Philips TX mono portable.

[linescan87]

Hi,
I was given this today by a pal who does the occasional house clearance, he told me it had been out in the rain for a while. Anyway up on the bench with the back off I got the hair dryer to it, the chassis had been well drenched.

Dried out, power was applied and I soon found out that the switch was faulty. It would only come just past the "click". I opened the switch up and found the little lever was snapped in half. I decided to fit a separate switch, I found a little toggle switch that fitted perfectly where the headphone socket was.

Cheers, John Joe.

[mark pirate]

I have a couple of these with the white cabinet, they were both rescued from skips
both were actually working, just needing the push button tuner & pots to be cleaned, I guess your set, like mine, came with the preset door missing?

Mark

[linescan87]

Hi mark, amazingly the door was in place.

John Joe.

[Richard_FM]

I've been keeping an eye out for one of these, especially a Pye 1045 as my Gran used to have one for her caravan, making good use of the 12v socket to run it off a car battery.

[Studio263]

What a super looking workbench!

I really liked the TX, but we had a lot of LOPT problems with them. An interesting quirk is that the 12V DC input socket is connected to part of the AC bridge rectifier, presumably as some sort of reverse polarity protection. An unexpected consequence of this is that when the switch inside the socket starts messing about (as it does) the result is a single hum bar, since only half the rectifier is working.

[mark pirate]

Hi mark, amazingly the door was in place.

Lucky man!
Even seeing these sets at boot sales 20+ years ago, they always seemed to be missing

They do produce a good picture, quite a usable little set.
Considering the large numbers produced, they seem to be quite thin on the ground now. No doubt just thrown out when cheap colour portables became available.

Mark

[unitaudio]

One of these was my first telly. Bought it from a mate for £10. Never had any problems, always a good picture, tuning door was in place and all I did was drag a damp cloth over it and press it into use.

Hooked it up to my stereo via the headphone socket which was mono of course but the sound was nice and crisp with surprisingly good bass. Ideal for watching "The Tube" and other music programmes.

I eventually gave it to my sister and I don't know what happened to it, I doubt she took it with her when she emigrated to Florida!

Great seeing one again, took me back.

Regards,
Paul

[dazzlevision]

Is your set an Irish market version with UHF and VHF tuner coverage?

[emeritus]

Our first TV! We couldn't afford one when we got married, so my wife used to watch things like Wimbledon at a friend's. She was ill in bed on finals day, so I bought one of these at a local shop and wheeled it home on the handlebars of my pushbike. Long since replaced by a colour set. Thanks for the memory!

[dj_fivos_sak]

I have one of these but mine is a little bit different.
https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/...d.php?t=145401

[linescan87]

Now I knew I had another one of these around, sadly it hadn't faired as well as it has a cracked cabinet. As I was preparing them picture, disaster struck, a massive hum bar on the one I fixed yesterday. After a bit of head scratching around the power supply, the penny dropped. Sure enough, the switch in the dc socket on the back was intermittent. Thanks too Tim for mentioning that earlier.

An opertunity too compare the two sets side by side, they appear to have different crts fitted. Although the type numbers are the same (12VCUP4) they have different phosphor colours and the shape of the bowl is quite different.

Yes Daz, they are fitted with VHF/UHF tuners.

Cheers, John Joe.

[Richard_FM]

I've been trying to work out all the different places Philips made the 12 inch TX sets.

Singapore & Taiwan are listed on radiomuseum.org, but most other places Philips had a factory seem to have examples, though at least a 12B710 has a close up photo of the seriel number sticker with Made In England listed.

[dazzlevision]

Originally Posted by Richard_FM

I've been trying to work out all the different places Philips made the 12 inch TX sets.

Singapore & Taiwan are listed on radiomuseum.org, but most other places Philips had a factory seem to have examples, though at least a 12B710 has a close up photo of the seriel number sticker with Made In England listed.

Serial numbers starting with HU were made in the former Pye factory in Lowestoft.

[emeritus]

Mine was made in England. I don't have the exact model or serial number.

[mark pirate]

Both of my sets were made in Singapore.
Interesting to see even your damaged set still retains it's preset door
These must have been made in huge numbers and sold in many countries.

Philips consumer electronics was a huge global concern back then, it all ended in early 2013 when Philips Electronics, once one of the world's biggest manufacturers of television sets, agreed to sell its audio and video business to Japan's Funai Electric Co for 150 million euros (£130 million).

Mark

[dj_fivos_sak]

Mine was made in Holland and assembled in Greece. Built around 1981.

[ben]

Not seen one in Spain. The couple of 12v monochrome ones I have collected have been squat/square black cased jobs.

[Welsh Anorak]

I see your first one is serial number 000009!

[Nickthedentist]

...and 0000742 is pretty low as as well.

My granny had one of these as a spare set. It was reliable but the picture on my Ferguson equivalent was better IMHO.

When at university in the 1990s, I had a creamy white one for a while, thrown out as a non-worker by one of the many secondhand shops in the seedy studenty area around the edge of the campus. I can't remember what was wrong with it, but it wasn't much and then it served me well for a long time. In the end I traded it in to the shop I rescued it from, in part exchange for a pristine 1930s Ferguson radio which I still have. I think they put my old telly up for sale for £25.

Happy days!

Nick.

[Maarten]

Originally Posted by mark pirate

Both of my sets were made in Singapore.
Interesting to see even your damaged set still retains it's preset door
These must have been made in huge numbers and sold in many countries.

Philips consumer electronics was a huge global concern back then, it all ended in early 2013 when Philips Electronics, once one of the world's biggest manufacturers of television sets, agreed to sell its audio and video business to Japan's Funai Electric Co for 150 million euros (£130 million).

Mark

Not entirely, but the story is not less tragic.

In the late 1990's, the Spanish TV factory that would be closed down, was sold to the management and became Tecnimagen. They continued to develop and sell TV sets for a few years under their own brand and house brands, but didn't really have the resources to be successful with LCD sets and went bankrupt.

In 2002, Philips sold the rights to produce VHS recorders under the Philips brand to Funai (the factory was scrapped, Funai used their own shitty design).

In 2006, they sold the Taiwanese monitor branch (who also produced low end TV sets like this TX and later a few small screen LCD sets) to the other Taiwanese giant TPV (the quality mostly remained, so I consider this a neutral move). The Italian monitor branch F.I.M.I. remained (for medical production) and was later sold to Barco (excellent choice, the only real highlight in this piece of history). A Novo Displays may have also been split off around that time, I'm not sure.

In 2008, they sold the North American production facilities and the rights to produce TV sets for North America and part of Asia to Funai.

From 2012 to 2014 Philips transferred TV production and the rights to use the Philips name for TV sets in most of the world, to TPV. Note that TPV as a monitor and low end TV manufacturer didn't have any experience to design higher end TV sets, so there was at least a limited transfer of design and production knowledge and a small development staff remains in Gent, Belgium. Possibly a future highlight in relative terms, but for now I consider it a mild faillure (only mild because Philips own production quality was already going down by that time).

In 2014, the A/V branch (audio, DVD, accessories) was to be sold to Funai but Funai didn't come through so it was eventually sold to Gibson Innovations, preserving part of the old Philips design and research facilities. Gibson went bankrupt earlier this year and most facilities closed down. The rights for the Philips name on A/V stuff were given to TPV, who (just like with TV sets) doesn't have any experience with that whatsoever. I hope some of the Hong Kong and Singapore staff were hired by TPV.