From: "Glenn Meadows" 

>I never did the color TV,

I did, 27" Top of the line.  Built in a friends basement in Atlanta,
loaded it in the back of my Volvo 1800 SE, drove it to NYC, and bought the
cabinet at the store there, had it delivered to my parents home, and
installed TV. They had a GREAT color TV for many years.  Worked first time
turned on.  Had to calibrate it of course, but it had all the test
generators built in for convergence, alignment, etc.

Left the manual inside the cabinet, I think once or twice they had to call
a local repair tech when something didn't work right.  He had the full
circuits and diagnostics to repair.  Never failed to get it working.
.

--

Glenn M.
"Frank Haber"  wrote in message
news:46681071$1{at}w3.nls.net...
> No, the Heath phenomenon was deeper than that.  I'm a bit older than most
> of you guys, so here's boring speech number 127x10^4:
>
> 1. There was a generation of American boys (only) with a history of
> tinkering (cars, farm machinery, etc.).  They loved the mixture of theory
> and dirty hands that was point-point wiring. Their fathers had RF burns
> from their ham transmitters as duelling scars, and thus were sympathetic
> to their efforts. Dad had ruined *his* father's rugs with liquid borax
> from the electrolytics; a few solder splashes on the furniture were easily
> ignored.
>
> 2. The era was analog.  Calibrated, temperature-compensated measurement
> equipment was insanely expensive, and needed perpetual calibration. For us
> peasants, there were ways (be happy with 3%; take home the calibrated gear
> from the lab and calibrate yours as a tertiary standard for the
> neighborhood).
>
> 3. Audio amplification was also uniquely suited to cheap kits.  There was
> lots of value added by the assembly-line girls soldering discrete
> components to tube sockets and lug strips.  A boy could do that cheaper
> (early outsourcing?).
>
> 4. A boy could use lead-bearing solder, keep a mouth full of Cd-plated
> screws, and no one screamed.  The line cords were also longer than a foot.
>
> 5. As someone has said, the Heath directions were magnificent.  For those
> who knew what they were doing, the step-by-step "released the
brain."  You
> got a warm feeling from following the directions, but it was entirely
> separate from, say, appreciating the circuit.  You could also add your own
> [stupid] little touch, like squared-off wire runs and shipshape lacing.
> For the ignorant, the Zen of professionally directed assembly was reward
> enough.
>
> 6. For test and measurement gear, Heath stuff was very tweakable.  Subbing
> some 1% components pocketed at some fancy lab by a father, neighbor, etc.
> gave you real accuracy.  For the friendless, there was always shaving
> molded carbon resistors, nail polish, and prayer (for constant temperature
> and low humidity).
>
> 7. The Heath guys were very good at designing for low component count.
> The line girls didn't begrudge us our scabbing - they packed the brown
> paper bags accurately, most of the time.  Everything was manageable, and
> the Heath store would cheerfully fix the backward-diode or dead-transistor
> sad cases.
>
> Flys in the ointment:
>
> 8. Competition: Dyna trumped Heath at its own game for amplifiers.  Eico
> had a couple of ingenious circuits (a really good AM tunerwas one), and
> undercut Heath's prices on their variants of the pervasive
> standard|knockoff circuits of the age - Hewpy's audio oscillator, DuMont's
> oscilloscope.  Lafayette had junk with part-Japanese construction.
>
> 9. Styles changed. Hot tubes on cheapo phenolic circuit boards never
> pleased me; nor did the lifted traces and charred lug points when you had
> to solder two 2W resistors to same. I never did the color TV, but I
> kibitzed as two were built.  Neither worked without repair.  Too
> complicated for home construction? I thought so.  Early transistor audio
> sounded absolutely horrible.  Unsocketed 14-pin ICs were a real problem,
> when half the chips in the kit were bad (no one could afford component
> test).  And so it goes.
>
>

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