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CTV 1982 Baird 8233 TX10 Teletext

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WayneD
(@wayned)
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Normally I don't bother posting about TX10s as there's probably more than enough posts on these and I'm sure everyone is familiar with them, however this one'a a little different:

FB IMG 1706788090148~2
Screenshot 20240202 161936

 

It seems to be one of the earliest rental TX10s with teletext and pretty rare today. 

However there's also something else about it:

Screenshot 20240202 161954

Yup, that's the condition of the chipboard case! 🤮 I'm going to rebuild this, probably from timber.

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 4:23 pm
Lloyd
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That one's farming mushrooms!! I was cleaning mould out from under the stairs in our utility room last weekend, awful stuff...

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 4:54 pm
WayneD reacted
slidertogrid
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Ooh that has been damp! Is the tube the original Videocolor PIL? Most of these were rather than the 30AX tube used in the retail models.  This was the set that was used as a donor for the "Tristar" reconditioned set. Semple in Norfolk  bought these from RR, stripped them, reconditioned and sonic cleaned the chassis, fitted a re-gunned tube and put the set into a new monitor style black plastic case complete with anti-glare screen.

The sets worked well and looked like new. I used loads as rentals and they went for a good 8/9 years by which time the chassis' were getting on a bit! The endeavour came to an end when the supply from RR ran out. This one must have escaped!   

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 4:54 pm
WayneD reacted
Jayceebee
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As @Slidertogrid says a lot of these used the awful RCA A56-708X PIL S4 CRT, they went flat very quickly. I think I would be wearing a mask before going anywhere near that cabinet, I have heard the term "Weetabix" for the material it was constructed with, looking at you skills with the games machine I'm sure you will make a good job of a replacement. Have a good look at the sweep tuning board closely, many suffered from Death By Varta. 

John.

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 5:18 pm
WayneD reacted
WayneD
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The tube does have the date code of 1982 and there's a label on the bottom that I can just make out the Ferguson Thorn logo. I didn't want to get any closer until it's dried out and been fumigated. It does say Made in Britain:

Screenshot 20240202 181357
 
Posted : 02/02/2024 6:17 pm
Jayceebee
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That's a Mullard 30AX so you may be lucky.

John.

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 6:44 pm
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WayneD
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@jayceebee someone told me ages ago that teletext versions had a better quality tube than non-teletext versions. I don't know if that's true though. 

I'm currently trying to dry it out with a 100 watt incandescent light bulb before power goes anywhere near it. The chassis seems to have missed most of the damp:

Screenshot 20240202 212650~2
 
Posted : 02/02/2024 9:30 pm
slidertogrid reacted
Jayceebee
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@wayned Hmm, not sure about that with CRTs. Before I left the trade the outfit I worked for were about to purchase large quantities of 16:9 Sanyo for our bread and butter models. We queried with the TLO because they were using Philips CRTs and the appalling problems others were having. He assured us that Sanyo were using a better quality version of the CRT. Just a few months later we were ordering CRTs on pallets of 16 every month 🤣.

John.

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 9:45 pm
RichardFromMarple
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@slidertogrid I was trying to remember the name of the reconditioned sets just the other day!

Do any survive?

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 10:32 pm
slidertogrid
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Posted by: @richardfrommarple

@slidertogrid I was trying to remember the name of the reconditioned sets just the other day!

Do any survive?

Not that I know of. We sold and rented them in Peterborough and Nottingham. Granada bought my rental accounts in Nottingham about 4 or 5 years later so those sets would have been changed over and disposed of. There could be the odd survivor from a customer who bought one I suppose. 

The sets in Peterborough had all been disposed of by 2000. Again, I suppose a purchased one could have survived. I don't remember any of the rental sets being scrapped though so I guess they were sold off at end of contract when they still had some useful life left in them. This was the case with most of our rental sets.  Considering that they were produced in small numbers compared with main line makers' production I would expect the chances are probably slim... Survival of most 30AX/PIL era sets seems to be fairly low. 

 I may have some pictures of the shops' window displays that I took from time to time, usually when we had a promotion on, I remember the Tristars being displayed in a 6 set pyramid display in the window so there may be a photo of one, Somewhere... 

I suppose Semple bought the PIL model as it wasn't too old when the Videocolour tube failed and the sets were disposed of by RR. All the Tristar sets I saw were PIL. Maybe the tubes with the best convergence were used on the text models? 

There were two versions one had search and channel up/down buttons the other search only so without a remote you couldn't even change channels! The Semple recons all came with a new pattern handset Konig style.  

 

 
Posted : 02/02/2024 11:03 pm
Till Eulenspiegel
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The first deliveries of the Ferguson TX100 sets started June 1980. The new set was the model 3765 which was the basic 22" model. I'd guess the remote control and teletext versions came along late 1981.  Three years after the HMV and Marconi brand names had been dropped Thorn-EMI Ltd concentrated on their Ferguson brand.

Ferguson became my best selling TV brand.

Till Eulenspiegel.

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 12:42 am
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slidertogrid
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Yes I sold and rented Ferguson sets from 1982 until the Logik fiasco then I closed my account. I did have a few Ultra branded sets then went over to Toshiba. In retrospect Ferguson did us a favour by annoying dealers as lots closed their accounts and like me dodged a bullet by not buying any ICC Thompson cr4p! 

The Tx sets were very good most suffered few faults during their service life we did change a lot of the early focus units though! At least the arcing didn't blow anything else ! The rental sets often went through a few customers and often were still good at 10 years old. 

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 10:23 am
Jayceebee
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As I've mentioned before we had a pre-production TX9 for long term testing housed in a cabinet obviously designed for a 9000. We also had a pre-production TX10 but in a proper cabinet for around nine months prior to it's launch, this used what would have been the 3765 cabinet but with different tuning pot arrangement. I remember the TDA3560 luma/chroma processor had no markings other that a sticker with some sort of factory code in pen and suffered from a limited brightness range. Even when the full production version appeared the brightness range was better but I still felt the range was lacking. The later TDA3561 which was drop in compatible improved matters.

The well known problem with the early focus unit didn't rear it's ugly head until it did battle in the field against the likes of the Calor gas Super Ser and other LPG/Paraffin heaters.

John.

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 1:59 pm
slidertogrid
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There was a local ex-rental flog off shop that sold ex Thorn rentals. They sprayed the front of the cabinet grey and the cabinets black or covered them in 'black ash' sticky back plastic to make the sets look newer and to cover up the scratches, they gave a three month guarantee and most sets struggled to last much longer.

Their favourite trick with the TX10 included unscrewing the arcing focus unit and stringing it up in the cabinet away from the metalwork sometimes wrapping it in thick plastic held in place with wrap ties! Short out the tube heater series resistor and away it went!

We often saw the sets in for repair, usually filthy inside nothing had been done beyond getting a picture on it.  Apparently the shop manager was on first name terms with trading standards officers! They did us a favour because they demonstrated how not to do it. Often we would write the set off and get a sale or rental customer as a result.

When we scrapped the sets I would remove the chassis and chuck the set in the skip in a dismantled state with no back cover. All of the backs were kept in an old outhouse and would go in the next skip first. This prevented the sets from being rescued and coming in for repair again which had happened in the past! Someone at the skip firm had a side line!   

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 6:44 pm
Cathovisor
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Posted by: @jayceebee

@wayned Hmm, not sure about that with CRTs. Before I left the trade the outfit I worked for were about to purchase large quantities of 16:9 Sanyo for our bread and butter models. We queried with the TLO because they were using Philips CRTs and the appalling problems others were having. He assured us that Sanyo were using a better quality version of the CRT. Just a few months later we were ordering CRTs on pallets of 16 every month 🤣.

That has brought back memories of when my studio went widescreen and the transmission monitors were made by Vistek (or was it Electronic Visuals?) - and they had Philips CRTs. They too did not last very long and as a result I rang up Blackburn casting around for spares only to be told "no, no longer manufactured and they have no equivalent". Given that the studio monitor stack was built around these sets, we had to find a solution and readers of a timid nature may wish to look away now.

In the end we bought two Ferguson (or maybe Thomson?) sets - probably the ICC models that Rich loves so much - and gutted them, fitting the tube and chassis into the professional monitor cases. We did rather a good job, we thought; until we found the CRT lugs were too big. There was only one thing for it...

They lasted until the studio's last transmission in 2011.

 

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 8:09 pm
slidertogrid
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Yes I think I got out of the trade just in time! I missed the Philips tube fiasco. The Painter chip problems. And all of the flat panel sets! I really do wonder how the big Philips dealers like Snellings and CF lake coped the losses on rental sets must have been massive and surely customers would have never bought another Philips !  

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 9:01 pm
Cathovisor
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@slidertogrid And where are Philips now in the brown goods sector? We bought a Philips portable TV with a genuinely flat-faced CRT for the bedroom many years ago: not being one to watch TV in bed it was pensioned off and sits in its box in the shed, unused.

 
Posted : 03/02/2024 9:08 pm
ntscuser
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Posted by: @cathovisor
And where are Philips now in the brown goods sector?

The brand name is licensed to TPV in China. Philips receives a 1% royalty on all sales which is more than they ever made on their own production. The tube plant in Eindhoven is now a housing estate.

 

Classic TV Theme Tunes

 
Posted : 04/02/2024 2:04 am
Cathovisor
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@ntscuser How the mighty have fallen...

 
Posted : 04/02/2024 8:56 am
slidertogrid
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Indeed! It it a shame to see what was a fantastic trade go to pot as it has. I really enjoyed my years in the trade it certainly kept us on our feet! The TX range was our mainstay for new sets for a good ten years. I wonder how many 14" 37140/1 s we sold? On a Saturday it wasn't unusual to sell 10 or so. I was forever checking stock supplies. an upstairs storeroom half the size of the showroom was dedicated to new Ferguson stock.

I wonder why they went over to Thompson, it surely cannot be that they weren't making money on the TX range? They were everywhere! Then (in my opinion) they got greedy and did the deal with Dixons which undermined their own faithful dealers. The sales they made to Dixons must have been negated by the lost sales to Ferguson dealers after a short time. Then they must have started to lose dealers which must have compounded the problem. I suppose I may have answered my own question here?

We had a short flirtation with Sharp. Which we found TV wise was worse than crap. New sets would blow up in the showroom before we could sell them! Often with major damage to the panel. Remember the set that almost blew the corner off the PCB near the LOPT? They were the ones! 

Then we secured a deal with Toshiba, they were marvellous in fact so good we offered a rental deal on them that discounted the monthly amount after two years for as long as the customer kept the set, we had this thought that the maintenance cost would be minimal. It was almost nothing in most cases. If I had stuck with Ferguson and rented out the ICC series I would have needed two more engineers and a bigger workshop! 

We kept a service record with the customer's payment record the Toshiba cards were mostly blank with the occasional "set OK, arial unplugged." Or "set OK, Grandchildren fault" (older customers always blamed the Grandchildren didn't they! ) The amount of Philips speaker switches that were pressed by "Grandchildren" was epidemic !)   

 
Posted : 04/02/2024 11:01 am
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