As some of you will be aware I've been diversifying the crustyTV collection over the past year or so to include and represent the era of continentals.
Thus far I've managed to find Tandberg CTV1-90, CTV2-4-125. Korting 54673 'Telesure'. BeoVision 3200 and of course the Grundig, Saba and a Telefunken 712 in the guise of an Aphelion. Still looking for Skantec, Finlandia, Finlux and others.
A set I saw a few years ago and was quite taken by finally popped up and fitted my continental remit perfectly, so I couldn't let it slip. It's the Autovox, a 2682 a 26" TV that was Italian designed, and sold via Comet. Not many continentals seem to have survived when compared to our home-grown offerings. I guess because they were a minority and the law of averages would suggest due to the greater number of UK sets, there were bound to have more survivors than continentals.
It's a rather plush looking set with a nice finish, also built like a battleship with a nice set of chrome blocks for feet. A service tag in the back proclaims the tube is good, I hope so as I've everything but a spare 26" in stock.
Although it's quite exciting to be presented with a chassis that is totally different to ones I've encountered before, it would be nice to have a cct to reference. However, absolutely no service data is to be found. If anyone has something (doubtful) please get in touch
@crustytv
There is a thread on UKVRRR about this model, not a lot of info but seems triplers were a problem and a mod required to increase video gain on the CRT base.
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=157276
Youtube.
Ah, "ojnoj. Irish TV And Radio" - I subscribed to his channel not long ago!
Looks nice, some of the smaller Italian sets could be quirky in style, but the bigger ones were a bit more restrained.
It seems the continental sets were treated as a fill in until the British industry could meet the demand for colour sets, with rental companies disposing of them after a few years. In some cases unreliable ones like the French EMOs were almost all scrapped rather than sold on.
It seems the ones in private hands had gone by the mid 1980s unless the owners were lucky enough to have a house big enough for a large second set & didn't mind they didn't have a remote control.
Wow that brings back some memories!
That was the tv in our 'television room' at primary school. I had forgotten the make and have never been able to find out what it was,until now! I remember a teacher commenting on how it was over 10 years old and it had never been any trouble. I left for high school in 1985 and it was still going strong then but I never saw it again and have been wondering ever since what on earth it was!
I'll look forward to more on this one,
Paul.
The newly acquired Autovox was complete but sadly missing its back cover, today I performed a cut-N-shut. Thanks to Chris (The_Teleman) who provided me two donor backs, one from a G8 the other from a Dynatron. Neither on their own would work, I tried. However, with a little modification with a saw, knife and application of hot-melt, they combined to become one custom back. I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out, OK it's not perfect but at least I can relax knowing the CRT neck is not so exposed now. When the weather warms up I'll spray the back so its one colour.
Top and part and the extended sides are Dynatron, main back and bowler G8.
Nice find, brings back memories. A friend had a 26" model and I remember seeing a Westinghouse CRT warranty card in the document pack. Like yours it had the dreaded stand-by switch!
Replacement back appears to fit well and will protect the CRT from accidental damage. What would we do without hot-melt glue.
Rich
From what I remember this isn't the first time Crusty has used a donor back on a set he was restoring.
I notice on the back of the set a 2pin DIN loudspeaker socket, a 5 pin DIN and some other multiway connector - did this set have direct AV input as well?
Yes that multipin looks a lot like a SCART connector. If so, at the very least it will give you AV In, some SCARTs even support RGB. Might be useful if the tuning pots have gone the way they usually do.
We saw a few of these imported into Oz back in 1974 - 5 in the mad scramble to grab any colour TV you could get. A friend had one, still in daily service into the 1990s.
I had a look in a pile of period circuit manuals I acquired recently without finding Autovox listed.
I notice on the back of the set a 2pin DIN loudspeaker socket, a 5 pin DIN and some other multiway connector - did this set have direct AV input as well?
Indeed, see Paul's comment below
Wow that brings back some memories!
That was the tv in our 'television room' at primary school
Yes that multipin looks a lot like a SCART connector. If so, at the very least it will give you AV
Hi, it's not SCART the TV is way too early for that its 1973. CENLEC designed SCART in 1976, it didn't appear anywhere on a TV until 1977 and only in France it wasn't until much later the rest of the world adopted it. The connector on this TV is a 10-pin rectangle socket, but yes it will be some sort of AV input especially when you take into consideration KB Paul's post.
Wow that brings back some memories!
That was the tv in our 'television room' at primary school.
I remember seeing the Japanese 8 pin AV connector on school tellies back in the 1980s, although by then PL259/SO239 at the TV end and BNC and the video end was more often used when I was at school (one set had a loop through on the PL259/SO239 used to show the same video on two sets for large class groups).
I don't recall any 10 pin connectors - but have read elsewhere about a different multi-pin DIN configuration being used on German equipment, that had luminance and chroma separated (a predecessor of S-video?)
by the time SCART was common on UK equipment I was already in 6th form (1988-1990) (and curiously there was much less use of any AV equipment for teaching compared to my earlier teens!)
Yes it might be the EIAJ 8 pin socket or something similar. SCART was somewhat spurned in Australia, it was very rarely seen here. If a product such as a VCR had a SCART as its only AV In / Out it was invariably shipped with an adapter to RCA and BNC. The CENELEC spec was badly flawed in its naming of the pins as just "In" or "Out" (no allowance for a source or a display device) so plug and play was rarely achieved between brands.
The company I started in 1976 did a nice business for years making and fitting AV In/Out EIAJ interfaces to Pye T30s and T34s for the school market, for use with UMatic VCRs. We even did switchable NTSC mods. You may recall, many UMatics could play US-sourced NTSC tapes with a suitable TV.
The McDonalds' training tapes were a case in point. (We sold lots of modified Pye TVs to McDonalds.) The two audio track feature was used to put Spanish on the 2nd track!
I didn’t have problems with SCART compatibility problems but could have very lucky, usual problem I had was poor SCART cables and the damn plug working loose and needed pushing back into the socket. Heavy decent cables really needed a retainer similar to the early ones used on RS232 sockets, a clamp that fixed over the plug but would increased expense and be frowned on.
Scart was fine providing it was a good quality cable, poorer types used to suffer from video in/out crosstalk. On dark scenes it was possible to see video from the TV sets internal signals stage floating in the background of VCR or DVD playback.
Major problems showed up when manufacturers used the reserved pins 10 & 12 for data transfer, the idea was to simplify setting up of VCRs. Unfortunately TVs and VCRs of different manufacturers would do some strange things, JVC TVs were very bad for this and some really headscratching effects occurred but never in the workshop, took us a little while before we cottoned on. 😧
The Autovox at primary school was mainly used with a Philips N1700 but was only connected by RF lead so I can't shed any light on the sockets I'm afraid.
I've always assumed that schools were given whatever colour sets were available at the time as demand exceeded supply in 1973.
I have repaired a few of these sets in the dim and distant past. Almost every one needed a tripler.
The tuner buttons are very reminiscent of those on the ITT CVC5. Did Autovox have a connection with ITT?
John
@kbpaul Tandberg CTV2-2 models were common around my way, with Salora sets taking over from about 1981.
Thanks to a very kind donation from John (Jayceebee) I now have some super rare, Autovox service data. 😎
That term "rare" is often unjustly banded about, however in this case it's very true, I've been looking everywhere and not a hint of anything, so many thanks to John.
The data is for the 26" 2684 but an initial look through the circuit it appears to be identical to the 2682 that I have. It has all the waveforms, plan views and circuit information required. Anyway, this will no doubt come in very handy when the TV makes its way up the queue to the bench. I'll also get it scanned for the data library. 👍
