First telly you owned.

Depends how you define it. If it is defined by the first working TV you had in your own room, then it would be a hand-me-down of a set bought temporarily whilst our family KB was away being mended (it took that long, we pestered Dad until he gave in and bought a temporary telly)

The set in question was a 20" (?) Ultra in a plastic cabinet, with a painted wood-effect finish; no expense incurred on this one! Although dual standard (BRC 1400), the system switch had been removed and wire links fitted to make it 625 only. Also, it was never terribly loud: even though the volume control was fully up, it was really only just about adequate to listen to. When the KB came back, it ended up in my bedroom. This'd be late 70s, I think.

At some point I modified it to have an external loudspeaker (no isolation of course!), consisting of three R&A speakers that were intended for quality use as the surrounds of two of the speakers were very flexible, and one was definitely a tweeter of sorts. It improved the quality, but not the volume. And nothing ever got rid of the intercarrier buzz from the loudspeaker.

With its top-mounted dropper, it did serious damage to one of my favourite LPs when I absent-mindedly placed it on top of the cabinet - The Four Tops Super Hits. I was greatly upset by this! I still have that LP, and even now, 35+ years on, I still haven't tried the trick of placing it between two pieces of plate glass on a hot and sunny day to iron out the rather vicious warp....

Like many things, it bit the dust eventually, being replaced by a 24" Pye with the 368 chassis in a teak cabinet.

Excluding cast-offs which never worked anyway it was a Teleton T-122 B&W portable purchased new in 1983 and which I still use. The horizontal linearity is a bit out but as I usually watch the screen from one side it doesn't normally show.

The one here ... http://www.forum.radios-tv.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=9916&p=109415&hilit=pye+rambler#p109415

... still need a loptx!

Mine,

Was our old Bush TV75.. It had a partial frame collapse, and no vision from the IF strip.. Instead of getting it repaired, my parents decided to buy an almost as old Ferranti set that cost a fiver.

About a year and a half later, my dad found the remains of another TV75 in the "ash wagon" at York station, where he worked.. Having retrieved that, we set about checking it over.. In the end, and for a quick fix, we robbed the IF chassis out of it and putting it in 'our' set.. That sorted out the lack of vision.. After that, it became my bedroom set, an a little bit of bottle swapping soon had a full frame picture.

The first set I actually bought, was a 12" Ferguson from Currys.. It was on sale cheap because of a crack in the top mounted control panel.. I can't remember the model, but what I really wanted was a Ferguson Courier, however, this little set gave sterling service right up to me getting my first colour set - a G6.

Marion

First one I owned was a secondhand philips g8 on its legs complete with doors over the front- that had a distorted picture. The east/west circuit, think it had a replacement board. That was in 1982 and it lasted until 1992, for the last couple of years, the on off pushbutton was dodgy so id turn it on and off at the plug lol . It took a vhd recorder ok but at the end, it had to go as the touchtuner drifted if you leeft it clicked into position ( but wouldn't if it was hinged down! ) and the tube was so soft it was hard to read writing on it. Great tv set though considering it was free secondhand. And it had lovely tv sound too. Quite powerful.

Mid 70s, I would have been around 9. I used to acquire the oddest things from the village jumble sales, one of which was a big old B&W telly, no idea what model. I can't even remember whether it was 405, 625 or DS. Signals came from a longwire down the garden (Line of sight with Kirk O Shotts and Blackhill, you could do things like that). Thinking back I'm not even sure we had a set in the living room at the time, it's years and several houses later before I can picture one.
After a while it expired with a loud bang, someone who apparently knew about these things looked at it and said a condenser had gone. Apparently a replacement condenser could not be obtained so the telly was presumably dumped.

It was many years later that I next had a "personal" TV, which comprised the green screen monitor (ex ICL terminal) from my BBC computer, fed with video from an old VHS VCR. Audio fed initially to an old record player aux input, later to a pair of Maplin Mosfet amp modules which drove a couple of 8" speakers. One of the speakers was mounted in a cardboard enclosure for years, the other was in a recycled wooden box. That lot was eventually replaced by an ex rental G8.

The first set I had in my bedroom was an Ekco T283. 14" round CRT type CRM141. It gave a cracking picture and was lovingly repaired by me when I was 16.

My TV engineer brother had it originally and had decided it was too old in 1969 and wanted something more modern. It wasn't working very well at the time with weak contrast, noisy turret, slow warm-up and a hum-bar. There was plenty of brightness and after donating it to me he gave me a few tips on where to look for the faults.

Low contrast was due to a faulty pre-set cap in the video stage. A new 30FL1 made a further improvement. The hum bar was caused by the smoothing caps. In those days, exact replacements were easily available and my brother was able to get a nice new 100uF x 200uF 350V can. With this fitted, the hum bar had gone but I still had slow warm-up. This was due to the U191 boost diode and another replacement donated by my brother finally had the set working well.

There was some shading on the picture which caused me some head scratching. It was purely by chance that I noticed the visconol had been bypassed. These were also still easily available and a NOS component was waiting for me when I got home from school one afternoon (donated by the company he worked for)...'well we'll never use it so you might as well have it'. With the new visconol fitted, the shading had gone and the brightness was improved.

I was able to watch the first moon landing on that set and sat up until the early hours watching fuzzy pictures from the moon. I had the set for about three years until I passed it on to and elderly lady who thought it was 'wonderful'.

The first TV I ever owned was a PYE 14 inch washboard TV,. it had a turret tuner on the right hand side. I got it in 1961 for 10/- (shillings).
How I got the TV is quite interesting. It was around a two mile walk down hill from my house to town (Bolton). About three quarters of the way to Bolton was a laundrette that also sold new TV rentals. One Saturday when I was passing I noticed a sign saying trade in tvs 10 bob not tested. My life savings were 5/-. I told my mum and she agreed to fund me the extra 5/-. So with my sisters old pram I went to the laundrette. Offered the guy my 10/- note. I was directed by him to this Pye set which he helped me put in the pram for my 1.5 mile up hill journey to home. Unknown to me my mum had telephoned the laundrette and asked if he would give me one that was working as I was only 11.
When I got home I took it up to my bedroom and switched on. It gave a good picture and sound. It was only after 10 minutes a fault developed. A slowly rolling picture which was corrected by adjusting the vertical hold. Unfortunatly 10 mins later it would roll in the opposite direction and vertical hold had to be adjusted again. I used the set for the next two years never trying to repair the faullt which was probably just a low emission valve!

Launderette and TV rentals in one shop, that made me smile . I don't think the damp atmosphere would have done the TV's any good.
What district of Bolton was the shop in? I started work at a large Radio and TV retailer in 1962, head office on Manchester Road. Worked around Bolton for a couple of years.

Frank

It was on Derby St on the RHS of the road from town. About half way between Modern Radio (still going) and the Tivoli cinema.

My first working set was a Murphy V330 'barrel' set, 405 line with FM radio. the set was given to me by a friends parents around 1972, it had a great picture and was still working well when replaced with a 19" Pye dual standard a couple of years later.
I now have another example courtesy of Cathovisor on the roundtuit pile

My first colour set was a freebie Ekco dual standard from a neighbor. The red gun had pretty much given up the ghost, but the set was otherwise working ok. I finally found another tube from a scrap set scrounged from my local TV shop, it was a bit tired but at least it had all three colours

Despite many hours of fiddling, I could never get the convergence quite right and it was taken to the tip when replaced with an orange 22" Murphy 'Acoustic deluxe' colour set, complete with chrome swivel stand that barely looked strong enough to hold this extremely heavy set!

I cannot remember what happened to the Murphy, but I would love another, it really was a cracking set

Hi, folks, RR here. The first set I owned was a Bush TV125 19" set. I got it for about £2.00 from a local private seller in about 1978 and when I got it home it's boost reservoir capacitor which was an old waxed paper thing was shorted so there was no picture and when I replaced this with something better I had a picture but the tube's emission was right down so I started looking for a tube to replace it, which was not much of a problem in those days where I lived as there was always loads of old sets getting dumped around the local area, most likely highly illegal but it happened. So it wasn't long before I found one with a good 19" tube in it but otherwise knackered. The Bush set ended up looking a bit strange as the original tube was an AW47-91 which had the old phosphor with the lighter green finish but the replacement tube I got was a later type with the darker coloured finish, I think it was an A47-14W, the type that normally had a plastic skin stretched over it, I think that was called a fenbridge guard. I remember fitting lots of them and trying not to get bits of stuff stuck inside which I sometimes did and only noticed when the tube was fully fitted in the set. I can't remember if my Bush had a UHF tuner as I remember some of these sets had a dummy set of buttons fitted and the UHF tuner was an optional extra. RR.

Mine was somewhat newer than those noted previously in this thread. My first telly was a Bush colour portable in about 1990, pretty sure it was 16" and it had a remote (and I think teletext). Was the same style cabinet as classic wooden cased TV's but was made of plastic, on the right hand side was a little door above the speaker, which the tuning/channel/volume/menu buttons were behind. Also had an LED Fig-8 display behind smoked plastic for the channel indicator.

It never worked quite properly, it would run for a certain period of time then there would be a thump from the speaker and a (very!) bright flash from the tube (from the phosphor, not flashover), usually the sound and picture would come back straight away, but after a while it ended up needing a thump on the side or to be left off for a few minutes to restore normal operation.

Even in my early years (about 8-9) I tried to repair it, knowing that it was probably just a dry joint. I went over that TV at least 3 times doing every single joint one-by-one but I could never fix it even though I did find a completely unsoldered wire in a solder pad. Got sick of that eventually and upgraded to a 21" ferguson and was the envy of all my school friends.

Dave.

Hi, from RR. I once spent near enough a whole sunday afternoon completely re-soldering every joint on the main panel of my 20" Thorn TX9, which cured quite a few things. Then having done that some time later the remote control decoder board started demanding the same treatment so out it came, a lot more of a pain to remove and replace than the main board. Then having done that the little IR receiver had to be done too. That made it more reliable but it still changes channel by itself sometimes, I don't think Thorn ever did cure that one. RR.

The first one I remember in the house is the Murphy V230 that Crusty owns and repaired last year.. (year before?)

But my own personal one was a Murphy V849 in my bedroom at home. Unfortunately it croaked terminally and became an.. erm...Fishtank

Hi all,

It would have been around Christmas time 1974 when a set appeared for me to "tinker with" I can't remember exactly what it was but with knowledge gained since I started this hobby I'm guessing it could well have been a Ferguson T306 Anyway as a 9 year old it wasn't really in my field to repair it so my dad took it to work with him for the guys in the TV department to have a look at, it must have been a good'un as it was never seen again !
So that was one set down but I can't really count it as a "first telly" as it never made it past the kitchen and it was there for less than 24 hours.

The following week my dad came home with another telly but this time it was an ex-rental from work (Bickers of Dewsbury) for the grand sum of £2. It was an unbadged KB 405 set and was supplied complete with a length of coax that had been stripped back around 4 foot with the screen and core separated to form a dipole to pin up on my bedroom wall, it worked great with a fabulous picture and believe me the reception where we lived was pretty grim as we were in a dip, even to this day it's still not good (my parents are still there).
The model identity of the KB has always been a bit of a mystery as despite a lot of research over the years I can not find any model with the same "exact" trim finish however a few weeks ago I did purchase a KB XV05 (shown below) which apart from the darker trim round the CRT (mine was was speaker grill cloth across the whole TV front) and the added 625 conversion it's the closest I've come across. I suppose it is a possibility that the set I had was specially made order for rental (cutting down on trim and there for costs) for Bickers.
What ever model it was it was a belter, it lasted me from 1974 to 1983 without fault and was finally donated to a friend who used it until 405 switch off, as for it's final fate I never knew but I'm guessing the local tip would have taken care of it.

Marc.

erm... Marc?

I worked at Bickers (TV service dept) in the 70s.. the old sugar mill on Bradford road just out of town (opposite Reggies sarnie bar).

erm... Marc?

I worked at Bickers (TV service dept) in the 70s.. the old sugar mill on Bradford road just out of town (opposite Reggies sarnie bar).

Hi Wolfie,

That's the one !

My dad was based at the department store in town from 72 to 86 but worked mainly at other branches (Wades) all over the country.
I can remember the old electrical department & TV sales on the lower ground floor of the shop, I think the manager was Mr Eggington back in the 70's, Then the TV's ware moved upstairs to a new sales area.
I also remember calling in at the service dept on the odd occasion as a nipper and was fascinated with the sight of the workshop.... wonder if you were there at the same time (74-77 ish)

Marc.

Our first set (1952) was an Ekco TC162 which my brother bought secondhand. He had to carry it about 3/4 mile from New Lane station (Lancs) to our cottage by himself! That was enough to let the village know the we had a tele - so a few days later, we had visitors almost every day during TX hours. It proved to be a very reliable set and when we moved to Croydon, we fitted an Ekco turret tuner kit for ITV.
Eventually, in 1957, it came into my hands. By this time there were quite a few faults so I used the IF chassis in my home-made VCR97 set. I have no idea what happened to that.
I now have an Ekco TC162 in the dining room for old times sake.