"John-Del" wrote in message
...


Okay, one more. True story... This wasn't so much a difficult repair as it
was the circumstance. 1980, hot summer day and my new girlfriend (who
would be my wife) is having her HS graduation party when her parent's
early 70s tube Magnavox console blacks out in a cloud of smoke leaving a
clean horiz line. I was 21 at the time and looked younger, but of course
being a TV tech I was asked to look at it. I pulled the chassis out and
the area around the vert centering control was pitch black. That and the
cigarette smoke and wood stove deposits made seeing what else was burned
nearly impossible.

I borrowed the garden hose and a bottle of Fantastik (TM) and soaked the
bottom of the chassis and rinsed so it sparkled, then left it out front in
the hot sun. Later in the afternoon I put in two 10 ohm 5W resistors in
place of the vert cent control and put it together, touched up the height
and lin and it worked fine for a few more years.

When my father in law tells the story, he said that when he saw me hosing
out the TV guts in the front yard he was thinking "oh sh$t I'm going to
have to buy a new TV tomorrow".



Same thing happened to my younger brother when our family was visiting the
family of the older brother's wife.

Zenith TV died. My younger brother, who was either still in tech school or
early in his career, tore the set down to bits and pieces right there on the
living room floor, puzzled over it a bit, the light came on, ran down to the
Zenith distributor, picked up a part, got back over there and finished the
repair.

Two families (not to mention the two brothers) were sweating bullets on that
one.


Mark Z.

John-Del wrote: "When my father in law tells the story, he said that when he saw me hosing out the TV guts in the
front yard he was thinking "oh sh$t I'm going to have to buy a new TV tomorrow".


Good story with happy ending! Nowadays most folks
won't let me adjust their PICTURE menus for them,
let alone go component level. Sets are so reliable
today, with consistent image quality, yet people wonder
why they burn out after only 3-5 years.

Backlit TVs(LCD, LED) require a backlight to be seen,
and very often this setting, along with the others, are
left in factory/showroom mode, shortening the life of
the appliance. Getting set owners to understand this
basic fact, along with the benefits of correct setting of
the basic adjustments(brightness, contrast, color, etc),
is well-nigh impossible! A $300 full calibration is often
not necessary to achieve these goals.