I spotted this on ebay and made an offer of £25, the seller accepted and I am off tomorrow to Bury St Edmunds to collect it.
The chassis is the BRC 1500 and we will see what story the set has to tell upon arrival at it's new home.
A couple of photos from the vendor for now.....
That does look in nice condition Andrew, looking forward to see it up and running. I have the Marconi version which took very little effort to get it working, it will be a late schedule so shouldn't have any Callins fitted.
Thanks John, a nice little Thorn 1500 should keep me occupied ?
The set arrives and an initial inspection reveals pretty much as expected. A nice chassis in good condition with only the PCL805 looking to have been replaced in the past with a Pinnacle valve. All the rest are TCE with an ITT CRT. The mechanical tuner is sticking and likely the plastic on the push button stops has rotted as can be seen from bits in the bottom of the cabinet.
Next step is to get the hoover out and remove the dust.
After a clean of all the dust, nothing greatly amiss was discovered. I removed a valve to break the heater chain, powered up the set via a 15w pygmy lamp and it dimmed after a few seconds so no shorts or seriously leaky caps. I then re-fitted the valve and powered up. After a few seconds, sound appeared quickly followed by a snowy raster. A tune to channel 33 and we have pretty good results. Rather boring really.... but lets see how long it last's ?
I was talking to the person where I got the set from and they said it had been discovered after they were doing some renovation work on their home. They have lived there for about 7 years, so the set could have been there idle many more.
Looks like a date code on one of the valves is 1976, the Pinnacle will be date coded as well but that won’t say when it was fitted.
Nice clean set with a good picture, excellent find Andrew.
Bury St Edmunds, I was in Bury a couple of weeks ago.
I am thinking that the set was made early 1977, most of the date codes are late '76 and this one pictured below is the latest date I could find. The Pinnacle is dated Dec 80 so obviously a later replacement for a faulty original valve.
The valve on one of the pics is dated the 45th week of 1976.
Just as I expected ? . The 30FL2 in mine states Japan, I can't quite see where your PL504 and PCL82 came from. There were a batch of valves with "Made in Hunagry" printed on them.
The PL504, PY801 and PCL82 are made in Hungary whereas the 30FL2 was made in Great Britain. No Mazda branding which did surprise me a bit to be honest.
I wonder if like stamps and coins the misprinted Hunagry valves are collectable?
Lol, you never know John.
Am I right in assuming that the brand T.C.E. on the valves stands for Thorn Consumer Electronics ?
Correct.
Nice looking example and looks like its had limited use going by the condition and the picture. I'm surprised to see valves been used in a set as late as 1976, in New Zealand we stopped using valves in TV's the early 1970's. When did manfacturers go completely solid state with monochrome sets in the UK?
Posted by glenz75
When did manufacturers go completely solid state with monochrome sets in the UK?
I believe the last hybrid (valve and transistor) B&W TV and the largest (24" 6844), was in 1977. As an example see the Ultra 6823 & 6844 below. So In answer to your question, I would say 1978.
I have one of these! and it's either this, or the Marconi version. It hasn't been powered up yet, but I did a cursory 'look-at' and found a dropper that had sprouted 'Polos'. I got as far as buying a 'new old stock' dropper to put in. I know where both the set, and the dropper are stowed away, so............
We shall see, though mine is a rather scruffy looking article and I suspect it's had a hard life.
Many years ago I donated a 1500 to our work tea room. It was still going strongly when I left that job - I doubt it will exist today. ?
That's right, certain 1500 series models were still available from Ferguson as late as 1977. I remember buying a small number of these sets that year. Many of the valves were made in Hungary and were branded T.C.E. Thorn Consumer Electronics. The CRTs were also sourced from other Eastern Bloc countries.
However, one valve was made in the UK, the replacement for the Mazda 30FL2. Mullard made a specially modified version of a valve that had the look of a PCF80.
Love to find the version of the 1500 that had the solid state frame timebase.
Till Eulenspiegel.