"Bruce L. Bergman" wrote:

On Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:26:01 -0400, "Michael A. Terrell" wrote:
Vaughn Simon wrote:
"Joseph Gwinn" wrote...

The problem with Muntz TVs was that they could not be repaired. Most TV
repair shops would refuse to touch a Muntz.

Not because they were inherently unrepairable, but because they were crap.
There was no way a service shop could end up with a happy customer, so they
learned not to try. You woud probably get the same reaction if you took your
Yugo to your mechanic for a tune up.

Some shops did work on them, but only on a time availible basis.
They were crap when they worked, but the crappy design made it difficult
to locate problems with common TV shop test equipment. I saw one in our
shop, in the early '70s. The price of the repair parts was more than the
set was worth.

From reading the articles from the time and after, they cut so many
corners on the set design and construction to cut price that you had
to have an intimate knowledge of how it worked to diagnose and fix it.


He never intended them to be serviced, after the warranty.


They took out stabilizing and buffer circuits to cut the tube count.
They omitted most trimmer resistors and capacitors, they would trim in
the circuit with a decade box and then solder in a fixed resistor
instead of a pot - and you had to do it in a certain order, or you
would affect the stability of other sections. Easy enough with all
point-to-point construction with terminal strips and tube sockets.
Back then, the labor was still cheaper than the components.


Actually it isn't mush worse than the early reflex radios where a
single amplifer was used for different frequnncies. The same tube was
an RF and AF amp at the same time.


You didn't even get the basics like horizontal hold and vertical
hold trimmers, unless a tech added them later to make the set work.


By the time the parts had aged enough to need adjusted, it was out of
warranty. The schematics are in the old H. W. Sams Photofacts
collection. http://www.samswebsite.com/

None of the circuits would have ever passed a design review.


Muntz omitted extra RF amplifier sections and most filtering,
figuring the set was being sold in strong signal areas only - which
probably led to the obscenely high power levels used by the TV
Transmitters on Mount Wilson, where there is no permanent population
other than the technicians.


Those mountaintop sites covered a large area, and the back side was
shielded by the mountain. There is no way they would build a higher
power site so people could use cheap YVs. The electric bill was always
the biggest expense at most commercial stations.


There are still areas up there where the RF levels are so hot at
ground level you can light a 4' fluorescent lamp just by taking it out
of the Faraday Cage of your car trunk.


One of those is gone. The okld VOA Bethany plant was so strong they
could have lit everything with stray RF. Over 500 kW of RF in the 1.6
to 30 MHz range.

-- Bruce --


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