Neat little TV! It's always fun to see how the engineers would squeeze so many hot little tubes into a small area for the sake of portability. The thought behind the component placement in this set would have been a big challenge to get such a good result from a series set. Thanks for sharing :^)
Mr. Carlson! Fancy meeting you here. I always get a kick out of running into other 'tubers on my subscription channel list. Interconnected community ... cool. DT
Regardless of the year this set came out, this for sure gives me 70's vibes of my parents first home that was built in the 70's, and even in the early 80's still had avocado, and brown, appliances, and fixtures lol!
For sure! In the late '60s and all through the '70s we had nothing but tube TVs that my dad scrounged from wherever, and he often had to fix them. He was no expert, but he knew just enough to get them going most of the time. And just enough to be dangerous -- one time something arced on his metal watch band and blew it off his wrist. Lol. But like most working class in the '70s, we were pretty poor, and if we didn't scrounge and fix our own stuff we didn't have anything.
@@jackgilchrist IDK, I'd say the "working class" today is poorer, because of so much debt. It was much more difficult to accumulate debt in the 70s, credit cards were a novelty, etc. And because everything in the 90s onward was made disposable, today we CAN'T salvage and scrummage old electronics, whereas things like old tube TVs were repairable. Just my impression, although there's long been a massive effort to make people feel if they didn't buy new, that was bad that was an indicator of poverty. I sometimes try fixing things for my mom and she inevitably throws it out, thinking a repair was what the poor people in her community growing up did. Well, that and a certainty that I'm too incompetent to fix anything right. lol
I remember my family getting one of those “No warm up” sets from one of my grandfathers. They both got into the radio/TV repair business in the late 40’s/50’s. We were told to unplug it when not using it.
Even after transistors had taken over the rest of the set's functions by the mid-1970s, there were still horizontal-output tubes for many, many years -- going all the way until the early '80s in some sets. The transistors that could handle the frequencies and voltages of that circuit were far more expensive (and far less reliable) at that time than the tubes which had been manufactured for decades and had an economy of scale yet to be matched by the then-available transistors. I'm surprised this set had so many vacuum tubes, yes, but not at all surprised that it had some vacuum tubes. Tubes really didn't disappear completely from TVs until the early '80s in many cases.
@@jamesmdeluca But aren't tubes still better at that particular task? Because isn't the cascode (lots of dioes plus capacitors) a way to avoid the impossible situation of having a single semiconductor rectifier for many thousands of volts.
I had a tiny Montgomery Ward B&W TV my parents gave me circa 1981 that still had several tubes in it besides the CRT itself. I can still smell that thing - had a distinctive odor as it warmed up.
I found an ad for this TV in September 1973 in the Toronto Star, it was called the Panasonic "Teton" and cost 120 Canadian dollars (Canada had fairly high tariffs on TV imports then which would explain the price difference vs the US). The ad boasts "speed-o-vision" (the quickstart feature) and "10 solid state devices and 10 tubes", and it also shows the 12 inch model that I'm almost certain is the other one mentioned on the PCB silkscreen (interestingly it's cheaper). Matsushita stuff from this era is indescribably well built, I'm not surprised that it still works.
I'm only a year older than you, and the first TV my parents had had a little button on the side that you had to press first to warm up the tubes and then waited 5 minutes before turning on the set. The memories.
It find it amusing that everyone seems to forget that every CRT monitor/TV is tube based. Regarding the light bulb test: A light bulb is more than just a resistor. A cold bulb is almost a short and the resistance goes up when hot (PTC). So it acts more like a very crude current regulator or overcurrent protection. And as a bonus it also lights up making it a (again very crude) current "display".
The CRT is in itself a vacuum tube. But whether a set is classified as a tube or solid-state was dependent on specifically the chassis, not the CRT. That's what manufacturers meant they called their sets 100 percent solid-state.
Some devices actually used a tiny bulb as a PTC. The monitor for the Xerox Alto was a notable example. The bulb won't have a visible glow unless there is a short, which is a handy indicator, but if it's open you get no sweep or HV. So if the monitor doesn't work, check to see if the light bulb has burned out. Not the CRT, the light bulb!
The CRT normally doesn’t count on a solid state versus tube television. Which is nowadays getting difficult to find online as peope advertise any old set as a tube tv (versus lcd/plasma) but they really have no vacuum valves whatsoever.
Lol. As a lad we had a colour set that when switched off, the decaying HV oscillator and still hot CRT cathode emissions would produce 3 coloured dots that would diverge and then "fly off' .. Later (as an adult) when I saw Close Encounters, it reminded me of that. Probably just out of diapers, I would sneak up late at night and turn the set on and off just to watch the flying spots .. and of course you could leave, or sweep an electrostatic hand print artifact on the glass if it was dark enough. Indeed - to me this was more interesting than the actual stories displayed. Of course my phone now likely has as much 'power' as NASA did then, but my phone offers no awe nor mystery. It's just a thing that I try not to get too wet. I know how it works and I don't care.
I wonder if leaving the tube filaments running in "standby mode" might actually decrease wear on them since they are not going through as much thermal contraction whenever the TV is turned on and off. I've seen in multiple videos about vacuum tube based computers that they are far more reliable if they are left hot continuously. Very entertaining video, though!
You don’t have to wonder. Tube TVs took a while to warm up, so manufacturers created instant on sets which would keep the tube filaments energized at a low level when a set was plugged in. We had an Emerson color console that had instant on and I was down to the tube tester at Thrifty Drugs every six months or so with a paper bag full of tubes I had to test. It’s what got me interested in TV repair.
Depends if you have them hot enough so they have emission or just have them barely warm that there is no or very little emission happening. If you have heaters on, but without the B+ (or anode voltage), the emission will very slowly drop, but the real problem is cathode poisoning that occurs if there is no anode current - this will happen in about 1000 hours.
@@michvod cathode poisoning! I totally forgot about that being a thing. I bet you're totally right, it would take much more current draw to keep them emitting than what is supplied in "standby" mode. Also thanks for the insight Steven, sounds like a real pain to have to do that so often!
Maybe turning on the instant on feature a couple minutes before turning on the TV would be healthier for the tubes, as a form of soft start to get them slowly heated and prevent filament flashing. But keeping them heated 24 hours a day just to use the TV for 2 would kill the cathodes much faster IMO. One of my sets has an NTC thermistor in series with the filaments and it takes a long time to warm up, but AFAIK it took over 50 years for the first tube in it to die.
If there is no preheat circuit, the tubes will draw much more power at cold start than in steady state. Some tubes experience a filament flash which significantly decreases their lifetime.
I have always been into electronics, and almost all the sets I ended up taking apart as a kid were pre 1980s. One thing I noticed about countless mid to late 1970s sets, was that the tuners, and sometimes the high voltage rectifier and-or horizontal circuit would still use tubes, but _everything_ else had switched to transistors and diodes. A few sets even combined valves, transistors, diodes, AND integrated circuits!!! All the major techs, under one chassis. The reason for this odd juxtaposition of technologies, is a mix of three primary factors. The first, and simplest factor, was many companies simply possessed massive stocks of older parts that they wanted to use up before making the switch (Panasonic, for one, used tubes all the way into the 1980s, for this very reason). The second reason, was early semiconductors were not very fast or high frequency, so it cost more to source high frequency transistors or ICs to use in the tuner. I continued seeing valves on TV tuners, particularly the UHF portion, into even the early 1980s. The third major reason was high voltage. early semiconductors could not handle high voltages or currents, and even into the later part of the 1970s, when higher voltage semiconductors did begin to appear, they had a tendency to cost more, hence the continued use of valves for high voltage rectification and horizontal circuits. In the case of the horizontal, high voltage combined with relatively higher frequencies (not as high as the tuner though) resulted in some sets retaining valves for horizontal. As for ICs, some sets had IF and detector chips for sound and-or image, some had color decoding on a chip, and others had automatic gain control circuits. These and other core functions saw early integration, even as far back as the early 70s... 1968 if you count the bleeding edge of electronics, but that wasn't common in any consumer devices back then. As was seen with the continued use of valves, sometimes it was a mater of cost. a board could have a discrete IF circuit, and a footprint for an IF chip... Populate whatever is cheaper or more available at the time. can't tell you how many devices I encountered with alternate part populations on the board. This could also be utilized to offer alternative features using the same board.
I'm surprised he missed the two transistor shown in the UHF tuner on the schematic. Although ultra high frequency, those didn't need to handle high power or volatge.
In 1971, around December, I bought a 9” Panasonic similar to yours. I paid $89 for it and I was in the Army at Ft. Sill, OK. I could stash it in my wall locker during the day. The front was slightly different with a removable tinted shield. The shield was useful for brightly lighted areas. The workings were very similar only a different style. It used a bowtie UHF antenna that was missing wth yours. The owner’s manual came with a circuit diagram and it referenced ociliscope setting for some of the adjustments. Look online for the owner’s manual. It will also mark tell you about the quick on. When I was in the Army I was trained in electronics and tubes. The B+ voltage is very high and will reach out and grab you. We were trained how you use your hands around tubes and I was about to cringe when I saw you pointing at some of the parts. And yes I would open mine up and adjust some of the pots. As a tubes wear the voltages and signals can come out of adjustment. Your set seems almost like new. I wanted to see it with the smoke screen off. Now the big question is what are you going to do with that door stop. All of the channels have changed. If you want to really watch it you will need a converter. If you need a digital converter just reply Need Converter and your name and mailing address.
That green is usually called "avocado green" these days, although I don't know if that was a common name for it back in the 70s when it was ubiquitous. Also I count 11 tubes - you forgot the big one with the phosphor coating at the front :)
Thanks for the flashback. I owned the same model with the same color case. There wasn't much choice at the Penney's in downtown Anchorage AK. The set cost $160 which is equivalent to about $800 today. Reception was good but there were only three TV stations. Two went off the air at midnight.
I have a grundig b&w TV set in my (small) collection which has tubes, transistors and ICs in it. The horizontal section is tube (horizontal output and damper; PY500 and PL509), audio output is tube (PCL82) and the video driver is tube (PCF801/PL80) the rest is transistorized and it has a sensor button preset tuner which uses ancient TTL ICs. There are also Telefunken color TV sets which use tubes alongside a color demodulator with ICs. That's the amazing 70s.
@@sobolanul96 Absolutely. In b&w applications they lasted ok. But in color TVs they were driven really hard (in Europe/Germany the tube manufacturers never engineered a real color TV horizontal output tube (color tv kicked in fifteen years later than in the US), so they used the b&w ones) and held up very poorly. Some European/German TV sets (Bang&Olufsen for example iirc.) used two PL509s in parallel and a ballast triode shunting the HOT to keep them tamed. Those sets work as furnaces. In the horizontal stage they burn up like 300 Watts. You can (literally!) warm your dinner on top of them.
@@albinklein7680 About 1975 we had a new 26inch tube colour set (possibly ITT big wooden cocktail cabinet with the circuitry in a plastic “cage” protruding from the back presumable to allow air flow ). The back was often too hot to touch . We would need a visit several times a year to have tubes changed.
@@albinklein7680 There was a PL519 tube that was designed specifically for color TV sets. But it came late and few years later there were solid state solutions (like thyristors)
The stay warm feature actually increases the life of the tubs by reducing thermal shock. Tubes will run almost forever at reduced filament voltage. (As long as plate voltage isn't applied.)
I had a 1972 Magnavox Color console that lasted 18 years with “Quick on” enabled with no tube failures . Was always bright and clear … flyback finally failed which condemned it.
Sandby power increases life of anything electronics, because of freaking in-rush currents. People always wonder why my computers function so well, well, I never turn them off, I just let them idle. All electronics idle in my house, except for the switch-mode LEDs, because I need the lights to turn off to sleep (otherwise I wouldn't even turn off LEDs, only dim them).
@@BenState if it was nonsense why would electrical engineers design against it. Nonsense is old people unplugging things from the socket because of 20W extra per house per month.... That's just one extra iPhone charge, it literally doesn't matter.
@@monad_tcp Im an electronic engineer, it was designed to prevent annoyance and speed up conductance. your comment is nonsense and been shown time and time again in studies of MTBF for components.
Back in Germany in the 1970ies when the transistor based TVs came up there were commercials depicting a soccer game and you were late to turn on the TV to watch the match. And while your tubes were heating up and the sound came in after a one minute or so the narrator told about the goal just happened. "That cannot happen with a transistor TV. Sound immediately, Picture after 30 seconds!". :)
I remember our TV which had vacuum tubes in it, the tubes would fail on a regular basis and the grocery store in town had a tube tester and a stock of replacement tubes. So when the TV went out we would pull all the tubes and go into the store, test the tubes, buy a new one for the one that failed and replace them back. Pretty easy but good luck finding a tube tester now days.
I had a TV similar to this one when I was a kid back in the early 80s. Had to slam the top of the set with my hand or a nice thick phone book when the screen would go black. Worked for some time. Parents finally got us a new one. Pretty sure they did it because they thought I would kill myself one day trying to get the picture back on that set. 😳😆
I remember having a TV set like this when I was a kid. We had a color unit in the living room, so our parents just handed us the B&W tube set for our gaming. Only difference is ours was a red/orange cover instead of green (may have faded from age) and yes, vacuum tubes it took a while to warm up.
This is a testimonial of old televisions work better than the newer ones !! A tv with a tubes in there , and IT WORKS!!! Nowaydays a tv is not very reliable than older ones
I used to buy these all the time for 50cents in nonrunning condition. I used to stock 12,000 tubes at all times, so fixing these was a snap. It was usually the horizontal output tube that was out that would stop these from running. Panasonic was good, but Sony had all solid state TVs in 1959. The last American TV with tubes was the 1978 GE Portacolor. These TVs look good if you clean the CRT with a Beltron or Sencore unit. If you put a larger compacitor as a power supply filter, it can look really sharp. But, I usually made quick work with the cheap black and whites like this where I tried to work on at least 8 TVs a day.
Adrian - be careful using an antistatic mat with high voltage electronics. You may think you’re isolated through your transformer but the mat can provide the ground reference and increase your chances of getting shocked.
I bought one of these at a yard sale around 1988. I was 7. I also Bought an oversized Skateboard I would sit on to ride. The TV had a Tan chassis and was trending towards an orange color because of sun exposure. The only thing I would watch on it was Star Trek The Next Generation. The tubes looked really cool with their orange glow and I spent a lot of time peering inside to see them. Did not know it was drawing phantom power when plugged in. May explain why my room was always blazing hot if you shut the door.
Love your enthusiasm as the set came to life. I had a big smile on my face too . Japanese gear of that era was superbly made . I have a few large multiband Japanese transistor radios from that time . All probably high hours but work perfectly and never been touched . That kind of quality will never be repeated sadly . Nice video . I enjoyed it . Best wishes from the UK .
I grew up with a little 13" Magnavox B&W set in my bedroom that my Pappy had repaired a cracked circuit board in back in about 1978. It was an early 70's model and had both tubes and transistors in it, so just before they all went "solid state". I kept it as my bedroom tv clear up to about 2001 at which point I noticed the picture on the CRT was very gradually shrinking. At that time I didn't know anyone that messed with tube equipment anymore so I finally threw it away. Even Pappy, who at one time had thousands of tubes (Believe me, the whole family once spent 4 days sorting them all back in about 1980) had finally gotten rid of all his tubes. I sure wish I had them now, lol. In the last few years I've gotten into restoring old 30's & 40's radios. Heck, just the eye tubes alone would be worth a small fortune now.
As I remember, when I was a child the only black and white TV in home is running tubes, should be 1976. There are no color TV or rare until 1978, and the price is rocket high. Tubes are easier to service, at least you can see it's growing or not, basically make sure heater have the right 6.3v or 5v feed into it and it grows, then the other circuit need to read schematics and probe around.
As a much younger person, I've always had a chuckle at the verse in 1978's "Rappers' Delight" where one of the rappers brags about having a pool and a colour TV in the same sentence. Due to not being American either, I'd been having difficulties confirming just when exactly colour sets became truly affordable, so thank you very much for your recollection! Oh, and as for vacuum TVs, one time we were staying at my grandma's the Trinitron decided to give up the ghost but me and my dad found two thermionic valve sets in the attic and made one working unit out of them, just for the time being. It ended up never getting replaced again, haha.
If the RCA's and Zeniths of the world got their way, everyone would have had a 25" Console TV in their living room for the only color TV in the house. Fortunately, the Japanese started producing higher quality small color sets! We had Toshiba solid state color sets in our house (no console set). They were reliable-my parents bought them in the late 1970's, and they were still in service when they sold my childhood home in 1996. I remember marking them up for the garage sale 😕
Any molded paper capacitors should be replaced as a matter of course. The first number or numbers on a vacuum tube is the filament voltage, and if you add them up including the CRT (typically 6.3V), you should get a number pretty near 120 volts. The horizontal output tube is always the largest and hottest of all the tubes. Tube TVs typically have two or three tubes with caps (HV rectifier, damper, and horizontal output). This is definitely a late model when the “duodecar” or “Compactron” tubes were common, and these will be the ones with 12 pins on the bottom. Three places you should never try to measure with an oscilloscope on a tube TV are the horizontal output plate, damper cathode (the two are tied together), and the filament of the HV rectifier (which is where the CRT anode voltage comes from).
@@Renville80 but the opposite is also true early film caps can be confused with paper in molded plastic. unfortunately only experience and sometimes sawing one in half gives the answer. You can also just test a few and if the test good, leave them.
Looks Avocado on my screen. ;) Thanks for the great video. What a awesome little set. That horizontal output TUBE is super cool looking. This would look so neat at night with a clear back.
An easy way to tell if it’s a series string set is the orange dropper resistor on the upper left side. If the tube heaters don’t add up to 110V (line voltage in the 70s) a series resistor is used to drop the remaining voltage.
I have a "light bulb" current limiter which I made myself. Glad I am not the only one testing 100 times, starting very low and then increasing a bit at a time! I made mine with 6-7 bulbs of increasing power and some rocker switches which enable me to select the max wattage I want, along with a bypass switch.
I remember my parents buying a 9” portable B&W set in 1975 at the local JC Penney. It was tube-based, so that technology was around fairly late. May have actually been a hybrid with some transistors. It became the monitor for my Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1983.
Panasonic stuff is quite reliable; i have some tape players still working with their original belts after 40 years. Also they used good quality plastic, it remains strong and does not get brittle.
Even my 2003 Panasonic crt is very well made. The picture is good and crisp, the color is vibrant, the contrast is very good, the sound is good with no distortion, and the case it well made.
I have a true reliable Panasonics. No, it ain't LN7WKJ or YN7WKJ, but this was my 2015 F-EQ405, 2015 FV-30RUN5, 2016 FV-20TGU3 and of course my 2010 TH-L32C3G TV. These old Panasonic are ABSOLUTELY reliable than the current 2021 Panasonic which turned badly into Chinese thing. I really missed of old Panasonics before 2017, a company making the beautiful high-quality electronics.
@@EvilTurkeySlices That's true. Panasonic back then before 2017 are somewhat reliable and not damaged easily. Your 2003 Panasonic CRT TV is still working normally after 18 years!
@ Enrico Stuff: I think this video proves that very old - almost 50 years old - Panasonic stuff is EXTREMELY reliable!! :-D The fact that those valves (tubes) are still working after all this time says a lot - the valves are the least reliable part, but the circuitry used may have been more 'kind' to them than some other brands and equipment:- -I had an old Philips record player back in the mid 70s that used valves for the amplification, and it would blow the same two valves roughly every six months!! Probably a defect on the main board, but that's what I mean about the Panasonic being 'kinder', or, more reliable!! It's a real shame that modern day Panasonic is a mere shadow of it's former self, and uses the same cheaper 'disposable' parts... In the 70s and 80s they were, along Sony, one of the best....
Cool TV. I love old electronics. Working on anything with tubes is a dying art. Nice to keep such things alive. I live in Houston and used to go to a shop in Bellaire, TX called Lightspeed computers. They had a display case full of old computers of various vintage. The owner sold his business in earlier 2010 or 2011 and the shop closed so I'm not sure what happened to his stuff. Your videos on restoring old computers and electronics are great.
mostly in the last 25 years... i am only in my mid 30s and have actually purchased new CRTs in my lifetime (PC monitors and late model widescreen CRTs).
Sets had a variety of components. to chose from in the 70s -80s. I remember a Teleton in the UK that was still using Japanese valves , tubes in the UK and a selection of semiconductors. Adapted from NTSC design to work on PAL.
I remember the tiny GE color TV -- 11 or 12 inch CRT -- circa 1964 (pretty sure I recall seeing one at the NY World's Fair), which used a small number of "Compactron" tubes. Each Compactron replaced _several_ conventional tubes, which made it possible to make such a tiny color TV (IIRC, a "normal" color TV -- very rare, still, most people at that time still having B&W televisions) used something like _twenty_ tubes (some of which had more than one function, similar in concept to the common 12AX7, which is still quite popular).
Old British sound tech here, two things: 1/ Valves (tubes) are far more reliable than most people think. 2/ Panasonic have made some high quality electronic items. I've come across very good domestic entertainment equipment, professional sound amplifiers and commercial telecom equipment.
I really love the design language on this set. Such a pretty looking little set, color and all. :D It's pretty modern looking for a 70's set imo. It's not as boxy and clunky looking as a lot of TVs with the turn dial tuners.
fun fact: on tube sets you can inject composite video on the grid of the video amplifier tube and it will display it perfectly...also injecting audio is easy, on the volume pot itself...the only downside is that is you use a hot chassis set then the video ground will be tied to chassis so you can get a shock if your video source has exposed metal parts...
@@mal2ksc a good idea but a simple transformer doesnt work for video signals, too low voltage, maybe around 3vpp i believe and too diverse frequencies, too complex signal...i tried it...doesnt pass through intact....remember that besides the video information there are 15khz and 50hz sync pulses and they all have to pass intact....i also tried to isolate with capacitors like they do on antenna terminals but also doesnt work, when you reach a capacitor value that allows the video signal to pass intact then that value of capacitor also allows you to get a shock.....among my collection of tvs i have a very old philips tv that doesnt have a tuner with multiple channels, it was bulit only for one channel that was transmitted from the eiffel tower in france...i added composite input on that tv and i just use a playstation 2 as a dvd player to output video to the tv, the playstation is made of plastic and the plug is not earthed so no problems...maybe it would be easy for someone to design something with optocouplers maybe, i dont know
@@mal2ksc thank for checking, never dug into that...but definetely the plain transformer will also not work...i dont see any simple analog solution for this but i would love to build such a device, it would be usefull in my case
FWIW, the video and audio detector diodes wouldn't typically constitute a hybrid tube/transistor set, video diodes were used well back into the '50s. However you do have transistors in the tuner as shown on the tube chart.
The dim bulb tester is a poor man's self-resetting fuse. A light bulb is in fact an element with a quite strong PTC effect, although dedicated PTCs in self-resetting fuse applications still exhibit an even stronger resistance change and have a steeper jump point. A light-bulb has approximately 10 times the resistance when it is hot compared to the resistance when it is cold. PTCs for use as fused get warm-to-cold resistance ratios of more than 1000.
Tube based sets are cool as heck. i found a 1965 23 inch black and white admiral tv that's been out in the weather for a long time. went to the local packrat's house and found replacement tubes for the ones that were missing and off it went. lots of rust and the wood was warped and falling apart but the set worked well for it's age.
Welcome to the dark side of vacuum tubes! If you're stubborn enough, you can build just about anything out of tubes (like a 1-bit tube computer inspired by the MC14500.. cough cough)!
I had the orange colored solid state set the TR-729U it was the same shape and still had the smoked plastic cover but it was all transistor and bright orange.
I remember having a 9 inch Philco Ford BW TV in 1970 that was all solid state, and it may have been the first such set. I do know that color TV's stayed tubes for much longer after black and white sets went all solid state. All that extra energy used to keep the filaments (heaters) warm was to compete with all solid state sets, but remember we were also going through an "energy crisis" in the early 1970s, so I'm sure most people unplugged their sets to save power.
By 1973, solid state was becoming the norm for TV's. It was really a transitional year. High voltage solid state systems were very expensive, so many companies made hybrid sets where solid state was used for everything but sweep and high voltage. This kept costs down and still made the set reliable - as tube technology had hit its peak by 1970. To see a mostly tube or all tube set in the 70s meant it was definitely budgeted. General Electric had budget color portable sets under the portacolor line that were all tube based until 1978! Cheapest color tv you could buy at the time. The "instant on" feature was used to help make tube sets sell by having them come up as fast as their solid state counterparts. It does shorten the life of the cathodes. I'll usually disable the instant on circuits. The UHF tuner your set has is known as a continuous tuner, vs. a "click" or turret tuner. Again, lower cost item As far as DC restoration - most sets even into the solid state era had no DC restoration or partial. Most of the cathode of the crt was AC coupled to save money. However, sets that had full DC restoration often had a unique identifier - which was instead of the control being labeled "brightness" - it was labeled "black level." Zenith was fond of using this to distinguish their average set, from a set that had full DC restoration.
These were great little B&W sets, I have an AN-109 similar if not identical chassis from about 1968-69, and an identical looking set to this one only all solid state, all still working, in have serviced very few over the years, mainly dirty controls and or bad horiz or vert output tubes
One of the most damaging things for tubes is to turn them off and on. The thermal cycling is destructive. They figured this out on one of the early tube type computers (the Whirlwind maybe). By keeping the filaments continuously on at a lower current, when the computer was not working, they would be a few orders of magnitude more hours of operation from the tube.
tell that to everyone who either owned or serviced vacuum tube tvs...and if you buy a vintage set with instant on its almost guarateed it will have a bad crt and a bunch of bad tubes....this set has had little use because its a small portable, maybe it was a kitchen set and was always powered off or something
The number one cause of death of CRTs is loss of cathode emissions which instant on features accelerates. Theoretically you might have less chance of heater/cathode or grid shorts with fewer thermal cycles. That failure mode would be more likely to happen with a machine that has thousands of tubes vs a TV.
@@MrHBSoftware I wonder if later picture/receiving tubes were designed to better tolerate this kind of use, something that was not designed into earlier picture/receiving tubes. This one looks like it's cool as a cucumber.
yep, thermal cycling is bad, but so is keeping heaters on continuously, can cause 'cathode poisoning' with no anode current flowing, making the emission drop prematurely
When you were thinking this second channel, with what's now a plethora of CRT stuff episodes, was getting rather analog, here's a step beyond with non transistorized circuits but ones with venerable glowy things in them!
My dad bought a Panasonic TV in the mid 70s that was similar to this. It had the tubes with the heater so it didn't need to warm up before it worked. I remember it being either red or orange. Fun fact: It worked long after mom's console TV quit working amd we used the console for a TV stand for the little Panasonic. Thanks for the memories. . .
😏👍👍🖐️ Beautiful! At the beginning all tv-sets used tubes instead of transistors. Next there were hybrid solutions. High voltate areas used still tubes while others transistors. And next everything migrated to transistors and chips only. And now.... we have lcd's and similar stuff and some yt channels about retro equipment including yours which is one of the best and including also mine which is making first steps...
I have a similar vintage panasonic which I have connected to an old vcr (via a balum ) that produces a vhf output then connecting a set top box to the input sockets of the vcr to make the tv work.
15:10 That explains why it was so dirty. I had one like it, but the case was a little more chromy and rectangular and it had a digital clock; I found a ton of dust in it when it was only about 15 years old. Instant-on circuits were banned in NY state during the Arab oil embargo (and thus discontinued in many other markets), so this set must have been one of the last with it. That feature makes me a bit nervous; 1973 was also one of the last years before flame-retardant plastic was required for a UL listing. The guy who produced the "Assembled Multitudes" version of the Overture from Tommy (1970) and worked with various Philly-Soul groups in the 1970s (eg. MFSB by TSOP) died when an old TV in the guest room of his parents house caught fire while it was plugged in but switched off.
It WAS a neat little TV. I had well-to-do cousins who would take it to their rooms and watch Saturday night live, then put it back into the camping gear. Their Dad never knew.(Seriously, Don't Ask)
Wow, this is really cool, I love old sets like this and I’m very surprised they made valve-based portables. It looks surprised good but wow it took a long to start. I have a few old tellys of my own but none of them run on valves, I might go to get one someday, maybe one of the very ancient wood-covered sets, or even a 405-line system although I don’t know where I’d find a way to transmit video to it. It was also fascinating to see how the audio varied so much as you messed with the fine tuning dial, I wonder if that’s because of the valves it uses
The standby feature reminds me of a conversation I had with my father when I was a little kid, in which he mentioned that "instant-on" TVs could sometimes cause house fires even when turned off. I remember that terrifying me. We'd switched to a transistorized TV when I was very young, but I certainly remember when drug stores all had tube testers in them. The incongruity here is that the case design aesthetics look far too modern for the age of tubes, but of course, these things coexisted in the Seventies.
I remember seeing tube tester in a kiosk stand at the local grocery store where they went by the honor system and you marked the cans and packages with a grease pencil for the prices on everything.
I’d bet money that was a kitchen TV. A few things to note: 300ohm twin lead is the best for low-loss per unit distance (far superior to coax), however it’s highly susceptible to external interference. Also, a well-aligned (black and white) set should show crystal clear sharpness across the full multi-burst test pattern (the full original 4MHz NTSC video bandwidth) over RF with no distortion/snow. Color sets generally can’t get higher than the color burst carrier of 3.58MHz (the second from the right bar).
I don't think this set was ever that sharp. No point in making the circuitry much sharper than the CRT itself. A little sharper is good, just to minimize the impact of other components that may soften the image in a cost-driven piece of gear like this, especially after nearly 50 years of use.
@@adriansdigitalbasement2 Yep, I was 12ish when I started doing this and it was as simple as unplugging the set, pulling all the tubes and putting them in the tester at the grocery store. For me the hardest part was figuring out the tester settings (IIRC you had to set a couple dials then push a button). Once the bad tube(s) were identified you just pulled them from the cabinet under the tester and reinstalled everything in the set. After that Star Trek was back up on! I seem to remember having to do this several times a year
One of those pieces that makes me want to fill a barrel with IPA, dump the electronics in it, tip the barrel on it's side and set the whole shebang rolling down a long hill.
Take it from a EE. Do not reform electrolytic caps. Doing so puts the Device, You and your work space in DANGER. My first TV I bought from a yard sale for 15 bucks back in 1994. It was a B&W Admiral and had Tubes. Looked almost brand new and kinda wish I held onto it. From what I was told in the 70's the Transistor was still quite new so the cheaper consumer stuff still had tubes. Wasn't until the mid 70's the transistor became cheap enough to use in cheaper consumer electronics.
Thanks! It was interesting to hear your reaction to Vacuum Tubes. How serviceable *WERE* those tubes in the era? Was there room in there to pull them out and push replacements in? Didn't a Solid State Rectifier exist that was tube shaped?
Depended on their placement. If there were no big parts blocking access to a tube's location, R&R'ing it was usually a snap. The situation changed dramatically if there was a part mounted right over the tube. Then at least some disassembly is needed. This was a common issue with small sets like this one that were equipped with tube type tuners. The tuner would be mounted in such a way that the tubes would be blocked off by the CRT, requiring pulling the tuner cluster just to get to the tubes. But on the whole, tube replacement was very straightforward. That's why even drugstores sold tubes and had testers as well. And you are right about there having been a solid state "tube." It was a plug-in replacement for the HV rectifier tube in color sets. There was also a plug-in replacement for the low voltage rectifier as well, such as the 5U4, 5Y3, etc.
![Adrian's Digital Basement ][](http://yt3.ggpht.com/ytc/AIdro_k7CrQRe71qN6c0Ua7A1P_I8KkxjqLa70u0zYeCvdvnKw=s48-c-k-c0x00ffffff-no-rj)
Neat little TV! It's always fun to see how the engineers would squeeze so many hot little tubes into a small area for the sake of portability. The thought behind the component placement in this set would have been a big challenge to get such a good result from a series set. Thanks for sharing :^)
I was honestly hoping you'd come by. xD
Mr. Carlson! Fancy meeting you here. I always get a kick out of running into other 'tubers on my subscription channel list. Interconnected community ... cool.
DT
For Sure !!
I was just about to mention you when he started talking about dim bulb testers.
Hi Paul! More fun is see how the engineers squeese so many tubes in one compactron. Greetings from Argentina.
I'm disappointed! I wanted to see you plug in a game console or something that used RF.
Hello lol
Regardless of the year this set came out, this for sure gives me 70's vibes of my parents first home that was built in the 70's, and even in the early 80's still had avocado, and brown, appliances, and fixtures lol!
It looks like the ubiquitous avocado green to me. I wonder if there was a harvest gold set too.
@@projectartichoke Yeah it does make ya wonder.
Brings me back to 82 playing atari with my grandmother on an old zenith bw. Would love to see more tube electronics on the channel!
For sure!
In the late '60s and all through the '70s we had nothing but tube TVs that my dad scrounged from wherever, and he often had to fix them. He was no expert, but he knew just enough to get them going most of the time. And just enough to be dangerous -- one time something arced on his metal watch band and blew it off his wrist. Lol.
But like most working class in the '70s, we were pretty poor, and if we didn't scrounge and fix our own stuff we didn't have anything.
@@jackgilchrist IDK, I'd say the "working class" today is poorer, because of so much debt. It was much more difficult to accumulate debt in the 70s, credit cards were a novelty, etc. And because everything in the 90s onward was made disposable, today we CAN'T salvage and scrummage old electronics, whereas things like old tube TVs were repairable.
Just my impression, although there's long been a massive effort to make people feel if they didn't buy new, that was bad that was an indicator of poverty. I sometimes try fixing things for my mom and she inevitably throws it out, thinking a repair was what the poor people in her community growing up did. Well, that and a certainty that I'm too incompetent to fix anything right. lol
I remember my family getting one of those “No warm up” sets from one of my grandfathers. They both got into the radio/TV repair business in the late 40’s/50’s.
We were told to unplug it when not using it.
Good idea
Even after transistors had taken over the rest of the set's functions by the mid-1970s, there were still horizontal-output tubes for many, many years -- going all the way until the early '80s in some sets. The transistors that could handle the frequencies and voltages of that circuit were far more expensive (and far less reliable) at that time than the tubes which had been manufactured for decades and had an economy of scale yet to be matched by the then-available transistors. I'm surprised this set had so many vacuum tubes, yes, but not at all surprised that it had some vacuum tubes. Tubes really didn't disappear completely from TVs until the early '80s in many cases.
All CRT TV:s have at least one vacuum tube so tubes were comon in TV:s well in to the 2000:s. That is the T in CRT.
Greetings:
Although the CRT was a tube, the last smaller tube to go was the high voltage rectifier.
@@jamesmdeluca But aren't tubes still better at that particular task? Because isn't the cascode (lots of dioes plus capacitors) a way to avoid the impossible situation of having a single semiconductor rectifier for many thousands of volts.
Indeed, hence the “fully transistorized” badges on those 80s sets.
I had a tiny Montgomery Ward B&W TV my parents gave me circa 1981 that still had several tubes in it besides the CRT itself. I can still smell that thing - had a distinctive odor as it warmed up.
I found an ad for this TV in September 1973 in the Toronto Star, it was called the Panasonic "Teton" and cost 120 Canadian dollars (Canada had fairly high tariffs on TV imports then which would explain the price difference vs the US). The ad boasts "speed-o-vision" (the quickstart feature) and "10 solid state devices and 10 tubes", and it also shows the 12 inch model that I'm almost certain is the other one mentioned on the PCB silkscreen (interestingly it's cheaper).
Matsushita stuff from this era is indescribably well built, I'm not surprised that it still works.
That name is funny. It means someone with big boobs in Spanish lol
I'm only a year older than you, and the first TV my parents had had a little button on the side that you had to press first to warm up the tubes and then waited 5 minutes before turning on the set. The memories.
It find it amusing that everyone seems to forget that every CRT monitor/TV is tube based.
Regarding the light bulb test: A light bulb is more than just a resistor. A cold bulb is almost a short and the resistance goes up when hot (PTC). So it acts more like a very crude current regulator or overcurrent protection. And as a bonus it also lights up making it a (again very crude) current "display".
The CRT is in itself a vacuum tube. But whether a set is classified as a tube or solid-state was dependent on specifically the chassis, not the CRT. That's what manufacturers meant they called their sets 100 percent solid-state.
Some devices actually used a tiny bulb as a PTC. The monitor for the Xerox Alto was a notable example. The bulb won't have a visible glow unless there is a short, which is a handy indicator, but if it's open you get no sweep or HV. So if the monitor doesn't work, check to see if the light bulb has burned out. Not the CRT, the light bulb!
The CRT normally doesn’t count on a solid state versus tube television.
Which is nowadays getting difficult to find online as peope advertise any old set as a tube tv (versus lcd/plasma) but they really have no vacuum valves whatsoever.
When I first saw the woodgrain water bottle, I thought it was a spray can- I suddenly got very excited for Spray-On LGR.
I love the way the raster zooms in as the CRT starts up, rather cool feature of older valve-driven tellies... :D
"valve" .... "telly" ....... :D
Cos British, innit? :P
Lol. As a lad we had a colour set that when switched off, the decaying HV oscillator and still hot CRT cathode emissions would produce 3 coloured dots that would diverge and then "fly off' .. Later (as an adult) when I saw Close Encounters, it reminded me of that. Probably just out of diapers, I would sneak up late at night and turn the set on and off just to watch the flying spots .. and of course you could leave, or sweep an electrostatic hand print artifact on the glass if it was dark enough. Indeed - to me this was more interesting than the actual stories displayed.
Of course my phone now likely has as much 'power' as NASA did then, but my phone offers no awe nor mystery. It's just a thing that I try not to get too wet. I know how it works and I don't care.
I’m glad I’m not the only one. I keep shouting “they’re valves!!!” at my phone 😂😂
I wonder if leaving the tube filaments running in "standby mode" might actually decrease wear on them since they are not going through as much thermal contraction whenever the TV is turned on and off. I've seen in multiple videos about vacuum tube based computers that they are far more reliable if they are left hot continuously. Very entertaining video, though!
You don’t have to wonder. Tube TVs took a while to warm up, so manufacturers created instant on sets which would keep the tube filaments energized at a low level when a set was plugged in. We had an Emerson color console that had instant on and I was down to the tube tester at Thrifty Drugs every six months or so with a paper bag full of tubes I had to test. It’s what got me interested in TV repair.
Depends if you have them hot enough so they have emission or just have them barely warm that there is no or very little emission happening. If you have heaters on, but without the B+ (or anode voltage), the emission will very slowly drop, but the real problem is cathode poisoning that occurs if there is no anode current - this will happen in about 1000 hours.
@@michvod cathode poisoning! I totally forgot about that being a thing. I bet you're totally right, it would take much more current draw to keep them emitting than what is supplied in "standby" mode. Also thanks for the insight Steven, sounds like a real pain to have to do that so often!
Maybe turning on the instant on feature a couple minutes before turning on the TV would be healthier for the tubes, as a form of soft start to get them slowly heated and prevent filament flashing. But keeping them heated 24 hours a day just to use the TV for 2 would kill the cathodes much faster IMO. One of my sets has an NTC thermistor in series with the filaments and it takes a long time to warm up, but AFAIK it took over 50 years for the first tube in it to die.
If there is no preheat circuit, the tubes will draw much more power at cold start than in steady state. Some tubes experience a filament flash which significantly decreases their lifetime.
I have always been into electronics, and almost all the sets I ended up taking apart as a kid were pre 1980s. One thing I noticed about countless mid to late 1970s sets, was that the tuners, and sometimes the high voltage rectifier and-or horizontal circuit would still use tubes, but _everything_ else had switched to transistors and diodes. A few sets even combined valves, transistors, diodes, AND integrated circuits!!! All the major techs, under one chassis.
The reason for this odd juxtaposition of technologies, is a mix of three primary factors.
The first, and simplest factor, was many companies simply possessed massive stocks of older parts that they wanted to use up before making the switch (Panasonic, for one, used tubes all the way into the 1980s, for this very reason).
The second reason, was early semiconductors were not very fast or high frequency, so it cost more to source high frequency transistors or ICs to use in the tuner. I continued seeing valves on TV tuners, particularly the UHF portion, into even the early 1980s.
The third major reason was high voltage. early semiconductors could not handle high voltages or currents, and even into the later part of the 1970s, when higher voltage semiconductors did begin to appear, they had a tendency to cost more, hence the continued use of valves for high voltage rectification and horizontal circuits. In the case of the horizontal, high voltage combined with relatively higher frequencies (not as high as the tuner though) resulted in some sets retaining valves for horizontal.
As for ICs, some sets had IF and detector chips for sound and-or image, some had color decoding on a chip, and others had automatic gain control circuits. These and other core functions saw early integration, even as far back as the early 70s... 1968 if you count the bleeding edge of electronics, but that wasn't common in any consumer devices back then. As was seen with the continued use of valves, sometimes it was a mater of cost. a board could have a discrete IF circuit, and a footprint for an IF chip... Populate whatever is cheaper or more available at the time. can't tell you how many devices I encountered with alternate part populations on the board. This could also be utilized to offer alternative features using the same board.
I'm surprised he missed the two transistor shown in the UHF tuner on the schematic. Although ultra high frequency, those didn't need to handle high power or volatge.
@@MrDuncl indeed!
@@MrDuncl How much of the uhf tuner is being done by vaccuum tubes?
For a modern digital tech and your first time you did very well.
In 1971, around December, I bought a 9” Panasonic similar to yours. I paid $89 for it and I was in the Army at Ft. Sill, OK. I could stash it in my wall locker during the day. The front was slightly different with a removable tinted shield. The shield was useful for brightly lighted areas. The workings were very similar only a different style. It used a bowtie UHF antenna that was missing wth yours. The owner’s manual came with a circuit diagram and it referenced ociliscope setting for some of the adjustments. Look online for the owner’s manual. It will also mark tell you about the quick on.
When I was in the Army I was trained in electronics and tubes. The B+ voltage is very high and will reach out and grab you. We were trained how you use your hands around tubes and I was about to cringe when I saw you pointing at some of the parts. And yes I would open mine up and adjust some of the pots. As a tubes wear the voltages and signals can come out of adjustment. Your set seems almost like new. I wanted to see it with the smoke screen off.
Now the big question is what are you going to do with that door stop. All of the channels have changed. If you want to really watch it you will need a converter. If you need a digital converter just reply Need Converter and your name and mailing address.
That green is usually called "avocado green" these days, although I don't know if that was a common name for it back in the 70s when it was ubiquitous.
Also I count 11 tubes - you forgot the big one with the phosphor coating at the front :)
Yes, "avocado" is what it was called.
It very much was called avocado green. The other option, of course, being harvest gold.
The 11 tubes thing, hehe
This kind of reminds me of the sort of TV you'd have next to your bed watching cartoons because you're out sick from school with the flu.
Oh man, I that brings back some memories, like watching The Price is Right on a school day.
Thanks for the flashback. I owned the same model with the same color case. There wasn't much choice at the Penney's in downtown Anchorage AK. The set cost $160 which is equivalent to about $800 today. Reception was good but there were only three TV stations. Two went off the air at midnight.
I have a grundig b&w TV set in my (small) collection which has tubes, transistors and ICs in it. The horizontal section is tube (horizontal output and damper; PY500 and PL509), audio output is tube (PCL82) and the video driver is tube (PCF801/PL80) the rest is transistorized and it has a sensor button preset tuner which uses ancient TTL ICs. There are also Telefunken color TV sets which use tubes alongside a color demodulator with ICs. That's the amazing 70s.
Aaaaa, the PL500 series tubes that would burn out so often that they stocked them at most corner stores.
@@sobolanul96 Absolutely. In b&w applications they lasted ok. But in color TVs they were driven really hard (in Europe/Germany the tube manufacturers never engineered a real color TV horizontal output tube (color tv kicked in fifteen years later than in the US), so they used the b&w ones) and held up very poorly. Some European/German TV sets (Bang&Olufsen for example iirc.) used two PL509s in parallel and a ballast triode shunting the HOT to keep them tamed. Those sets work as furnaces. In the horizontal stage they burn up like 300 Watts. You can (literally!) warm your dinner on top of them.
@@albinklein7680 About 1975 we had a new 26inch tube colour set (possibly ITT big wooden cocktail cabinet with the circuitry in a plastic “cage” protruding from the back presumable to allow air flow ). The back was often too hot to touch . We would need a visit several times a year to have tubes changed.
@@albinklein7680 There was a PL519 tube that was designed specifically for color TV sets. But it came late and few years later there were solid state solutions (like thyristors)
Those sensor select ICs are not TTL, they are bipolar SAS560 or similar
Really cool set! I’m a fan of Zenith Trans-Oceanic radios which are relatively compact tube radios. Nice to see this philosophy applied to TVs.
The stay warm feature actually increases the life of the tubs by reducing thermal shock. Tubes will run almost forever at reduced filament voltage. (As long as plate voltage isn't applied.)
I had a 1972 Magnavox Color console that lasted 18 years with “Quick on” enabled with no tube failures . Was always bright and clear … flyback finally failed which condemned it.
Sandby power increases life of anything electronics, because of freaking in-rush currents.
People always wonder why my computers function so well, well, I never turn them off, I just let them idle. All electronics idle in my house, except for the switch-mode LEDs, because I need the lights to turn off to sleep (otherwise I wouldn't even turn off LEDs, only dim them).
@@monad_tcp nonsense
@@BenState if it was nonsense why would electrical engineers design against it.
Nonsense is old people unplugging things from the socket because of 20W extra per house per month....
That's just one extra iPhone charge, it literally doesn't matter.
@@monad_tcp Im an electronic engineer, it was designed to prevent annoyance and speed up conductance. your comment is nonsense and been shown time and time again in studies of MTBF for components.
Seeing that twin-lead clip reminded me of my childhood. My late grandfather had one connected to his big-box RCA tv.
Back in Germany in the 1970ies when the transistor based TVs came up there were commercials depicting a soccer game and you were late to turn on the TV to watch the match. And while your tubes were heating up and the sound came in after a one minute or so the narrator told about the goal just happened. "That cannot happen with a transistor TV. Sound immediately, Picture after 30 seconds!". :)
What a neat design for a TV. Love the two tone contrast, though I’d rather a different color.
I remember our TV which had vacuum tubes in it, the tubes would fail on a regular basis and the grocery store in town had a tube tester and a stock of replacement tubes. So when the TV went out we would pull all the tubes and go into the store, test the tubes, buy a new one for the one that failed and replace them back. Pretty easy but good luck finding a tube tester now days.
That little thing uses almost twice the power of my 50" TV
I had a TV similar to this one when I was a kid back in the early 80s. Had to slam the top of the set with my hand or a nice thick phone book when the screen would go black. Worked for some time. Parents finally got us a new one. Pretty sure they did it because they thought I would kill myself one day trying to get the picture back on that set. 😳😆
I remember having a TV set like this when I was a kid. We had a color unit in the living room, so our parents just handed us the B&W tube set for our gaming. Only difference is ours was a red/orange cover instead of green (may have faded from age) and yes, vacuum tubes it took a while to warm up.
This is a testimonial of old televisions work better than the newer ones !! A tv with a tubes in there , and IT WORKS!!! Nowaydays a tv is not very reliable than older ones
I used to buy these all the time for 50cents in nonrunning condition. I used to stock 12,000 tubes at all times, so fixing these was a snap. It was usually the horizontal output tube that was out that would stop these from running. Panasonic was good, but Sony had all solid state TVs in 1959. The last American TV with tubes was the 1978 GE Portacolor. These TVs look good if you clean the CRT with a Beltron or Sencore unit. If you put a larger compacitor as a power supply filter, it can look really sharp. But, I usually made quick work with the cheap black and whites like this where I tried to work on at least 8 TVs a day.
I used to love to repair these tube sets
i still repair tube sets i wont touch this chinese made crap out now
Adrian - be careful using an antistatic mat with high voltage electronics. You may think you’re isolated through your transformer but the mat can provide the ground reference and increase your chances of getting shocked.
I bought one of these at a yard sale around 1988. I was 7. I also Bought an oversized Skateboard I would sit on to ride.
The TV had a Tan chassis and was trending towards an orange color because of sun exposure.
The only thing I would watch on it was Star Trek The Next Generation.
The tubes looked really cool with their orange glow and I spent a lot of time peering inside to see them.
Did not know it was drawing phantom power when plugged in. May explain why my room was always blazing hot if you shut the door.
Wonderful restoration work, thank you for showing us that old but nice TV.
Love your enthusiasm as the set came to life. I had a big smile on my face too . Japanese gear of that era was superbly made . I have a few large multiband Japanese transistor radios from that time . All probably high hours but work perfectly and never been touched . That kind of quality will never be repeated sadly .
Nice video . I enjoyed it . Best wishes from the UK .
I grew up with a little 13" Magnavox B&W set in my bedroom that my Pappy had repaired a cracked circuit board in back in about 1978. It was an early 70's model and had both tubes and transistors in it, so just before they all went "solid state". I kept it as my bedroom tv clear up to about 2001 at which point I noticed the picture on the CRT was very gradually shrinking. At that time I didn't know anyone that messed with tube equipment anymore so I finally threw it away. Even Pappy, who at one time had thousands of tubes (Believe me, the whole family once spent 4 days sorting them all back in about 1980) had finally gotten rid of all his tubes. I sure wish I had them now, lol. In the last few years I've gotten into restoring old 30's & 40's radios. Heck, just the eye tubes alone would be worth a small fortune now.
This reminds me of when I was a kid, we used to raid my Dad's vacuum tube parts bin and use them as "really cool" space craft. :)
As I remember, when I was a child the only black and white TV in home is running tubes, should be 1976. There are no color TV or rare until 1978, and the price is rocket high. Tubes are easier to service, at least you can see it's growing or not, basically make sure heater have the right 6.3v or 5v feed into it and it grows, then the other circuit need to read schematics and probe around.
As a much younger person, I've always had a chuckle at the verse in 1978's "Rappers' Delight" where one of the rappers brags about having a pool and a colour TV in the same sentence. Due to not being American either, I'd been having difficulties confirming just when exactly colour sets became truly affordable, so thank you very much for your recollection! Oh, and as for vacuum TVs, one time we were staying at my grandma's the Trinitron decided to give up the ghost but me and my dad found two thermionic valve sets in the attic and made one working unit out of them, just for the time being. It ended up never getting replaced again, haha.
If the RCA's and Zeniths of the world got their way, everyone would have had a 25" Console TV in their living room for the only color TV in the house. Fortunately, the Japanese started producing higher quality small color sets! We had Toshiba solid state color sets in our house (no console set). They were reliable-my parents bought them in the late 1970's, and they were still in service when they sold my childhood home in 1996. I remember marking them up for the garage sale 😕
Any molded paper capacitors should be replaced as a matter of course. The first number or numbers on a vacuum tube is the filament voltage, and if you add them up including the CRT (typically 6.3V), you should get a number pretty near 120 volts. The horizontal output tube is always the largest and hottest of all the tubes. Tube TVs typically have two or three tubes with caps (HV rectifier, damper, and horizontal output). This is definitely a late model when the “duodecar” or “Compactron” tubes were common, and these will be the ones with 12 pins on the bottom. Three places you should never try to measure with an oscilloscope on a tube TV are the horizontal output plate, damper cathode (the two are tied together), and the filament of the HV rectifier (which is where the CRT anode voltage comes from).
This set should be young enough not to have paper caps but foil ones
@@bzuidgeest later paper capacitors often have molded plastic exteriors and can be mistaken for film caps…
@@Renville80 but the opposite is also true early film caps can be confused with paper in molded plastic. unfortunately only experience and sometimes sawing one in half gives the answer. You can also just test a few and if the test good, leave them.
Looks Avocado on my screen. ;)
Thanks for the great video. What a awesome little set. That horizontal output TUBE is super cool looking. This would look so neat at night with a clear back.
An easy way to tell if it’s a series string set is the orange dropper resistor on the upper left side. If the tube heaters don’t add up to 110V (line voltage in the 70s) a series resistor is used to drop the remaining voltage.
I have a "light bulb" current limiter which I made myself. Glad I am not the only one testing 100 times, starting very low and then increasing a bit at a time! I made mine with 6-7 bulbs of increasing power and some rocker switches which enable me to select the max wattage I want, along with a bypass switch.
I remember my parents buying a 9” portable B&W set in 1975 at the local JC Penney. It was tube-based, so that technology was around fairly late. May have actually been a hybrid with some transistors. It became the monitor for my Timex Sinclair 1000 in 1983.
Panasonic stuff is quite reliable; i have some tape players still working with their original belts after 40 years. Also they used good quality plastic, it remains strong and does not get brittle.
Even my 2003 Panasonic crt is very well made. The picture is good and crisp, the color is vibrant, the contrast is very good, the sound is good with no distortion, and the case it well made.
I have a true reliable Panasonics. No, it ain't LN7WKJ or YN7WKJ, but this was my 2015 F-EQ405, 2015 FV-30RUN5, 2016 FV-20TGU3 and of course my 2010 TH-L32C3G TV. These old Panasonic are ABSOLUTELY reliable than the current 2021 Panasonic which turned badly into Chinese thing. I really missed of old Panasonics before 2017, a company making the beautiful high-quality electronics.
@@EvilTurkeySlices That's true. Panasonic back then before 2017 are somewhat reliable and not damaged easily. Your 2003 Panasonic CRT TV is still working normally after 18 years!
@ Enrico Stuff: I think this video proves that very old - almost 50 years old - Panasonic stuff is EXTREMELY reliable!! :-D
The fact that those valves (tubes) are still working after all this time says a lot - the valves are the least reliable part, but the circuitry used may have been more 'kind' to them than some other brands and equipment:-
-I had an old Philips record player back in the mid 70s that used valves for the amplification, and it would blow the same two valves roughly every six months!! Probably a defect on the main board, but that's what I mean about the Panasonic being 'kinder', or, more reliable!!
It's a real shame that modern day Panasonic is a mere shadow of it's former self, and uses the same cheaper 'disposable' parts... In the 70s and 80s they were, along Sony, one of the best....
A Matsushita (Panasonic) radio that malfunctioned at a critical moment was part of the reason the IJN lost so badly in the Battle of Midway.
Vacuum tubes or transistors, this TV definitely looks 70's era.
Cool TV. I love old electronics.
Working on anything with tubes is a dying art.
Nice to keep such things alive.
I live in Houston and used to go to a shop in Bellaire, TX called Lightspeed computers.
They had a display case full of old computers of various vintage.
The owner sold his business in earlier 2010 or 2011 and the shop closed so I'm not sure
what happened to his stuff. Your videos on restoring old computers and electronics are great.
Amazing the changes made in the last 50 years.
mostly in the last 25 years... i am only in my mid 30s and have actually purchased new CRTs in my lifetime (PC monitors and late model widescreen CRTs).
Sets had a variety of components. to chose from in the 70s -80s. I remember a Teleton in the UK that was still using Japanese valves , tubes in the UK and a selection of semiconductors. Adapted from NTSC design to work on PAL.
I remember the tiny GE color TV -- 11 or 12 inch CRT -- circa 1964 (pretty sure I recall seeing one at the NY World's Fair), which used a small number of "Compactron" tubes. Each Compactron replaced _several_ conventional tubes, which made it possible to make such a tiny color TV (IIRC, a "normal" color TV -- very rare, still, most people at that time still having B&W televisions) used something like _twenty_ tubes (some of which had more than one function, similar in concept to the common 12AX7, which is still quite popular).
Old British sound tech here, two things: 1/ Valves (tubes) are far more reliable than most people think. 2/ Panasonic have made some high quality electronic items. I've come across very good domestic entertainment equipment, professional sound amplifiers and commercial telecom equipment.
I love old TV i dont know why, but i love old stuff, great vid! Greets!!
I really love the design language on this set. Such a pretty looking little set, color and all. :D It's pretty modern looking for a 70's set imo. It's not as boxy and clunky looking as a lot of TVs with the turn dial tuners.
And this is why i choose Panasonic, i love the brand, i had a lot of tech from Panasonic and i had never had major problems with them!
fun fact: on tube sets you can inject composite video on the grid of the video amplifier tube and it will display it perfectly...also injecting audio is easy, on the volume pot itself...the only downside is that is you use a hot chassis set then the video ground will be tied to chassis so you can get a shock if your video source has exposed metal parts...
I was wondering if this could be modded with composite. It would make a pretty neat monochrome monitor for an 8-bit computer.
Sounds like a good reason to build a transformer-based "direct box" to block any high voltage AC from reaching the video source.
@@mal2ksc a good idea but a simple transformer doesnt work for video signals, too low voltage, maybe around 3vpp i believe and too diverse frequencies, too complex signal...i tried it...doesnt pass through intact....remember that besides the video information there are 15khz and 50hz sync pulses and they all have to pass intact....i also tried to isolate with capacitors like they do on antenna terminals but also doesnt work, when you reach a capacitor value that allows the video signal to pass intact then that value of capacitor also allows you to get a shock.....among my collection of tvs i have a very old philips tv that doesnt have a tuner with multiple channels, it was bulit only for one channel that was transmitted from the eiffel tower in france...i added composite input on that tv and i just use a playstation 2 as a dvd player to output video to the tv, the playstation is made of plastic and the plug is not earthed so no problems...maybe it would be easy for someone to design something with optocouplers maybe, i dont know
@@MrHBSoftware I was worried that using an opto-isolator would not have sufficient bandwidth, and TI's specs seem to agree.
@@mal2ksc thank for checking, never dug into that...but definetely the plain transformer will also not work...i dont see any simple analog solution for this but i would love to build such a device, it would be usefull in my case
FWIW, the video and audio detector diodes wouldn't typically constitute a hybrid tube/transistor set, video diodes were used well back into the '50s. However you do have transistors in the tuner as shown on the tube chart.
The dim bulb tester is a poor man's self-resetting fuse. A light bulb is in fact an element with a quite strong PTC effect, although dedicated PTCs in self-resetting fuse applications still exhibit an even stronger resistance change and have a steeper jump point. A light-bulb has approximately 10 times the resistance when it is hot compared to the resistance when it is cold. PTCs for use as fused get warm-to-cold resistance ratios of more than 1000.
Tube based sets are cool as heck. i found a 1965 23 inch black and white admiral tv that's been out in the weather for a long time. went to the local packrat's house and found replacement tubes for the ones that were missing and off it went. lots of rust and the wood was warped and falling apart but the set worked well for it's age.
Such an elegant design !
Welcome to the dark side of vacuum tubes!
If you're stubborn enough, you can build just about anything out of tubes (like a 1-bit tube computer inspired by the MC14500.. cough cough)!
@@Dave-rd6sp We're watching this video thanks to the RUclips lol
That color was called "Avocado" and it was an option for *everything* in the 70s. That and an awful shade of burnt orange.
The floor model tv my parents bought in the mid-70s had tubes and transistors.
I had the orange colored solid state set the TR-729U it was the same shape and still had the smoked plastic cover but it was all transistor and bright orange.
We had brand new tvs with vacuum tubes until 1979. It was cheap and fixable.
OMG those old TVs drew a third of the power while they were switched *off*! No wonder our electric bills were so high when I was a kid!
I remember having a 9 inch Philco Ford BW TV in 1970 that was all solid state, and it may have been the first such set. I do know that color TV's stayed tubes for much longer after black and white sets went all solid state. All that extra energy used to keep the filaments (heaters) warm was to compete with all solid state sets, but remember we were also going through an "energy crisis" in the early 1970s, so I'm sure most people unplugged their sets to save power.
Avocado is the color you are looking for.
By 1973, solid state was becoming the norm for TV's. It was really a transitional year. High voltage solid state systems were very expensive, so many companies made hybrid sets where solid state was used for everything but sweep and high voltage. This kept costs down and still made the set reliable - as tube technology had hit its peak by 1970. To see a mostly tube or all tube set in the 70s meant it was definitely budgeted.
General Electric had budget color portable sets under the portacolor line that were all tube based until 1978! Cheapest color tv you could buy at the time.
The "instant on" feature was used to help make tube sets sell by having them come up as fast as their solid state counterparts. It does shorten the life of the cathodes. I'll usually disable the instant on circuits.
The UHF tuner your set has is known as a continuous tuner, vs. a "click" or turret tuner. Again, lower cost item
As far as DC restoration - most sets even into the solid state era had no DC restoration or partial. Most of the cathode of the crt was AC coupled to save money. However, sets that had full DC restoration often had a unique identifier - which was instead of the control being labeled "brightness" - it was labeled "black level." Zenith was fond of using this to distinguish their average set, from a set that had full DC restoration.
I am with you, gotta clean it up a little. Shango066 always keeps them dirty... I die inside a little.
Shango always does the bare minimum it's his thing I hear. He leaves full restoration to others.
Shango does everything half-a$$ and spends more time rambling about conspiracy theories.
@@danielknepper6884
He tosses most of them. The repairs are for education only.
2:08 Check out the generous cable length, the 70's were amazing ;+}
Definitely a cool little set. The Japanese stuff lasts really well.
I was hoping for an episode of Brady Bunch for Gilligan's Island on this set. Lol. I had this exact TV as a teen in my bedroom.
These were great little B&W sets, I have an AN-109 similar if not identical chassis from about 1968-69, and an identical looking set to this one only all solid state, all still working, in have serviced very few over the years, mainly dirty controls and or bad horiz or vert output tubes
One of the most damaging things for tubes is to turn them off and on. The thermal cycling is destructive. They figured this out on one of the early tube type computers (the Whirlwind maybe). By keeping the filaments continuously on at a lower current, when the computer was not working, they would be a few orders of magnitude more hours of operation from the tube.
tell that to everyone who either owned or serviced vacuum tube tvs...and if you buy a vintage set with instant on its almost guarateed it will have a bad crt and a bunch of bad tubes....this set has had little use because its a small portable, maybe it was a kitchen set and was always powered off or something
The number one cause of death of CRTs is loss of cathode emissions which instant on features accelerates. Theoretically you might have less chance of heater/cathode or grid shorts with fewer thermal cycles. That failure mode would be more likely to happen with a machine that has thousands of tubes vs a TV.
@@MrHBSoftware I wonder if later picture/receiving tubes were designed to better tolerate this kind of use, something that was not designed into earlier picture/receiving tubes. This one looks like it's cool as a cucumber.
yep, thermal cycling is bad, but so is keeping heaters on continuously, can cause 'cathode poisoning' with no anode current flowing, making the emission drop prematurely
@@kilwala2242 i agree
When you were thinking this second channel, with what's now a plethora of CRT stuff episodes, was getting rather analog, here's a step beyond with non transistorized circuits but ones with venerable glowy things in them!
My dad bought a Panasonic TV in the mid 70s that was similar to this. It had the tubes with the heater so it didn't need to warm up before it worked. I remember it being either red or orange. Fun fact: It worked long after mom's console TV quit working amd we used the console for a TV stand for the little Panasonic. Thanks for the memories. . .
This looks like something that should be featured on Mr. Carlson's lab.
😏👍👍🖐️ Beautiful! At the beginning all tv-sets used tubes instead of transistors. Next there were hybrid solutions. High voltate areas used still tubes while others transistors. And next everything migrated to transistors and chips only. And now.... we have lcd's and similar stuff and some yt channels about retro equipment including yours which is one of the best and including also mine which is making first steps...
I have a similar vintage panasonic which I have connected to an old vcr (via a balum ) that produces a vhf output then connecting a set top box to the input sockets of the vcr to make the tv work.
that would be awesome to watch some retro t.v. shows, It would really take person back..
15:10 That explains why it was so dirty. I had one like it, but the case was a little more chromy and rectangular and it had a digital clock; I found a ton of dust in it when it was only about 15 years old. Instant-on circuits were banned in NY state during the Arab oil embargo (and thus discontinued in many other markets), so this set must have been one of the last with it. That feature makes me a bit nervous; 1973 was also one of the last years before flame-retardant plastic was required for a UL listing. The guy who produced the "Assembled Multitudes" version of the Overture from Tommy (1970) and worked with various Philly-Soul groups in the 1970s (eg. MFSB by TSOP) died when an old TV in the guest room of his parents house caught fire while it was plugged in but switched off.
The irony of the recent E27 lamp holder being less reliable than a nearly half a century old TV.
It WAS a neat little TV. I had well-to-do cousins who would take it to their rooms and watch Saturday night live, then put it back into the camping gear. Their Dad never knew.(Seriously, Don't Ask)
Micheal J. Fox that plays Martin "Marty" McFly in Back To The Future III, says "What do you mean Doc, all the best stuff is made in Japan."
Wow, this is really cool, I love old sets like this and I’m very surprised they made valve-based portables. It looks surprised good but wow it took a long to start. I have a few old tellys of my own but none of them run on valves, I might go to get one someday, maybe one of the very ancient wood-covered sets, or even a 405-line system although I don’t know where I’d find a way to transmit video to it. It was also fascinating to see how the audio varied so much as you messed with the fine tuning dial, I wonder if that’s because of the valves it uses
Time for you to spend some time with Mr. Carlson's Lab, his channel goes into a lot of detail on working with tubes. :D
I can just imagine watching the Watergate hearings on this thing.
Absolutely Beautiful inside and out
Toobs? Nah, those are Valves... :P
(Spot the Brit!!!)
Indeed they are old chap.
Even in the UK it does contain one tube ;-)
@@mjouwbuis Lol ! nah its a 'picture bulb' !
My wife bought one in 1972 or thereabouts. Long gone now.
The standby feature reminds me of a conversation I had with my father when I was a little kid, in which he mentioned that "instant-on" TVs could sometimes cause house fires even when turned off. I remember that terrifying me. We'd switched to a transistorized TV when I was very young, but I certainly remember when drug stores all had tube testers in them.
The incongruity here is that the case design aesthetics look far too modern for the age of tubes, but of course, these things coexisted in the Seventies.
I remember seeing tube tester in a kiosk stand at the local grocery store where they went by the honor system and you marked the cans and packages with a grease pencil for the prices on everything.
I’d bet money that was a kitchen TV.
A few things to note: 300ohm twin lead is the best for low-loss per unit distance (far superior to coax), however it’s highly susceptible to external interference.
Also, a well-aligned (black and white) set should show crystal clear sharpness across the full multi-burst test pattern (the full original 4MHz NTSC video bandwidth) over RF with no distortion/snow. Color sets generally can’t get higher than the color burst carrier of 3.58MHz (the second from the right bar).
I don't think this set was ever that sharp. No point in making the circuitry much sharper than the CRT itself. A little sharper is good, just to minimize the impact of other components that may soften the image in a cost-driven piece of gear like this, especially after nearly 50 years of use.
That green encased TV would look great with the 70s multi-tone green shag carpet.
Would be cool to watch The Outer Limits on this thing.
nice little tv thank goodness you saved it it deserves to live on.
Our TVs were tube well into the 70's. I had to take them to Fred Meyers and test them every time the TV quit.
Were you always successful in testing and finding the bad tubes? (And getting the set working again)
@@adriansdigitalbasement2 Yep, I was 12ish when I started doing this and it was as simple as unplugging the set, pulling all the tubes and putting them in the tester at the grocery store. For me the hardest part was figuring out the tester settings (IIRC you had to set a couple dials then push a button). Once the bad tube(s) were identified you just pulled them from the cabinet under the tester and reinstalled everything in the set. After that Star Trek was back up on! I seem to remember having to do this several times a year
It's a good basement heater if nothing else :-)
One of those pieces that makes me want to fill a barrel with IPA, dump the electronics in it, tip the barrel on it's side and set the whole shebang rolling down a long hill.
Take it from a EE. Do not reform electrolytic caps. Doing so puts the Device, You and your work space in DANGER.
My first TV I bought from a yard sale for 15 bucks back in 1994. It was a B&W Admiral and had Tubes. Looked almost brand new and kinda wish I held onto it.
From what I was told in the 70's the Transistor was still quite new so the cheaper consumer stuff still had tubes. Wasn't until the mid 70's the transistor became cheap enough to use in cheaper consumer electronics.
Nice Matsushita!
Thanks! It was interesting to hear your reaction to Vacuum Tubes. How serviceable *WERE* those tubes in the era?
Was there room in there to pull them out and push replacements in? Didn't a Solid State Rectifier exist that was tube shaped?
Depended on their placement. If there were no big parts blocking access to a tube's location, R&R'ing it was usually a snap. The situation changed dramatically if there was a part mounted right over the tube. Then at least some disassembly is needed. This was a common issue with small sets like this one that were equipped with tube type tuners. The tuner would be mounted in such a way that the tubes would be blocked off by the CRT, requiring pulling the tuner cluster just to get to the tubes. But on the whole, tube replacement was very straightforward. That's why even drugstores sold tubes and had testers as well. And you are right about there having been a solid state "tube." It was a plug-in replacement for the HV rectifier tube in color sets. There was also a plug-in replacement for the low voltage rectifier as well, such as the 5U4, 5Y3, etc.
In the US tubes were used in TVs clear up until the late 1970s the same for the Japanese.