Wonderful memories there Michael. We had various Thorn chassis' here in New Zealand, including the 9000 (9200). There was a 20 inch version called the precision 20. It had a terrible RCA tube which died like your one. Then there was the precision 22 with a 22 inch Hitachi tube. They lasted very well. There was a 26 inch version which had convergence circuitry (9600?). As an apprentice, I tried to get my head around the Syclops circuit. I enjoyed working on them though. I learnt all the faults you mentioned. I hope you make a video about the tube change.
Yes there was a Thorn 9600 in a plastic cabinet also and the tube in those were just as bad , if the tube in the loft turns out to be the same one then there will be another part to this video.
I'd forgotten about the 9600 chassis, only ever seen a few of those and I stand corrected on my comment regarding the Precision 22 tube brand for some reason I thought they had Toshiba's but then I remembered the Pye sets had those! Those Hitachi tubes hold up extremely well.
I can't say that I have ever seen a Thorn 9000 in person in my entire life. My childhood was spent taking apart mostly Sears and Montgomery Ward TVs, in fact I still remember the first TV I took apart, a Montgomery Ward Airline, using scissors and a claw hammer probably when I was about 9 or 10 years old or so. Good Christmas and New Year to you and yours!
your not in England I assume because I have never seen a Sears or Montgomery set either , I have heard of the sears brand though , was it something to do with Radioshack ?
That is right, sir. Lifelong American here. No, Sears and Radio Shack were always separate entities. Sears was at one time the world's largest retailer, nearly history now. Radio Shack's parent was Tandy, which later assumed Radio Shack's name. They were known as InterTAN internationally.@@michaeldranfield7140
I once spotted one of these TVs dumped and smashed up on an old colliery site. David Boynes told me about the tripler faults on these. I managed to salvage the badge off the tv and stuck it on the vrat forum and someone wanted it as there set was missing there's. I do love the retro look of these sets and it was the year i was born when this was made. You hardly see any of these sets now. Thorn badged there sets and radios with different names like Ultra, Ferguson, HMV and Marconiphone but all had BRC chassis. British radio corporation. Really enjoyed this video as at least i now have seen a complete set, still nice regardless of the issues they suffered.
We had one of those. Served us well for a number of years, from the beginning of '77 till the mid '80s. It was very good for a relatively modest set, with a rock-solid picture from the PiL tube. The light output wasn't as good as on later sets, of course, and it didn't work that well with a VCR (without modification to stop those verticals keeling over at the top on pre-recorded tapes), but it really wasn't at all bad for what it was. Not bad-looking either.
Had one of these as a rather poorly secondhand "monitor" for my Atari ST as a kiddo! I was just about to be born when that chassis was designed...when I trained in the 1990s, they let us loose on TX9s and 10s!
these were very poor after a short period , CRT life was bad , TX9 and 10 were much better but not brilliant compared to Jap tubes , I have some TX9 and TX10 in my collection .
Great video Mr. Dranfield, we had one of these at home throughout my childhood. Thank you for all your inspired and thoughtful content in 2023, and I wish you and yours a happy and enjoyable Christmas.
Great Christmas video Michael..... Has brought back memories of repairing the 9000's, when I worked for Rumbelows, back in the 70's. I also purchased a new one, for my parents from the retail shop, with staff discount. TV had a very good picture, due to PIL tube. Eight years later, after repairing all the stock faults, my parents upgraded, then I took charge of the old 9000. I used it as a direct to RGB monitor (not via the tv tuner), with my BBC model B, home computer. From memory.... I made up an RGB to computer interface, which incorporated opto isolators, form one of the electronic magazines.
Glad you liked it , I have a feeling I have seen some sort of project in Television magazine using opto isolators many years ago but I have a feeling it may have been just for sound .
No doubt they did , and I scrapped loads due to worn out CRT s , its hard to think now how big the Thorn industry was and now its all confined to the history books never to return .
our first colour TV was an ITT CVC9 chassis ,I would love one of those and the redifusion sets were good as you say , I have some very happy memories of these too, in fact I have a MK 1 hybrid set .
redifusion were good sets , I think it was the Mk4 that suffered from dry joints on the chopper transformer , due to a vertical mounted power board @@quattrohead
Great work Michael. Many thanks for taking the time to do this video. I remember the 9000 chasis. I liked them. I went over to GEC completely for ease of spares. Best wishes to you and your family for 2024. You're an absolute legend
Great to see a vintage tv repair. That Thorn brings back memories for me. I had a fear of Ferguson. Looking forward to your vintage repairs in the new year.
Thank you for posting these interesting videos Michael. Like everyone else on here I would like to wish you and your family a great Christmas and new year. All the best,
That brings back a few very distant memories Michael, it must be the best part of forty years since I last have the pleasure (if that's the right word) of attempting to repair a Thorn 9000 !
YAAYY !! Been looking forward to this video Michael . Keep us updated and see if you can find / fit the new regun tube . Would love to see some of those tellies brought back to life . Thanks for sharing another video. MERRY CHRISTMAS MICHAEL !!!!🎄
Last time I saw the inside of one of those was the mid eighties. Did lots of them at RR. They were forever being retubed . The NGT thorn reguns ( No Good Tubes ) had to be left on soak for two days to make sure the things didn't spark over and trip the set. They had a great picture with a good tube and as they had the convergence rings set and sealed there was very little adjustment. EW diodes , Triplers , tant. caps . flat tube , A1 supply you seem to have covered the lot there Michael didn't they have a thick film resistor unit in the video somewhere ? . Merry Christmas.
the only thick films in the 9000 are I think the over voltage protection module, I think your getting confused with the Thorn 3500 chaiis where the video output module was a thick film resistor block , stay tuned , I have one of these also ! The Thorn new life CRT s were as you say pretty dreadful and thats whats worrying me about the CRT I have , it could be worse than the old one .
Ah the memories come flooding back. Merry Christmas to you and your family and an happy new year too. Looking forward for the next instalment. Many thanks.
Hi Michael, a while ago you uploaded a video where you explained the ways capacitors can break down and how they work, with what’s inside a cap. The most distinctive thing about the video was you drew a “spiral” representing the roll of paper/film/whatever inside but now I can’t find the video.
Fantastic a real fault finding investigation for this good looking set. I hope you do replace the tube in a further video as it would be great to see this. Have a great New Year. Nigel
Michael, It may be interesting to mension for the sake of overseas viewers, that Thorn never made a colour TV that wasn't solid state. Even back in the Mid 60-s when Thorn introduced their 2000 chassis it was solid state. In fact it was the first solid state colour TV in the world. Even back then, Sony colour TV's still had one valve in them. Not all viewers will realise that Thorn had four main brands...Ferguson , HMV (His Masters Voice), Marconi & Ultra. Under the Ultra brand, thorn did a 25" black & white TV in 1967 using their 950 chassis.....the biggest B&W ever. Richard
I had forgotten all about that Richard , the 2000 chassis was a bit before me but I did quite a lot on the 3500 sets as a kid and I now have a 3500 in my collection so watch this space ! you mention the sony sets , I have a vague recollection of one with 3 EHT rectifiers all with separate heater windings arranged as a Tripler arrangement but its a long time ago , although definitely not one of my favourite sets the hand wired sony ones , a friend of mine had a house full and I keep buying the odd one off him .
i have a thorn 8000 ferguson 3712 in the back of the barn. worked fairly well when last powered up in the early 2000s apart from teletext flyback lines! from about 1972 i think!
@@stickytapenrust6869 2 3/4 hours, according to the 'net., and in any case cant get to it for the forseeable future, got a sony kv1300ub if you want one, when last powered up did work and get a picture but started squealing a bit after a minute or so, so needs investigating, also 2 kv1320s untested
Fantastic video .Michael i think that set had nearly every stock fault..we had a lot of these out on rental so i got quite used to most of the faults but it was great being reminded of them. lokking forward to your next vintage set.
Very happy memories there, not bad old sets apart from the tripler, didn't Thorn look after us engineers well, beautiful manuals with everything you needed, and a laminated schematic because they knew that bit got dog eared with use.
I remember when the 9000 chassis came out they were a big improvement over the 8000 and 8500 in build and picture quality the tantalum and SKE diodes always a problem the replacement triplers got rid of the arcing and get rid of the plastic anode caps.Basic fault finding usually got things working again but the Euro style tubes ended their lives
Thorn were a very popular brand with the rental companies so you could well have rented this model , I remember seeing thorn stuff by the thousands in the ex rental TV disposable warehouses .
Ferguson made awesome televisions, my favourite is the little Ferguson courier portable black and white, that thing lasted forever! My local repair shop in stoke-on-trent used to replace the Mullard CRT's with either Philips or Toshiba's, as the mullards were literally dead in emissions after about 4 years, that was the only weak point of them really. The problem was the filament, dropping it from 6.3v to 5.8v usually cured the problem. Those slide controls were a real pain in the backside though, im glad they got rid of them by about 1978
Ferguson did indeed make some really good sets as you say, only let down by the tube , it all went to pot when they got involved with Thompson and made the dreadful ICC chassis sets .
Michael- might you have a schematic for the cap reformer? Great video That looks useful.. Thanks I saw many of those style fuse holders lose tension and when trying to tighten them, the metal would break off on the pressure contact to fuse. I restored many TV sets and one problem after another was so frustrating. I also had the same issue with the main fuse holder in my old Ford1 ton van. Heat from current flow would blow the fuse. Added an off board holder & problem solved).
I remember there was a GEC 2110 set in which the mains fuse would just go open circuit for no apparent reason and then one day I realised what had caused it , a bad contact in the fuseholder caused the fuse to heat up and melt the soldered joint at the end cap, for the cap reformer have a look on " world radio history " July 1995 Everyday practical electronics, this is the basic circuit , I just added a bit of my own circuitry to it .
Was the SYCLOPS setup similar to the combined chopper/lopt circuit found in old Saba or Nordmende tvs? Only ever encountered that circuit in the 1990s when, by then, one set was very second hand but it worked well enough though 🙂
Cabinet looks in good condition being plastic the ones I saw often seemed to lose the teak pattern , did Richard Ingleby go into tv servicing trade ? First thing I thought you would have done would be to check the tube on a CRT tester , amazing it's still got some life in it anyway
Hello Michael, does that NOS tripler say, 'MADE IN GEMRANY' (as opposed to GERMANY)? Perhaps it's an optical illusion. I love the videos by the way. I get withdrawal symptoms if I can't get my regular fix! My grateful thanks for sharing your repairs.
@@michaeldranfield7140 you're probably quite lucky, they were popping in BBC computer power supplies even 15 years ago! and i had an AT PC psu in the early 2000s(dating from early to mid 90s) let the 'magic smoke' out
Never saw those piles of crap in OZ but you did send us the portable oven aka the 3504 & they were an epic failure in Aussie heat with the muli tapped resistor they used for power rails, then we got the 4KA with it's faling ceramic thin film resistors & they were worse, the next Thorn I saw was a Mitsubishi & no more problems they were very reliable.
We got a variant of them in New Zealand, and they would bake in our summers too. Many customers took our hint that the sets were more reliable if the back cover lived in a closet rather than on the back of the set. 😄 I did like the switch mode supply though. It was simple and as an apprentice, I could understand the concept of switch mode from those, and then tackle the tricky supplies in other sets. We got the 9000 that he has in this video and it was way better than the early oven. Pretty reliable despite his one having most of the problems all at once. The 20" version did have a crap RCA tube, but the 22 had a wonderful Toshiba, so they were the ones to go for.
@@tenmillionvolts They were all a unreliable P'sOS here till they went to the G-Chassis Mitsubishi in 78 but they had plugin cards with foam on the top of the gold contacts which due to heat would melt & run down into the connector causing kaos, but once the was fixed on all cards in home service they where good. But those 4KA's where a service call a week hence a POS & we had about 80 on rental.
the Thorn 3500 was the worst with its low voltage , only 60 volts HT rail but very high current power supply , the board would go black with the heat .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Yes I'm well aware of the huge list of problems they had plus the picture tube was mounted upside down& you could never get good purity here in the southern hemisphere so I turn the picture tube around 180 degrees so the ulta cap was at the top that fixed the bad purity & convergence problems but they failed extremely regularly, they didn't like 40C in summer... epic failure but worked good as a heater.
Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed watching you working on the set. Please do some more videos like this! Best wishes to you for Christmas and the New Year.
I remember seeing a lot of these in the early 90's mostly ex rental DER and Baird, the customer had a lot of guest houses and the sets probably originally came from one of the disposal warehouses. I do remember the tubes weren't great by then. It wasn't one of my favourite chassis, I was more into the later TX9 and 10, but my boss knew them inside out. It was pretty groundbreaking for 1976, I always thought they were a bit later than that.
TX9 and TX10 videos coming soon ! Thorn was the backbone of the rental industry but in most sets the tube always let the set down which is a great pity .
This takes me back, in 1976 i was 21 and had just completed my apprenticeship and obtained my C&G 223 colour certificate. When you mentioned the tant, a few of the other faults came back to me. The best sets for long tube life were valve based, they were more gentle on the tubes than transistor RGB stages. Happier times when most of the faults were known and the more obscure ones could be found with a multimeter and scope. Television magazine was a great source of information and cheap parts fron Sendz Components. Have a great Christmas and New Year Michael.
I was one of the last apprentices to do the C&G 224 course starting in 1983 and finishing in 1986. Only one more year came after me ('84-'87) into D|E|R as apprentices - when they finished the program ended and I think D|E|R didn't last much longer after that. Happy days and some great memories and stories from some of the Sales Reps and Engineers, many of which I couldn't repeat on here! Every Christmas I used to get a big hamper with cheese, meat and wine in it, which put a big smile on my dear old mum's face. Happy Christmas to you, Michael and all the followers of this channel!
They were happy times back then, TV's and later VCR's were mostly rented due to their price and reliability was not that good. Re Christmas, it was a great time with the reps bringing callendars , mugs and chocolates that all stopped in the 2000's. All the best for Christmas and the New Year.@@radio-ged4626
Too right and because production of a TV set could last 18 months or more before the next model came out you had lots of time to find all the stock faults , unlike today when you never seem to see the same set twice .
when you think back to all the TV rental shops we had back then because people simply couldn't afford to buy a new TV and now there next to nothing to buy its so sad. @@radio-ged4626
What i find today that apart from backlight and panel issues the same parts still fail despite how many different brands that we see. Badge engineering was common on the 70/80's but at least you knew which chassis they had, today the badge means very little.@@michaeldranfield7140
Great video. Here in New Zealand we had the identical chassis which was known as the 9200. The 20 inch RCA tubes like this one never lasted, but we had a 22 inch version using a Toshiba tube and they gave an outstanding picture. I fixed a few of these back in the 1990's and have one waiting to be repaired in my collection. We also had the 3500 chassis known as the TX574- they weren't the greatest set, I have one of those as well. Look forward to Part 2 on the 9000!
Glad you liked it , I have a Thorn 3500 that I want to do a video on soon but unfortunately its a 26 inch so I'm also expecting the CRT to be worn out too.
@michaeldranfield7140 The 3500 I have the tube was re-gunned in the 1990's and was probably retired after that.When I got the set, I went around the power supply checking all the silicon and then gingerly applied some mains and it burst into life amazingly with a raster showing frame foldover and no blue but the tube appeared to be ok otherwise. I'll get back to this set at some stage! Look forward to a video on your 3500 :-)
Thorn made these TV s to sell and also for their TV Rentals in DER,Radio Rentals, Multi Broadcast, Rumbelows. Unfortunately they were cheaply made , the channel pushbuttons did not last or customer controls, the Tripler used to go and sometimes blow a hole in the CRT, it also suffered from poor emissions the CRT, they did not last long and must have been the worst Thorn Model ever made
9000 just loved the nice laminated schematics, great easy to wipe clean 😊 Ah the old fan heater ploy,. Did that trippler come from HRS or CPC? Don't ya just love the smell of RIFA's in the morning, it went quite sedately!😊
I don't know for sure as I got it with the set but its just like the ones I use to buy from Sendz components in the 80 s , do you know I never had any problems with those Rifa capacitors until quite recently , 5 years or so my Farnell bench power supply went up in smoke and it was a Rifa, and now I have had a few in vintage TV sets burn up , I have some brand new ones and I can see the problem , the plastic jacket has cracked with age and they must let moisture in .
wow i cant believe these are that old! ,i was messing about with philips g8, and rbm a823,s at the same time as these i thought these were far more modern with a pil tube no cooking convergence panel and a cyclops switched mode psu that psu struck fear in me as it felt so wrong to bypass protections to see why it was tripping (i cant remember if a variac screwed these sets up?)
unfortunately were all getting older , I was only 21 first time I repaired one of these , not far off 60 now so these videos bring back very good memories for me to , G8, 823 did all these back then although when I first set up on my own sets like these were getting old and un reliable and usually ended up scrap .
@@michaeldranfield7140 I remember everything being very unreliable back then alot of the tv repair shops near me just had a test chasis at the shop for g8 and 823 they board swapped at the customers house then reworked those boards on the test chassis just do they could soak test them for a week to see if a bu205 would blow short, and they often did, the best set I had at that time was a reddif mk4 but then I did resolder that start up resistor trip a load of times for no apparent reason the set then worked another 6 months after the last trip
This IS a Masterclass of Fault finding, , Michael you are the main man at working out the circuit and the understanding of electronics, component behavior and circuitry. as usual its a pleasure to watch and learn from the best in the Business ... !
@@michaeldranfield7140 we had a few tx models in the past and they'd give good pictures for ages then suddenly seem to drop off quickly, those models used auto grey scale so likely the tube got too bad for the chip to compensate
@@andygozzo72 I think through the 70s and into the 80s, the practice was changing to stop that interference from getting into the mains, as I had a couple of Grundig V2000 VCRs with the filter before the switch. *Now* it only makes sense for it to be after the mains switch but wasn’t at the time, they were probably told by RIFA that their mains filter capacitors were better than the TCC waxies that manufacturers used to use. Obviously now in 2023 we know that that’s not turned out to be the case.
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Michael, could you please continue on this Set, IT was fascinating!
Yes I am hoping to get back to in , I have many other vintage TV s also for making videos on soon.
I worked on the pre- production and first run off at Thorn Consumer Electronics Lidget Green Bradford.
Quite interesting!
Happy days back then and proper British design .
Thanks for the video, hope you do another video fitting the replacement tube
Of course if it turns out to be the right one .
Wonderful memories there Michael. We had various Thorn chassis' here in New Zealand, including the 9000 (9200). There was a 20 inch version called the precision 20. It had a terrible RCA tube which died like your one. Then there was the precision 22 with a 22 inch Hitachi tube. They lasted very well. There was a 26 inch version which had convergence circuitry (9600?). As an apprentice, I tried to get my head around the Syclops circuit. I enjoyed working on them though. I learnt all the faults you mentioned. I hope you make a video about the tube change.
Yes there was a Thorn 9600 in a plastic cabinet also and the tube in those were just as bad , if the tube in the loft turns out to be the same one then there will be another part to this video.
I'd forgotten about the 9600 chassis, only ever seen a few of those and I stand corrected on my comment regarding the Precision 22 tube brand for some reason I thought they had Toshiba's but then I remembered the Pye sets had those! Those Hitachi tubes hold up extremely well.
Thank you. Very interesting video. Would love to see some older sets with valves in.
Merry Christmas to you and your family, Michael.
Many thanks for that , and for watching .
1976..I was only 5 years old haha..nice looking TV:) love these vintage sets:) great video:)
Many thanks for watching , hopefully more coming soon !
I can't say that I have ever seen a Thorn 9000 in person in my entire life. My childhood was spent taking apart mostly Sears and Montgomery Ward TVs, in fact I still remember the first TV I took apart, a Montgomery Ward Airline, using scissors and a claw hammer probably when I was about 9 or 10 years old or so. Good Christmas and New Year to you and yours!
your not in England I assume because I have never seen a Sears or Montgomery set either , I have heard of the sears brand though , was it something to do with Radioshack ?
That is right, sir. Lifelong American here. No, Sears and Radio Shack were always separate entities. Sears was at one time the world's largest retailer, nearly history now. Radio Shack's parent was Tandy, which later assumed Radio Shack's name. They were known as InterTAN internationally.@@michaeldranfield7140
I once spotted one of these TVs dumped and smashed up on an old colliery site. David Boynes told me about the tripler faults on these. I managed to salvage the badge off the tv and stuck it on the vrat forum and someone wanted it as there set was missing there's. I do love the retro look of these sets and it was the year i was born when this was made. You hardly see any of these sets now. Thorn badged there sets and radios with different names like Ultra, Ferguson, HMV and Marconiphone but all had BRC chassis. British radio corporation. Really enjoyed this video as at least i now have seen a complete set, still nice regardless of the issues they suffered.
We had one of those. Served us well for a number of years, from the beginning of '77 till the mid '80s. It was very good for a relatively modest set, with a rock-solid picture from the PiL tube. The light output wasn't as good as on later sets, of course, and it didn't work that well with a VCR (without modification to stop those verticals keeling over at the top on pre-recorded tapes), but it really wasn't at all bad for what it was. Not bad-looking either.
The line sync time constant mod was a good money maker back in the 80 s .
At D|E|R back in the early 1980's I used to fit re-gunned Thorn New-Life tubes to these sets. Sometimes they were worse than the old tubes I took out!
I remember that and that's what worry's me about the tube I have
Had one of these as a rather poorly secondhand "monitor" for my Atari ST as a kiddo! I was just about to be born when that chassis was designed...when I trained in the 1990s, they let us loose on TX9s and 10s!
these were very poor after a short period , CRT life was bad , TX9 and 10 were much better but not brilliant compared to Jap tubes , I have some TX9 and TX10 in my collection .
Great video Mr. Dranfield, we had one of these at home throughout my childhood.
Thank you for all your inspired and thoughtful content in 2023, and I wish you and yours a happy and enjoyable Christmas.
Many thanks for that Roundy, , hopefully some of JJ s sets to come next ! He gave me a few vintage sets last time he was over .
that was awesome on so many levels. Happy Xmas M D
More coming soon !
Great Christmas video Michael..... Has brought back memories of repairing the 9000's, when I worked for Rumbelows, back in the 70's. I also purchased a new one, for my parents from the retail shop, with staff discount. TV had a very good picture, due to PIL tube. Eight years later, after repairing all the stock faults, my parents upgraded, then I took charge of the old 9000. I used it as a direct to RGB monitor (not via the tv tuner), with my BBC model B, home computer. From memory.... I made up an RGB to computer interface, which incorporated opto isolators, form one of the electronic magazines.
Glad you liked it , I have a feeling I have seen some sort of project in Television magazine using opto isolators many years ago but I have a feeling it may have been just for sound .
Nice to see one still around. These were my bread and butter in the mid 90's. They must have sold millions.
No doubt they did , and I scrapped loads due to worn out CRT s , its hard to think now how big the Thorn industry was and now its all confined to the history books never to return .
Excellent trip down memory lane. I recall fixing ITT CVC5 hybrid TVs in the early 70s. I still have a Rediffusion MK4a in almost daily use.
Rediffusion MK4a were a fantastic TV. So simple to use, even my Mum could operate the teletext.
our first colour TV was an ITT CVC9 chassis ,I would love one of those and the redifusion sets were good as you say , I have some very happy memories of these too, in fact I have a MK 1 hybrid set .
redifusion were good sets , I think it was the Mk4 that suffered from dry joints on the chopper transformer , due to a vertical mounted power board @@quattrohead
Great work Michael. Many thanks for taking the time to do this video. I remember the 9000 chasis. I liked them. I went over to GEC completely for ease of spares.
Best wishes to you and your family for 2024. You're an absolute legend
I sold mainly GEC reconditioned back in the 80 s , 2110 chassis , far more reliable then the Thorn stuff .
Takes me back!
More to come yet !
Have a great christmas michael love watching your channel brings back old memories of visiting my dad he was always messing about with old teles.
More coming soon !
Have a great Christmas Michael, thanks for all the brilliant videos over the year.
Many thanks for that , more videos coming soon !
Brilliant!!! Have a great Christmas.
Many thanks for watching .
Thanks for another great video Michael, Merry Christmas.
No problem , many thanks for watching , more vintage TV sets coming soon .
Great to see a vintage tv repair. That Thorn brings back memories for me. I had a fear of Ferguson. Looking forward to your vintage repairs in the new year.
got another couple of Thorn sets in the pipeline ,hopefully soon .
Thank you for posting these interesting videos Michael. Like everyone else on here I would like to wish you and your family a great Christmas and new year. All the best,
Stay tuned , I have more sets now !
That brings back a few very distant memories Michael, it must be the best part of forty years since I last have the pleasure (if that's the right word) of attempting to repair a Thorn 9000 !
Certainly is a long time , better days back then before the disposable age .
YAAYY !! Been looking forward to this video Michael . Keep us updated and see if you can find / fit the new regun tube .
Would love to see some of those tellies brought back to life .
Thanks for sharing another video.
MERRY CHRISTMAS MICHAEL !!!!🎄
A few people keep requesting vintage TV videos , stay tuned I have more !!!!
Happy Christmas and healthy New Year.
Many thanks for that and for watching .
Have a good Christmas and New year a keep up the good work
Many thanks for that , more coming soon .
Brilliant Michael, fascinating repair have a great Christmas to you and your family 😊
Many thanks for that , more sets coming soon !
@@michaeldranfield7140 can’t wait 😊
Last time I saw the inside of one of those was the mid eighties. Did lots of them at RR. They were forever being retubed . The NGT thorn reguns ( No Good Tubes ) had to be left on soak for two days to make sure the things didn't spark over and trip the set. They had a great picture with a good tube and as they had the convergence rings set and sealed there was very little adjustment. EW diodes , Triplers , tant. caps . flat tube , A1 supply you seem to have covered the lot there Michael didn't they have a thick film resistor unit in the video somewhere ? . Merry Christmas.
the only thick films in the 9000 are I think the over voltage protection module, I think your getting confused with the Thorn 3500 chaiis where the video output module was a thick film resistor block , stay tuned , I have one of these also ! The Thorn new life CRT s were as you say pretty dreadful and thats whats worrying me about the CRT I have , it could be worse than the old one .
Thanks for the trip down memory lane Michael, looking forward to more vintage tv repairs, merry Xmas to you and your family.
Ah the memories come flooding back. Merry Christmas to you and your family and an happy new year too. Looking forward for the next instalment. Many thanks.
Many thanks for that , I like doing this old stuff just for the memories of happier times .
That's what its all about , invoking memories of happier times .
Hi Michael, a while ago you uploaded a video where you explained the ways capacitors can break down and how they work, with what’s inside a cap. The most distinctive thing about the video was you drew a “spiral” representing the roll of paper/film/whatever inside but now I can’t find the video.
I actually removed that video because I made a mistake in it but when I get it edited I will re upload it in the near future.
Fantastic a real fault finding investigation for this good looking set. I hope you do replace the tube in a further video as it would be great to see this. Have a great New Year. Nigel
Many thanks for that , if the CRT I have is the same then there will be a part two .
Michael, It may be interesting to mension for the sake of overseas viewers, that Thorn never made a colour TV that wasn't solid state. Even back in the Mid 60-s when Thorn introduced their 2000 chassis it was solid state. In fact it was the first solid state colour TV in the world. Even back then, Sony colour TV's still had one valve in them.
Not all viewers will realise that Thorn had four main brands...Ferguson , HMV (His Masters Voice), Marconi & Ultra.
Under the Ultra brand, thorn did a 25" black & white TV in 1967 using their 950 chassis.....the biggest B&W ever.
Richard
I had forgotten all about that Richard , the 2000 chassis was a bit before me but I did quite a lot on the 3500 sets as a kid and I now have a 3500 in my collection so watch this space !
you mention the sony sets , I have a vague recollection of one with 3 EHT rectifiers all with separate heater windings arranged as a Tripler arrangement but its a long time ago , although definitely not one of my favourite sets the hand wired sony ones , a friend of mine had a house full and I keep buying the odd one off him .
i have a thorn 8000 ferguson 3712 in the back of the barn. worked fairly well when last powered up in the early 2000s apart from teletext flyback lines! from about 1972 i think!
If you’re within an hour of Sheffield, I’d *LOVE* to have that!
@@stickytapenrust6869 2 3/4 hours, according to the 'net., and in any case cant get to it for the forseeable future, got a sony kv1300ub if you want one, when last powered up did work and get a picture but started squealing a bit after a minute or so, so needs investigating, also 2 kv1320s untested
I have a couple of 8000 s and still a few parts for them , tubes weren't so good in those either .
Im not that far form Sheffield but sorry mine are not for sale , I have a couple of Thorn 8000 sets in my collection .@@stickytapenrust6869
@@michaeldranfield7140 My comment was aimed at Andy.
Fantastic video .Michael
i think that set had nearly every stock fault..we had a lot of these out on rental so i got quite used to most of the faults but it was great being reminded of them.
lokking forward to your next vintage set.
there could have been other stock faults that have slipped my memory , its a long time ago now !
Very happy memories there, not bad old sets apart from the tripler, didn't Thorn look after us engineers well, beautiful manuals with everything you needed, and a laminated schematic because they knew that bit got dog eared with use.
we were very well looked after by most manufactures with technical support, service manuals , spare parts , all sadly gone now , never to return .
I remember when the 9000 chassis came out they were a big improvement over the 8000 and 8500 in build and picture quality the tantalum and SKE diodes always a problem the replacement triplers got rid of the arcing and get rid of the plastic anode caps.Basic fault finding usually got things working again but the Euro style tubes ended their lives
I liked most thorn stuff but as you say all let down by poor quality CRTs , some mullards were not too good either .
Same age has me 47 years old
still young then .
That set looks familiar, i'm sure we had one on rental in the early 80's. Have a wonderful Christmas Michael.
Thorn were a very popular brand with the rental companies so you could well have rented this model , I remember seeing thorn stuff by the thousands in the ex rental TV disposable warehouses .
Ferguson made awesome televisions, my favourite is the little Ferguson courier portable black and white, that thing lasted forever! My local repair shop in stoke-on-trent used to replace the Mullard CRT's with either Philips or Toshiba's, as the mullards were literally dead in emissions after about 4 years, that was the only weak point of them really. The problem was the filament, dropping it from 6.3v to 5.8v usually cured the problem. Those slide controls were a real pain in the backside though, im glad they got rid of them by about 1978
TX10 was their best chassis in my opinion.
Yes , I liked the TX10 , I still have a couple here .@@quattrohead
Ferguson did indeed make some really good sets as you say, only let down by the tube , it all went to pot when they got involved with Thompson and made the dreadful ICC chassis sets .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Yes! terrible they were, the TX portables had an awesome picture too
Michael- might you have a schematic for the cap reformer? Great video That looks useful.. Thanks
I saw many of those style fuse holders lose tension and when trying to tighten them, the metal would break off on the pressure contact to fuse. I restored many TV sets and one problem after another was so frustrating.
I also had the same issue with the main fuse holder in my old Ford1 ton van. Heat from current flow would blow the fuse. Added an off board holder & problem solved).
I remember there was a GEC 2110 set in which the mains fuse would just go open circuit for no apparent reason and then one day I realised what had caused it , a bad contact in the fuseholder caused the fuse to heat up and melt the soldered joint at the end cap,
for the cap reformer have a look on " world radio history " July 1995 Everyday practical electronics, this is the basic circuit , I just added a bit of my own circuitry to it .
Thank You. @@michaeldranfield7140
Was the SYCLOPS setup similar to the combined chopper/lopt circuit found in old Saba or Nordmende tvs? Only ever encountered that circuit in the 1990s when, by then, one set was very second hand but it worked well enough though 🙂
before condemning the tube what about doing a full grey scale adjustment?
Experience tells me its the tube but yes you are absolutely correct the heater voltage needs to be checked before condemning the tube .
Cabinet looks in good condition being plastic the ones I saw often seemed to lose the teak pattern , did Richard Ingleby go into tv servicing trade ?
First thing I thought you would have done would be to check the tube on a CRT tester , amazing it's still got some life in it anyway
he did go into TV servicing , I met him personally, he brought this set rather than risk sending with a courier .
Hello Michael, does that NOS tripler say, 'MADE IN GEMRANY' (as opposed to GERMANY)? Perhaps it's an optical illusion. I love the videos by the way. I get withdrawal symptoms if I can't get my regular fix! My grateful thanks for sharing your repairs.
You could well be right but Im writing this reply from home now but I will have a look tomorrow morning , more TV stuff coming soon .
Triplers were a big fault item on American TV's too, bad solder joints also
a lot of people are coming across shorted tants, but i've not...yet.......maybe been lucky?!
I have not had faulty Rifas until quite recently , in the last 5 years .
@@michaeldranfield7140 you're probably quite lucky, they were popping in BBC computer power supplies even 15 years ago! and i had an AT PC psu in the early 2000s(dating from early to mid 90s) let the 'magic smoke' out
Hello Michael. What happened to this set? Was the tube changed?
Not got round to looking in the loft yet to see if the one I have is the same .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Great. I was worried I’d missed the action.
Fond.
Many thanks for watching .
Never saw those piles of crap in OZ but you did send us the portable oven aka the 3504 & they were an epic failure in Aussie heat with the muli tapped resistor they used for power rails, then we got the 4KA with it's faling ceramic thin film resistors & they were worse, the next Thorn I saw was a Mitsubishi & no more problems they were very reliable.
We got a variant of them in New Zealand, and they would bake in our summers too. Many customers took our hint that the sets were more reliable if the back cover lived in a closet rather than on the back of the set. 😄 I did like the switch mode supply though. It was simple and as an apprentice, I could understand the concept of switch mode from those, and then tackle the tricky supplies in other sets. We got the 9000 that he has in this video and it was way better than the early oven. Pretty reliable despite his one having most of the problems all at once. The 20" version did have a crap RCA tube, but the 22 had a wonderful Toshiba, so they were the ones to go for.
@@tenmillionvolts They were all a unreliable P'sOS here till they went to the G-Chassis Mitsubishi in 78 but they had plugin cards with foam on the top of the gold contacts which due to heat would melt & run down into the connector causing kaos, but once the was fixed on all cards in home service they where good.
But those 4KA's where a service call a week hence a POS & we had about 80 on rental.
the Thorn 3500 was the worst with its low voltage , only 60 volts HT rail but very high current power supply , the board would go black with the heat .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Yes I'm well aware of the huge list of problems they had plus the picture tube was mounted upside down& you could never get good purity here in the southern hemisphere so I turn the picture tube around 180 degrees so the ulta cap was at the top that fixed the bad purity & convergence problems but they failed extremely regularly, they didn't like 40C in summer... epic failure but worked good as a heater.
Thank you for making this video, I really enjoyed watching you working on the set. Please do some more videos like this! Best wishes to you for Christmas and the New Year.
Many thanks for that , glad you liked it , hopefully more to come soon .
YOUR NEW TRIPLER WAS MADE IN GEMRANI !
someone else made the same comment , I will have a look tomorrow .
Merry Christmas Mr. Michael. Thank you for your videos and information that you give us.
Many thanks for that , more coming soon .
@@michaeldranfield7140 thank you.
I remember seeing a lot of these in the early 90's mostly ex rental DER and Baird, the customer had a lot of guest houses and the sets probably originally came from one of the disposal warehouses. I do remember the tubes weren't great by then. It wasn't one of my favourite chassis, I was more into the later TX9 and 10, but my boss knew them inside out. It was pretty groundbreaking for 1976, I always thought they were a bit later than that.
TX9 and TX10 videos coming soon !
Thorn was the backbone of the rental industry but in most sets the tube always let the set down which is a great pity .
Id sooner have one of these sets than a plasma one anyday 📺
At least you can repair these old sets to component level using the service manual .
@@michaeldranfield7140 exactly
This takes me back, in 1976 i was 21 and had just completed my apprenticeship
and obtained my C&G 223 colour certificate.
When you mentioned the tant, a few of the other faults came back to me.
The best sets for long tube life were valve based, they were more gentle on the tubes
than transistor RGB stages.
Happier times when most of the faults were known and the more obscure ones could
be found with a multimeter and scope.
Television magazine was a great source of information and cheap parts fron Sendz Components.
Have a great Christmas and New Year Michael.
I was one of the last apprentices to do the C&G 224 course starting in 1983 and finishing in 1986. Only one more year came after me ('84-'87) into D|E|R as apprentices - when they finished the program ended and I think D|E|R didn't last much longer after that. Happy days and some great memories and stories from some of the Sales Reps and Engineers, many of which I couldn't repeat on here! Every Christmas I used to get a big hamper with cheese, meat and wine in it, which put a big smile on my dear old mum's face. Happy Christmas to you, Michael and all the followers of this channel!
They were happy times back then, TV's and later VCR's were mostly rented due to their price
and reliability was not that good.
Re Christmas, it was a great time with the reps bringing callendars , mugs and chocolates
that all stopped in the 2000's.
All the best for Christmas and the New Year.@@radio-ged4626
Too right and because production of a TV set could last 18 months or more before the next model came out you had lots of time to find all the stock faults , unlike today when you never seem to see the same set twice .
when you think back to all the TV rental shops we had back then because people simply couldn't afford to buy a new TV and now there next to nothing to buy its so sad. @@radio-ged4626
What i find today that apart from backlight and panel issues the same parts still fail
despite how many different brands that we see.
Badge engineering was common on the 70/80's but at least you knew which chassis they had,
today the badge means very little.@@michaeldranfield7140
Great video. Here in New Zealand we had the identical chassis which was known as the 9200. The 20 inch RCA tubes like this one never lasted, but we had a 22 inch version using a Toshiba tube and they gave an outstanding picture. I fixed a few of these back in the 1990's and have one waiting to be repaired in my collection. We also had the 3500 chassis known as the TX574- they weren't the greatest set, I have one of those as well. Look forward to Part 2 on the 9000!
Glad you liked it , I have a Thorn 3500 that I want to do a video on soon but unfortunately its a 26 inch so I'm also expecting the CRT to be worn out too.
@michaeldranfield7140 The 3500 I have the tube was re-gunned in the 1990's and was probably retired after that.When I got the set, I went around the power supply checking all the silicon and then gingerly applied some mains and it burst into life amazingly with a raster showing frame foldover and no blue but the tube appeared to be ok otherwise. I'll get back to this set at some stage! Look forward to a video on your 3500 :-)
Thanks for the video Michael. Wishing you a merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Look forward to more videos.
Thanks for that , there will be definitely more coming .
Thorn made these TV s to sell and also for their TV Rentals in DER,Radio Rentals, Multi Broadcast, Rumbelows. Unfortunately they were cheaply made , the channel pushbuttons did not last or customer controls, the Tripler used to go and sometimes blow a hole in the CRT, it also suffered from poor emissions the CRT, they did not last long and must have been the worst Thorn Model ever made
Really interesting video remember these sets well ..Like you said usually the tube was weak great video as always .
CRTs were never very good in most Thorn sets unfortunately .
Michael. Capacitor reformer (probably asked before, sorry), is that a home brew unit or something off the shelf?
9000 just loved the nice laminated schematics, great easy to wipe clean 😊
Ah the old fan heater ploy,.
Did that trippler come from HRS or CPC?
Don't ya just love the smell of RIFA's in the morning, it went quite sedately!😊
I don't know for sure as I got it with the set but its just like the ones I use to buy from Sendz components in the 80 s , do you know I never had any problems with those Rifa capacitors until quite recently , 5 years or so my Farnell bench power supply went up in smoke and it was a Rifa, and now I have had a few in vintage TV sets burn up , I have some brand new ones and I can see the problem , the plastic jacket has cracked with age and they must let moisture in .
Thanks Michael ,
Boy that image of that TV ,has memories for me .
Great viewing on cold winter night here in County Meath , Ireland .
Regards
Sean
I should be able to entertain you with some more stuff soon !
Good work Grandad 👍
More good work to come soon Harley .x
Great work Michael well done really enjoy these vintage tv videos
Many thanks for watching , and for the Christmas card .
wow i cant believe these are that old! ,i was messing about with philips g8, and rbm a823,s at the same time as these i thought these were far more modern with a pil tube no cooking convergence panel and a cyclops switched mode psu
that psu struck fear in me as it felt so wrong to bypass protections to see why it was tripping (i cant remember if a variac screwed these sets up?)
unfortunately were all getting older , I was only 21 first time I repaired one of these , not far off 60 now so these videos bring back very good memories for me to , G8, 823 did all these back then although when I first set up on my own sets like these were getting old and un reliable and usually ended up scrap .
@@michaeldranfield7140 I remember everything being very unreliable back then alot of the tv repair shops near me just had a test chasis at the shop for g8 and 823 they board swapped at the customers house then reworked those boards on the test chassis just do they could soak test them for a week to see if a bu205 would blow short, and they often did, the best set I had at that time was a reddif mk4 but then I did resolder that start up resistor trip a load of times for no apparent reason the set then worked another 6 months after the last trip
This IS a Masterclass of Fault finding, , Michael you are the main man at working out the circuit and the understanding of electronics, component behavior and circuitry. as usual its a pleasure to watch and learn from the best in the Business ... !
Made a few mistakes along the way but its a long time since I repaired stuff like this , more coming soon !
those innards looks familiar, think i had one some years back and stripped it for parts as the tube was pretty much dead
I scrapped loads of these in years gone by, most Thorn stuff suffered from poor tubes .
@@michaeldranfield7140 we had a few tx models in the past and they'd give good pictures for ages then suddenly seem to drop off quickly, those models used auto grey scale so likely the tube got too bad for the chip to compensate
those damn RIFAs!! 😉 bad design having it before the mains switch, i'd reconnect a new one to after ...
The mains filter is before the switch to stop impulse interference from the switch getting onto the mains.
@@stickytapenrust6869 but that will only occur on switch on or switch off, most other makers had it after the switch....
@@andygozzo72 I think through the 70s and into the 80s, the practice was changing to stop that interference from getting into the mains, as I had a couple of Grundig V2000 VCRs with the filter before the switch.
*Now* it only makes sense for it to be after the mains switch but wasn’t at the time, they were probably told by RIFA that their mains filter capacitors were better than the TCC waxies that manufacturers used to use. Obviously now in 2023 we know that that’s not turned out to be the case.
That's what threw me , when smoke started to poor out of the back I thought I had left the set switched on but no it was in the off position .