My first TV repair shop in photographs from 1985.
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 26 ส.ค. 2024
- Another item from my vast archives !
Here we have some early photographs dating from 1985 of my first TV repair shop, I started by selling refurbished TVs and the odd video recorder , in the 1990s I dropped second-hand TV sets and moved on to selling only new equipment , I became a Sharp and Samsung retailer and service centre .After my partners decided to retire I moved to a main high street shop, I remained here for a further 17 years, eventually with the death of retail shops due to the rise of the internet I decided to get rid of the high street shop and moved to a 1700 sq feet out of town place with only a small retail area and this is probably end my days . Michael Dranfield . 18-10-2021.
Thank for Trip down memory lane Michael
thankyou for sharing and nice to see a trip down memory lane please keep the videos coming
Many thanks for watching , more to come . just a bit busy at the moment .
@@michaeldranfield7140 cant wait i find it hard to find time myself due to long hours at work study and family to hopefully i will have more time for myself soon for what i enjoy doing
Great memories for you Micheal ! Enjoyed 😊
Many thanks for that.
Interesting times! Thanks for the upload.
Glad you liked it , many thanks for watching .
Old photos aside... that's a "ferocious" wall of component drawers you've got there!
Have a look at my current workshop tour video, I have so many component draws now there's not enough wall space to fit them all on.
What a class shop you had, in many ways similar to the one I spent my youth in (although yours is much neater!) Thanks for sharing Micheal 👍
Many thanks for watching , should have more photos somewhere , you wouldn't think I was tidy now !
Great. Loved the tri cleaner. Still have 2 cans left. Only smell it on birthdays!
Totally agree with previous comments, great memories, I remember doing all of them.
Wow. Thanks michael. A trip down memory lane.👍
yes they were the days when nearly everything could be repaired and spares and service manually were readily available .
You are among the richest people in the world, as you have been able to do what you like most all your life long! I wish I could work in electronics!
Its been a lifelong ambition of mine and I'm still doing the same job now .
Wow that was a blast from the past brings back memories when i was a tv engineer in the 70s and 80s
I was into grundig 5010 and philips g8 g11 back then now retired in the land of the smiles
Repaired all those sets in the past, even the long forgotten Phillips G9 , many thanks for watching .
Wow..That wall of parts drawers ! 👌
Got even more now, I add new parts every week!
@@michaeldranfield7140 Looks amazing. I like seeing a massive collection of semiconductors, all arranged neatly arranged in their values, type / category. Very fascinating to see someone still doing repair work in Electronics, when today service / repair work is slowly fading away. I keeps the mind very sharp. The reward of fixing something complex, is truly inspirational. Glad you stayed with it, all this time.👌
its a lifelong addiction I cant shake off .@@bountyhunter4885
@@michaeldranfield7140 It's all perfect. You know when you're fixing things, it's nice to have an inventory of obsolete components, and some of the most unique parts, no longer being made. Electronic components will always be in demand, especially those from the early days. Keep nostalgic equipment alive. Long after our generation has past, and left this world, leave something for the future to remember us by. 📻 💜
Excellent
Thank you some great memories there remember all those TVs and some great prices on your sets think i've still got a adaptor board for the fidelity 2000 lopt to fit a 3000 memories great days🙂
got some more photos somewhere , I also have one of those fidelity sets but its been on a shelf for years and I am not sure if its a ZX2000 or ZX3000 but hoping one day to do a video of it .
Exactly the sort of place I used to visit when I became a TLO for JVC in 1988. I miss those those days.
TLO is now a thing of the past, no reps , no spares, no service manuals for most sets, component level fault finding is very difficult these days .
Like you I cannot bear to throw away any of my old test equipment even when it has been superseded by newer and better gear. I still have my first multimeter, a Heathkit MM-1U (poor man's AVO!) and a transistor tester I made when I was 18 (in the early 60s).
In reality I have never liked throwing anything away! Like you I still use test equipment from 30 years ago, some thinks like a Zener diode tester I made before they were commercially available, most stuff in that photo I still have.
Although I never got chance to pop in, I remember the shop well.
I used to work as a signalling fault technician for British Rail but repaired TVs and pretty much anything else as a hobby.
Our patch covered Buxton so I would pass regularly down the hill from Fairfield.
The thing that stood out the most was the TV on the little bit of flat roof, I don't know of any other TV shop that had anything like that
At the time I only lived down the bottom of the road , the big house on the left-hand side next to the bridge , if your ever in town you would be most welcome to call in , had a 2 feet fluorescent tube in the TV on the roof and it looked very impressive lit up at night .
You mentioned 'trichloroethylene' as a switch cleaner, but also a solvent for 'liquid paper' correction fluid. The standard solvent for dry cleaners is 'perchloroethylene', which has one less chlorine atom in its molecule. They are both very effective for their purpose, but vapours as well as skin contact is toxic. The next solvent with much less toxicity is iso-propyl alcohol, and combined with aliphatic hydrocarbons, used today...
Use to love the smell back in the day , I remember spilling some on a painted surface and within seconds all the paint bubbled up , I seem to remember this was also used as a degreasing agent in factories .
excellent i wish i had bothered to take photos of the shops i worked in and ran i dont think i ever had as tidy a work shop as yours .
my only regret is not taking enough photos but I do have some more somewhere , you wouldn't think I'm tidy now ! no one ever has a cup of tea here when they see the kitchen !
Antex soldering iron at 03:45 gave me a smile. I'm still using Antex and have an old 25W the red handled one, though I also have an 18W and 25W versions with new yellow handles.
I still have some Antex irons but never ever use them now.
Thanks so much for sharing these images, they remind me so much of my first TV shop which I opened in 1986 with the help of Maggie's government's "Enterprise Allowance Scheme".
Philips G8s, Bush 2-chips & ITT CVC30s were the order of the day, along with Sony C7 & Sanyo VTC5000 Betamaxes. Occasionally I'd get a hold of ex-rental Ferguson 3V23 VHS macines with those notorious rollers that never seemed able to push out a greasy old cassette! I preferred repairing videos, they didn't have the same urgency as TV's.
Happy days.
Repaired all those sets you mention, those were the days when spare parts and service manuals were all readily available and it was so easy to repair things and make very good money , unlike todays sets .
One of the most popular (early) TV was the 9" Bush. Dad was a TV Repair Technician, so we always had a working TV. Back in '62, I remember the very first TV Ad was for "STAG" Cooking Salt. Another early TV was the first Projection TV by Phillips. I was the 'mug' that removed the TV Chassis (at age 13 years), to 'blow down' the TV with the blow-end of a Cylinder Vacuum Cleaner. I used to polish these special concave mirrors of the Phillips Projection TVs with the finest Egyptian Cotton. I think (from memory) that the Projection CRT was only about 4" square. How times have changed! In today's throw-away world, not many persons would reach the heights of your success in repairing almost anything electrical. I am always fascinated by the complexities of PCBs and their functions. You are a rarity, a real wizard.
Awesome! As a kid, we had rental TV's. Usually some old past-it item! I used to watch the repair man when he came round to replace a valve - usually PCL85/805 field output valve. When sets went solid-state, repairs got a bit more difficult!
As a kid we only rented a black and white TV, I would imagine in those days most people rented due to the high cost of television sets.
MD a real trip down memory lane, thank you. You must have been very brave to open a shop at the age of 21. Mind you, at that age I was designing, making and installing control panels for brewery's around the world - all done in my mothers back garden shed, which grew from an 8 by 4 foot into one 21 feet long. Best regards Mark
In the 1980s making money from repairs was so easy , the average price of a basic 20 inch colour TV was something like £300, an awful lot of money then, so repairs and second hand sets were in big demand , like you I started working from home but soon outgrew it .
Brilliant Michael: Thanks for the trip down memory lane, somewhere I still have the Zener diode tester that I built to your design many years ago.
Still using the Zener diode tester , in fact I used it a couple of weeks ago on a LG soundbar to identify some zeners with a strange number !
I used to go to the spares supplier SEME and Willow Vale.
I still have a can of Servisol foam cleanser
Had accounts with both WVE and SEME but I closed my account with SEME when I ordered 1000 scart leads instead of 100 and they wouldn't take them back.
@@michaeldranfield7140 Ouch
Cool...
Happy days, now long in the past.
Nice to hear mention of the Bush T20. I repaired lots of those in the 1980's, they were popular sets and I found them easy to repair having read a good article in 'Television'. I don't remember who the author was. Another RMB set, I think it was Z718, with it's huge LOPT and unregulated HT rail. Interesting times.
Funny enough while tidying up a few days ago I found some 910 ohm resistors that were a common failling on the T20.
I have a couple of sets here , buried at the moment though , that might be Z718 chassis sets, I need to get them out one day , would make a good video.
That was s great video Michael. I started when I was 24 with a tiny side street shop. Eventually moved to the high street in 85 I think it was. Just before the whole market crashed
Looks like a nice cassette deck you didn't mention
A very nice shop you opened back in 1985, well equipped. I reconized much of the test gear, scope, and the DC power supply, I presume there was a VARIVAC, color bar pattern generaor, alingement generator, vector scope, CRT rejuvinator high impendance VOM or VTVM. In addition to test cables, high voltage meter.
Never had a vectorscope, interestingly enough all of that test equipment In the photo I still have and use today .
i still have one aerosol can of trichloroethane, useful stuff 😉
I use to like the smell
I think zenith and rca are the best TV sets in that time
I remember the Pye Chelsea's my boss used to use as a loan set for those having repairs done.
They were the only TV you could switch on drenched in condensation from the back of a cold van. If they didn't start up we'd use a hairdryer on the back of the tube to warm them up.
I remember the Pye chelsea and also the 731 chassis set with its swing out boards, must be getting on for 40 years last time I saw those !
I remember all those tvs from that time even those videolab vhs tapes , even your current spares drawers with dymo labels remind me of our old spares stock drawers
still Got stuff here from my childhood !!
I dont like throwing things away as you may have noticed .
Interesting, I got in the business in 1986 I worked for someone else we mostly specialized in Sony and Panasonic repair.
Just 1 year after me !
I bet your not still doing TV repairs now , take me back to the old days any time , its no fun now .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Oh yes those days of repairing consumer electronics ended for me 20 years ago. To think of all the stuff us repairman repaired and is now in the junk pile.
@@benshow3000 There is quite a big demand now though for older TV stuff , I saw a Thorn 2000 chassis TV set a couple of months ago on e bay and bidding was over £600 with still time to go .
I’d actually pay for a tour around your shop haha, such impressive equipment Michael I don’t know what half of it does 😱 Nice one fair play to you 👍
If your ever in my area no need to buy a tour ticket , just call in, no one ever has a cup of tea here though when they see the kitchen !
Hi we use to have a old decca tv
i have a a panasonic quintrix a toshiba blackstripe & a matsui tv from 80s still, when my current lcd dies, i will go back to them, as you struggle to plug old skool stuff into new tv's & even with a composite to hdmi converter some tv sets wont show the stuff up properly
Panasonic did make some good TV s in the day , easy to work on not like some sony stuff , I think there will be demand for analogue TV sets in the not too distant future as retro games consoles are making a strong come back and some new LCD TV s now dont have analogue built in any more as its over 10 years since we went digital .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Indeed, Panasonic did a rather excellent job of localising the design of their products for the UK market, and what with the bulk of assembly done in Wales.
Their sets were always very reliable, though I found the later (late eighties/ early nineties) ones with a recessed SCART socket a bit of a pain; almost like they wanted you to buy their own specific SCART cable! You invariably ended up removing the outer plastic cover around the plug to solve the issue!
Yes, CRT tellies are still very much in favour with retro gamers. I still keep several alongside two professional 14" JVC monitors. I currently have in storage: A Panasonic 24", Philips and NordMende 10", Bush 17", Salora 28", and an unusual 20" Sony widescreen..
wow
Long time ago now.!
@@michaeldranfield7140 I believe it ... in my case the profession I wanted to do.
I think weller and ungar where the best soldering iron
I had a weller 100 watt soldering gun in the 1970 s and I still have it !
Hi Michael, I noticed in this video that most of the TVs in your old photos has picture tubes mounted such that you could see this thick black glass black edge which I remember from Germany (lived there 4 years as kid in the early 70s). As I recall, the picture tubes mounted like that tended to protrude a bit out of the front of the TV set. In North America, the picture tubes were always mounted somewhat back from the from of the TV set and the edge was covered with a plastic frame such that you could not see the edge - only the active picture area was visible. I have seen some TVs like that in your other videos (ie Sharp C 1831H Vintage colour TV from the 1970 s). Was there any advantage of either way of mounting the picture tube. Or was it simply convention that manufacturers in Europe did it one way and in North America did it the other way? Thanks for all the videos! Regards from Canada!
4:20 from my memory, those Sharp machines used to wear out heads too soon.
There were some models, I think Panasonic where the back tension band got contaminated and wore down the heads, correct setting up of the back tension required an expensive gauge and if not done to the manifactures specified tourqe the new heads would wear out just as quick if not quicker, I still have my guage and all the special tools for VHS along with a beta excentricity guage, all not used for many years now although I still repair the odd few VHS machines from time to time, I still have thousands of parts still in stock, some back to the sharp VC7300!
Michael, have recently discovered your tv repair channel, have much enjoyed videos,
I bought a 1980's oscilloscope at the Newbury radio meet last Sunday - in superb condition - instruction booklet still in it's sealed packet! the seller said it worked but the display was not very bright so I took a punt at £30 - sadly I cannot get any waveforms on the crt at all - only a bright dot when I press the beam finder button - tried feeding in various signals but nothing on the display at all,
I wonder if this is something you may be able to assess/fix? it is such a lovely bit of kit I would really like to get it working - I have managed to download the full service manual so have all the info available - it's a Tektronix 664 - circa 1985 vintage, you may even have one yourself amongst your test kit as these were designed to work with TV's as well as general stuff,
Any help would be appreciated,
Regards Nick (Southampton)
scopes is something I have not really looked at before but if you have a single bright spot on the screen it would suggest both timebases have stopped which I would have thought very unusual unless they both share something in common such as a power supply rail .
@@michaeldranfield7140 Hello Michael, many thanks for reply, as this video was posted 2 years ago I was not sure of a reply, anyway - since my first message I have made some progress with this Oscilloscope - yes you are right- both timebases are absent - the beam finder works ok - so don't suspect the crt or high voltage ccts are down, I did some tests on the psu and the -8v supply is down to 5.7v also the 5v+ supply was low as well - and as both these supply rails share the same op-amp, reading the test voltages, it looks as if this has failed - I have ordered a replacement MC 1458P so will get psu outputs up to spec and see what happens. The fortunate thing with the Tektronix is I have been able to download the repair manual which has soo much information in it and the Oscilloscope itself is a superbly built piece of kit with plenty of test points and voltage readings printed on the cct boards. Hopefully will get it working soon.
Will let you know how I get on,
Are you planning to upload any more tv repair videos?
Regards Nick
Michael - sorry - the Tektronic is a model 466! not 664! nick
This brings back happy memories, I worked for an independent repair shop when I left school from 1979 to1985, a very similar setup.
Great to see a Thorn 1500, must have fixed 100's of these, most were rental sets, soon got to know all the stock faults!
Certinaley were happy days compared to today of un repairable sets and no service manuals, loved the 1500 my favourite set.
@@michaeldranfield7140 I agree, I still do the odd repairs on flat screen sets, but most are given to me after the owner buys a new set!
I am amazed you are still in business, all the local repair shops are sadly long gone round here, I work from home & have had to diversify to repairing computers & small appliances to make ends meet, but still really enjoy restoring 1940's -1960's valve TV's & radios, these are so simple to repair & a joy to work on, unlike the modern SMT stuff.
Anyone in there right mind wouldn't repair TVs for a living now, I don't make a living from this job anymore but repairing TVs is the only thing I ever wanted to do and I can't stop, with my soldering skills I could be a plummer and earn £500 plus a week but I wouldn't be happy so I keep going regardless, I have another source of income and very low overheads so that's what keeps me going, this week repairs have only just made me less than £100 but I can't stop, it's a lifelong addiction.
@@michaeldranfield7140 A man after my own heart, I have been repairing radios & TV's since childhood, still at it over 50 years later!
I got into industrial electronics in 1986 until 2009 when I took voluntary redundancy, since then I converted my garage into a workshop and take on repairs to fund my vintage TV & radio collection, like you, I really enjoy nothing more than repairing & restoring obsolete technology.
Same here, been repairing since childhood but as I work for myself I don't have the option for taking Earley redundancy, if I wasn't into cars into a big way I would have already converted my garage into a workshop and worked from home long ago, in an ideal world i would win the lottery, buy a very big house work from home use the garage for my cars and be in the same place I was in the 70s when my parents were alive and I didn't have a care in the world.
I think zenith and rca where the best tv sets
we dont have those brands in our country but I bet a lot of your sets are now made by Vestel like ours are !
Did you do any of the old decker sets
Fascinating. What sort of training did that young lad have to be able open his own shop?
No training at all , I am completely self taught, but I was buying Practical Wireless magazine from the age of 10 .Just needed someone with money to buy a shop , hence the partnership .
Thanks for sharing, you had an excellent shop. Was running the shop a good living in the 80’s, did you sell many TV sets or were repairs the main source of income.
In the 80s making money on repairs was easy , I started off selling refurbished ex rental TV s and repairs but into the 1990s dropped refurbished sets and only sold brand new , a basic video retailed for £299 which gave a £75 clear profit for no effort .