saga!

It was a diabolical nightmare especially when you added the mains switch episode into the bargain.

It follows on to that strange statement from Sony that ALL their CRT receivers were a fire risk! That was soon hushed up but feel that must have put many customers off buying Sony receivers, CRT or LCD. John.

I've still got a repair kit for these receivers, a souvenir of happier times!, reminds me of the story one of my old colleagues used to recount, he'd worked for a sony regional repair centre, one day the local TLO comes in and plonks down on the bench a charred lump of plastic that had once been one of this series with dire warnings that they never saw what was there before their eyes, it really was a big deal for sony and fair play to them they managed to modify most of them without further bad publicity, those big resistors and the power switch were a nightmare.
Greg.

[hans]

Originally Posted by Ferguson 2000

I would like to nominate the Grundig 5010 /6010 series for the following reasons:

1 They were very heavy.

2 Their British spares department were unhelpful.

3 Sales were even less helpful.

These were on my good list. They were fast to fix with modules that could be put on the backside of the main board. When I did them they were getting old and some sets had bad tubes or other probles that made them better suited for spare parts.

Compared to Telefunken 711 they were heaven to work on, and what about the even worse Sony KV1810 that was hard to work on, with very expensive parts and when you got it fixed you got rewarded by a horrible picture because the tube was duff. (Tubes were a problem with Telefunken too, but you could easily get a tube from Philips set and get a good picture on the Telefunken again. Good used Sony tubes were impossible to get.)

[Michael Maurice]

I wrote an article for Television magazine about sets catching fire.

The Matsui 209R/T were one of the worse sets around, in fact they all had to modified because someone’s house went up in flames. Even when the worked, the picture was so poor, they couldn’t be focused.

Another Matsui killed someone because it went up in flames due to the poor design of the power supply.

[Welsh Anorak]

Modified was putting it kindly - most 209s seemed to just have a big bit of print scraped away!
There were two fire risk sets we wouldn't allow in the workshop - overkill, perhaps, but if there was a fire then we would have been the last repair shop it had been to with associated liability. These were the Korting solid state PIL (a shame after their excellent hybrid) and the Bush 2550 where the scan coil plug and socket would set fire to the plastic cabinet. Unlike the Finlux, these couldn't be modified - or not in my opinion.

[Richard_FM]

The early Thorn 1600s could catch fire due to dry joints, but the 1615 seemed to sort out the issue.

From what I've heard Radio Rentals didn't take any chances and recalled & scrapped the 1600s on hire & replaced them with reconditioned 1500s.

[Heatercathodeshort]

Scan coil plug and socket breakdown was a common fault on many makes.
The only safe answer was to remove both socket and plug and solder the connections directly onto the board. I can't remember the model number but a latish Philips model suffered this very badly on the scan coil mounted connector.
I used to service large numbers of Saisho and Matsui receivers but cannot recall having problems with the 209R/T in fact I didn't see many of these in the workshop.
It's strange how certain models turn up for service in certain areas. It might have been some sort of distribution policy with Dixons/Currys. Dry jointed mains switches when mounted directly on the P/C board was another cause of arcing but I can't remember a serious burn up. It's the high current pulse voltages that do the damage. John.

[slidertogrid]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

The early Thorn 1600s could catch fire due to dry joints, but the 1615 seemed to sort out the issue.

From what I've heard Radio Rentals didn't take any chances and recalled & scrapped the 1600s on hire & replaced them with reconditioned 1500s.

Yes I think I have mentioned before I went to a trade disposal outlet who had piles of Thorn 1600s, they could only sell them for parts. The chassis were removed. You couldn't buy a complete chassis they broke the panel and sold it for parts only. You could buy a cabinet for the tube but each cabinet had a large X melted into it and or a hole in the speaker grille. They only had them for a very short time. I don't know if RR then destroyed the sets or if they simply ran out. I wonder if the disposal place realised they suddenly weren't getting any 1500s?
The place I worked didn't have may Transistorised mono sets they kept the old hybrids going ITT VC200 and Pye 169. They had so many coming back because of changeover to colour that they didn't see the point in buying new. The management were of the opinion that the mono rentals were coming to an end. The only SS ones I saw there were the lovely Philips with the glow switch, G8 style channel selector and thick-film, the chassis number is now in my suppressed memory...
ISTR the PYE 169 had a tendency to melt a hole in the plastic back cover. My mate Mick worked for British relay and he has told a story of how one burnt a house down.
I had a customer with a GEC D/S colour set that had a bad fire . There was a resistor in the frame stage from the boost rail that went low, this caused the VDR to glow red hot and if the set was unattended it could make a real mess of the panel. luckily the owner caught it in time and carried it outside. it was a complete write off.
The single standard hybrids suffered the same but by then I was aware of the problem and changed the resistor on sight whatever the original fault was.
Rich

[Welsh Anorak]

The actual Thorn 1600 was a nasty set, usually in a white cabinet with a frame stage that refused to respond to reason and a generally poor design. Not that many were sold.
The inflammable set in question was the 1615 series, 20" and 24". I believe Radio Rentals crushed most of them. Seemd a bit of an over-reaction as a simple piece of wire would have solved the problem - it was just a dry joint on the scan coil feed. Luckily they retained the fibre back on the 20" versions which is what the majority were, but the picture quality fell far short of the 1500 due to the poor CRTs used. Add to that the non-jellypot (and hence unreliable) diode-split LOPT, printed wood-effect plastic cabinet, junky sliders and noisy four-button tuner head and you could tell Thorn's heart wasn't in it!

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

Yes I think I have mentioned before I went to a trade disposal outlet who had piles of Thorn 1600s, they could only sell them for parts. The chassis were removed. You couldn't buy a complete chassis they broke the panel and sold it for parts only. You could buy a cabinet for the tube but each cabinet had a large X melted into it and or a hole in the speaker grille. They only had them for a very short time. I don't know if RR then destroyed the sets or if they simply ran out. I wonder if the disposal place realised they suddenly weren't getting any 1500s?
The place I worked didn't have may Transistorised mono sets they kept the old hybrids going ITT VC200 and Pye 169. They had so many coming back because of changeover to colour that they didn't see the point in buying new. The management were of the opinion that the mono rentals were coming to an end. The only SS ones I saw there were the lovely Philips with the glow switch, G8 style channel selector and thick-film, the chassis number is now in my suppressed memory...
ISTR the PYE 169 had a tendency to melt a hole in the plastic back cover. My mate Mick worked for British relay and he has told a story of how one burnt a house down.
I had a customer with a GEC D/S colour set that had a bad fire . There was a resistor in the frame stage from the boost rail that went low, this caused the VDR to glow red hot and if the set was unattended it could make a real mess of the panel. luckily the owner caught it in time and carried it outside. it was a complete write off.
The single standard hybrids suffered the same but by then I was aware of the problem and changed the resistor on sight whatever the original fault was.
Rich

The Philips SS sets were the 320 family of sets.

https://www.radios-tv.co.uk/wp-conte...g?v=1568384456

[slidertogrid]

That's the one! I have a 20" one imprisoned in the cupboard under the stairs!
Rich.

[Welsh Anorak]

The 320 series bore a striking resemblance circuit-wise to the colour Pye CT200 /Philips 570 we all love to hate. Unlike the latter it did have the distinction of having a good stable picture!
The 17" version now commands strong money because of the design - white cabinet and golf-tee style chrome stand. The larger screens enjoyed a more sober style. The great Les Lawry-Johns described the 17" as being pretty but could could give trouble - "Pretty things are often naughty aren't they?"

[Ferguson 2000]

Hi slidertogrid,

Yes that was the Grundig, some later models also had 17 Watt resistors at the top of the chassis.

I remember the Sony vertical resistor, I used to enlarge the burnt hole in the PCB and mount the resistor using thick stiff copper wire so that there was an upwards air flow around it. The on off switch................oh dear.

Best wishes,

Geoffrey.

[slidertogrid]

Luckily I didn't see many of those Grundig sets . I don't think there was a dealer in the Peterborough area so maybe they were only brought here by people moving here. they were certainly a few years old by the time they came into us.
Did Sony supply the replacement switch complete with mains lead and the wiring to the chassis complete with plug or was that a different model? I have vague memories of having some of these kits in stock.
We seemed to get a wide variety of sets in for repair all sorts of makes and models but maybe not a huge amount of any one type which meant keeping some spares in stock was a bit of of a gamble.
Some sets also seemed to come in in fairly large numbers for a while and then disappear quickly we got left with a few G8 LOPTs that way . We got used to seeing them on a weekly basis then fairly suddenly they became a rare sight.
Even back then one of my younger employees suggested keeping one each of the fast vanishing once common models for future posterity.
I remember saying where? I'm not filling the upstairs with a load of old junk we have enough! ( I have kept an Invicta I had as a bedroom set and my parents first colour set they bought and I thought that was enough at the time..) How I wish I had listened now!

[Red to black]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

Did Sony supply the replacement switch complete with mains lead and the wiring to the chassis complete with plug or was that a different model? I have vague memories of having some of these kits in stock.

Unfortunately not, at the time Sony would only allow the modified switches to be supplied to Sony dealers, they wouldn't supply to any non Sony dealers at all! , they eventually relented and supplied via SES to non account holders but this was much later, so much for safety!

[Welsh Anorak]

Yes, we had to get them sent to a Sony service centre as we weren't sllowed to do them. Later on we did get the kits as R2B says - remeber the green sticker you had to put on the back label to show it had been modified?
By that time Sony had issued a press release implying every Sony would burst into flames! Perhaps they were hoping everyone would buy another non-inflammable Sony?

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by slidertogrid

Luckily I didn't see many of those Grundig sets . I don't think there was a dealer in the Peterborough area so maybe they were only brought here by people moving here. they were certainly a few years old by the time they came into us.
Did Sony supply the replacement switch complete with mains lead and the wiring to the chassis complete with plug or was that a different model? I have vague memories of having some of these kits in stock.
We seemed to get a wide variety of sets in for repair all sorts of makes and models but maybe not a huge amount of any one type which meant keeping some spares in stock was a bit of of a gamble.
Some sets also seemed to come in in fairly large numbers for a while and then disappear quickly we got left with a few G8 LOPTs that way . We got used to seeing them on a weekly basis then fairly suddenly they became a rare sight.
Even back then one of my younger employees suggested keeping one each of the fast vanishing once common models for future posterity.
I remember saying where? I'm not filling the upstairs with a load of old junk we have enough! ( I have kept an Invicta I had as a bedroom set and my parents first colour set they bought and I thought that was enough at the time..) How I wish I had listened now!

I presume a lot of people bought G8s as their first colour set & kept them going got many years as they were very expensive to buy, but by the 1980s newer sets had a lot more features & owners started to upgrade.

The family of a friend of mine had one as their main set until the late 1980s.

His Dad had his own business so they weren't short of money, but weren't the sort of "keep up with the Joneses" family who had to buy new things just for the sake of it. I remember it was replaced by a similar sized set with fastext & other innovations.