My family bought a new Wards Color TV in the late 70's and it worked flawlessly forever...it was amazing...for like 10 years of constant use and it never had a hiccup...it had a great picture and it lightened in a bright room and dimmed in a dark room which was cool...also had instant on.
The chassis was made by Admiral, I worked on this sets back in 1974 (Admiral solar color),I worked for a company that we serviced TVs for hotel and motels one hotel here in Washington DC had 375 of this junkers they had lots of problems not dependable at all.
I so enjoy your videos! I believe Admiral made this set for MW. Even considering the open delay line, and weak CRT, bad tuner, etc., the longer it plays, the better it looks! I agree with you, these are just nearly all long gone TVs. It's amazing this set is able to do as much as it does, after being in the desert for many years, testifying to yesterday's quality, even on a "budget" TV set! I'll venture to say, if we are all around 30 years from now, and you pull a flat screen from the desert, it won't even do what these older sets do! I'm sure all it's plastic would likely crumble as it's handled! Thanks for the quality videos you provide!
@jdslyman Your set was probably made by Sharp. They were also a big supplier of TV's for MW during the '70's. Sylvania also made some sets for them; but, those would not have Hitachi parts in them.
One thing I loved Wards for, they had good, very good products, and went under before the quality of their products went to the level of current K-mart products. I still have a few Wards tools, including a soldering gun, woodworking vise, tool box. Circa 1967. I miss Wards, the smell of candy and popcorn coming from the center of the store. It needs more dirt.
The 70's - an era where solid state TV gradually became the norm. We didn't have (m)any tube colour sets in Australia around this time - except for an imported British hybrid set (the "Decca 33") the rest of our 'all-tube' TV's were B&W. Plus, we first got colour in 1975 and before 1956, we had no TV at all. The Philips K-9 chassis made for the European market around the early-to-mid 70's used a delta gun picture tube (with a deflection angle of about 110³). It was the only tube in the set - the rest was all solid state and incorporated a modular design for IF, Chroma-Luminance/Demodulation, etc. These plug-in modules were contained inside a metal case and were not serviceable - to fix a fault caused by one of them, you sent it off for exchange via Philips, and plugged the new replacement in. I repaired many of these beasts a few years ago and restored some to full working condition. Great video - illustrating a piece of history that would otherwise be forgotten, in spite of its medical ailments. Cheers.
I had a K9 chassis TV when I was a student, it was great! It was prbly already 15-20 years old by then. It died when I tried to get rid of the dust that had accumulated in the switchmode power supply..........
@@skuula I used to re-cap those supplies (changing the main filter electrolytics) as well as replacing the 4 bridge rectifier diodes and degaussing PTC. If everything checked out OK (including the power transformer and chopper transistor) the supply would normally work. The main issue with K-9's was dry solder joints, especially in the high voltage/power supply/IF strip areas. Another smaller problem was their convergence assemblies - a board inside the front control/speaker panel which contained several pots and coils that drifted with temperature changes or whenever the set was moved - resulting in static and/or dynamic convergence being slightly out of alignment. The "true fix" for this was to lock-seal the pots after re-alignment (either with a tiny bit of nail polish or special technician's paint at the base of the wiper). It was one of the many things I did when I serviced a few of those TV's back in the day. I also did the line-sync modification (for VCR playback which simply involved adding 2 wire links to the line control module socket) and replaced some CRT's in a handful of K-9's - then setup and aligned them to produce a reasonable, clear, colour picture. The sound was already good. The trick to getting most of the dust out of K-9 or K-11 chassis sets is to use light compressed air in short bursts when the set is unplugged from the wall. Then you can diagnose the condition more easily prior to any component testing and/or repair. They were good sets when they worked in the 70's and 80's but nowadays finding a working one that has never been serviced or cleaned in its 40+ year lifetime would be extremely rare.
That set looks very Admiral-ish. It has a "run" number which Admiral used and Admiral was the only one I've ever seen that calls instant on "instant play."
Admiral made these for Wards, K18 is a chassis number used by admiral, I have a Wards K19 almost mint. They had good pictures for the most part. I before 68 they sorced from Muntz for lower end large color sets.
The durt does not hurt but it depends on the kind of dirt because if it is cigarrette infusions it will hurt because it is conductive. Best regards and good work. I like the way you diagnose and fix stuff. Very good approach.
They were a mail order outfit when I was a kid.My parents bought a new Wards B&W box set back in 1957.I found one like it in 1976 in a secondhand store and got it for $5.00.It was a $2.00 fix:it needed a new fusible resistor.It looked like new when I bought it.I ended up selling it to some gal for $15.They started in the latter half of the Nineteenth Century in Chicago just like Sears and Spiegel.If I remember right,Airline was made by Wells-Gardner;Spiegel was made by Gambel-Skogmo.Some of the Airline sfuff was made by Belmont.
I remember the Belmont pushbutton models from the immediate pre and post WW2 eras. During the first few WW2 years several small makers made brief appearances before they went extinct in the early to mid 50s. Wards was pretty good at keeping to American makers while other chains went Japanese really fast.
The dirt holds and tells part of the story of those old tvs. On how they were misunderstood and mistreated, left to rot in the middle of the desert or in a cold abandoned mine for many years. Just to wake up in the far future and show us one last picture, to prove that they still can do it. that they are tough and always strive to do their best even when they're covered in rust, dirt, mud, rats nets, among others, they won't be bothered at all. you can't just wash it off... you gotta kept the dirt in there to pass that story on
Sam's is very willing to digitize a repair manual for you, they have to do it to replicate it for you anyway. I've had them do it twice for me, they get it in their database and I get an electronic version. Works out for both of us
Never ran into this particular model but over the years Wards got stuff from many places. Much of their solid-state items came from Sharp.(Small stuff like home & portable tape recorders and battery-operated TVs, etc.) Regular items like tube radios, phonographs and such came from Westinghouse and Symphonic. In their last days I saw a couple large TVs made by Quasar/former Motorola (by then part of Matsushita (Panasonic)) but I do know they got some stuff from Wells-Gardner and RCA (where everyone seemed to get their big color TV chassis from in the 60s).. I know some other stuff came from other outfits but these were the biggest I can recall.
I think I just might have seen a tv like that in a barber shop in the mid 80's. The way the screen is bent up reminds me of the black and white pay tv's I remember in airports; especially in the late 80's when they had the last of the early 70's stuff.
"Instant on" was Admirals trademark name for keeping the filaments warm. The wonderful days before anyone gave a shit about energy star compliant or ROHS bullshit.
Getting into it further after this video seems to use the same color de modulation circuit as GE did in the Porta colors. Maybe Admiral borrowed that like most people borrowed RCA
I think it looks quite European with the sliding controls. All it needs is a 'push-out' style CRT! Those type of controls were all the rage here, even into the early eighties. From my experience they always tended to be of good quality (usually Alps/ Philips/ ITT manufactured), and rarely gave trouble unless 'toyed with'.
I never had a problem with the ones on vertical front panels of TVs, equalizers, etc. A friend of mine worked for ARP instruments in the 1970s and they were always replacing those sliders, but that was on a horizontal panel which made them much more vulnerable. If he could have harvested and sold all the cocaine that fell into those things, he'd probably have been set for life.
I was just telling a friend that I would love to find a Montgomery Ward Airline set of this same vintage. I had one that was almost exactly the same in my bedroom as a kid for gaming console use. I am putting together a retro gaming room, and I would like to have the option of playing Contra on the same tiny CRT that i had when I was 7.
The French Connection @ 43:15 ...Great movie, one best of all time. That picture on that set, in analog...I watched TV like that for decades. Re "Barbershop" Yeah.. I could imagine sitting in a barbershop on a rainy Saturday afternoon in the 70's and they have on some really old 1950's crime drama show tuned to one of the "Independent Channels" on some old decrepit black and white TV with the audio buzz along with the obligatory busted rabbit ears and tin foil. In fact I probably did spend some rainy Saturday afternoons doing just that. Yep, there is some good channels on the Digital subs like Quest and Escape among others. The Decades Channel started running the original Dark Shadows. Johnny Carson reruns, Carol Burnett, and tons of others...Even the PBS stuff isn't too terrible. I got to watch a couple of hours of DW (Deutsche Welle) on the local 14-4 here and it blew away American TV in reporting. I mean here was news, they actually news reported news. Straightforward, unbiased.....felt I was in some kind of a time warp. Poor man's Cable TV...Just with a decent amplified antenna, you can get 50 + channels and subs for free. It's like having free cable TV...In fact we get more channels now on over the air digital then what we had on our 36 channel cable in 1979. Another great video and thanks for the nostalgia too...
when portabble meant you could carry it and not lug or hurt yourself moving it, you younger kids have all the fun now a days, plus look at that woodgrain you can tell this is 70's
We had a solid state Magnavox console 25 inch with instant on. (Bought 1974) I believe the heater on the picture tube was always on. (It had a switch to turn instant on off) It lasted 7 years until the picture was too dim to enjoy. Yes, leave the dirt. What matters is that it works.
Ahhhhh Montgomery Ward. Barranca Ave. Covina. Where IKEA is now. Visited it many a time when I was a kid!!! About the time this TV was made. Finally closed about 1996 or 2000??? I think.... Shango if you head over to Edwards Steak House you might be able to complain about the quality of the Asian Stations!😄
dirt? paintbrush and a vacumn cleaner sucks up the dirt. hosing it down, or washing it is only for mouse pee chassis. remove or cover things like speakers. after its washed, take open up the power transformer covers. lets it air dry for a few weeks. usually works. i only reserve that for sets like mouse pee, or otherwise sets that are already ruined, to see if they can be saves. havent lost one yet
I'm 18, but I know what Montgomery Ward is. I once did a report on them just for fun. I personally have an Airline 8-track/AM/FM Stereo unit. I pass my Phillips 5171 cassette deck through it and run it out to some Dell computer speakers. It's a fine unit.
39:49 is putting me in a spinny trance switchitswitchitswitchit! hahaha So cool to watch that old cop show on that tired TV. Look at those old muscle cars!
TV stations broadcasting color signals in the desert back in 1973-74 were likely few and far between. I don't think it would have been practical to own a color TV set back then, at least in that area. It's interesting to see that Jimmy Swaggart is still at it, 30 years after he got caught with his zipper down.
Hi, with all the airplane background noise, I could probably figure out where you live. The problem being is that I would have to get off my couch and that is a thing I don't do much after retiring. I do like your videos, and I don't care if you don't clean the dirt of the work platform, I tried that once and got dirt on my BigMac, never again!... I eatted the Mac anyway! Thanks for your videos.
The number on the flyback can is the chassis number...23K18 I think there were some instant-on TVs, particularly the Panasonic ones, which had an autotransformer with a tap changer just to switch the filament voltage for instant-on.
Thats' it... Im selling my house and moving to Shangoland CA. Gotta get me some of dat' quality TV programming. And its free?? Cheap at twice the price.
I get 235 tv channels here but most of them I have to pay for a month through satellite with Foxtel. There is a lot of crap channels too, like the religious ones- Daystar, Hillsong, SBN. I also get Fox News & CNN. This tv reminds me of the old General colour set from the 70’s my brother had when he was a kid. It looks nearly identical too.
I'm guessing you must live fairly close to an airport that has a flight path directly over your house. This one is interesting, would be fun to see where it goes
33:25 nowadays you have 'engineered for digital ATSC reception' on these antennas. Because you know... different wire for BW, different for color and a different for digital. Sell you the same crap 3x times.
44:20 "Indiana wants me, Lord, I can't go back there, Indiana wants me .... BTW: Car chases and shootouts are amazing on 1.5X speed. The retro-channels should broadcast all the old cop shows that way. Beats the hell out of that Joe Biden look-alike doing an Elvis impersonation.
After the set "works" try this. Change all the low level tubes one at a time noting improvements. You will find most are bad. Did this to a few GE sets also with same tube line up. Trouble is even then compactrons were so $$ you couldnt do it so these sets were seldom fixed "right". RCA also had there 1st plastic cabinet 19" &14" sets were the same but used normal tubes. LFOD !
It seemed like Compactrons were not very durable. Maybe it was because so many functions in one bulb magnified the chances of one going bad and needing replacement but they did not seem as durable as regular tubes.
Considering what this set has undergone and for its age I’m surprised it even powers up with deflection to boot! Too bad you can’t find another CRT for it ,I think the dirt preserved this one!
@14:30 - "The airplane says 'good morning,' everybody..." @35:33 - "Go sport team!" @37:13 - "Go football team.... GO AIRPLANE!" Did I miss any other wonderful Shango066 quotes? ROFL!
Nice Resurrection. Embrace the dirt!!!! Yeah, baby! You're on a ROLL, my friend! Blasting Sams, which I totally agree with. Sams got like Heathkit. Don't innovate anymore. Just hunker down and hang on to the old days for dear life! Like you say, the scans are not even high quality.
There is still a little blue though, Might... just need to spray up tuner, and clean the RCA female on main board, I hope in the future we get to see it again. Oh, Shango those weren't Airplanes, weird looking helicopters?
I say order the part keep it alive :) it seemed like all the colors were working the more it ran even though it was week also I would've liked to see that instant play in action of how much quicker it would display a picture vs with out it on with a cold set
