Worth saving?

[slidertogrid]

My mate has saved me a few T.V sets from skips over the last year, a Decca Bradford, A Pye K30 (which I did a thread about) and a maroon 1591 HMV mono portable.

Yesterday he arrived with this Matsui portable... He said he wouldn't normally have bothered with it but it was in it's original box with the instruction book and remote control, even the headphone earpiece.

I tested it and it shows a distorted raster. I have a horrible feeling it might be the scancoils faulty? ISTR it was a reasonably common fault with these .
I haven't really got the time to have a look at it at the moment.
Is it worth saving? Put it in my (already fairly full ) loft for another day? Or is it just junk that I should send back to whence it came?

Rich.

[paulsherwin]

It probably has no monetary value even if fully working, so it's only worth bothering about if you have a use for it or you want to fix it as an exercise.

[G6Tanuki]

Could be worth saving - such cheap-and-nasty portables were commonly used with first-generation home computers (XZ81s, Commodore-64s and the like) and the recent upsurge in 'retro gaming' could make it worth something.

[Nickthedentist]

Is that a Nikkai chassis? If so, that answers your Q!

[ben]

That was my first colour tv! Mine came second hand from an attic sale or somewhere similar. Although I scrapped it about 10 years ago (audio o/p stage fried IIRC) I may still have the scan coils if you want them!

check it hasn't been dropped and suffered cracked print or soldering, and also any caps in the flyback cct.

Those black square sets are not as common as they once were. I like them as they stack easily, unlike the late 90s offerings.

[Panrock]

The black square Nikkai was the set on which the MkI Retrovisor was based. Like them or loathe them, this chassis did give a very good picture.

Steve

[steve1010uk]

Those Matsui sets did suffer badly from scan coil problems due to corroded copper windings caused by the glue attaching the rubber wedges between coils and tube, occasionally the windings could be repaired if not too corroded,

Often the corrosion caused arcing which caused the failure of the line output transistor.

Steve

[Lloyd 1985]

I fixed one of these about 9 years ago for someone at work! It had the same distorted raster as that, and it wouldn’t stay switched on for more than a few seconds and smelt of burning. Sure enough the scan could had been eaten by the rubber wedges! I had a spare set of coils so did a swap ( they were from a modern Philips tv!) and got it running with a good picture, slight convergence errors in the corners which were only noticeable when using Teletext.

Worth saving? I’d say so, they must be a dying breed by now, and retro gamers might be interested in it for playing their old games consoles on, might make 30 quid on eBay if you try selling it!

Regards
Lloyd

[Welsh Anorak]

Like Lloyd, we used to swap the scan coils over with ones from Philips tubes as we had quite a number of these and the originals were impossible to get. A bit of fiddling with the line output tuning and convergence rings and the results were acceptable, certainly for the second set market, and meant many sets were given a new lease of life.

[Richard_FM]

Originally Posted by G6Tanuki

Could be worth saving - such cheap-and-nasty portables were commonly used with first-generation home computers (XZ81s, Commodore-64s and the like) and the recent upsurge in 'retro gaming' could make it worth something.

Agreed, it seems retro-gamers are cottoning on to the sort of sets their devices were originally used with are getting rarer.

[mark pirate]

I have the Teletext version of this set, the only TV I bought brand new back in 1987 for the sum of £180!
It got plenty of use and has only been repaired once due to a Teletext fault.
It too has it's original box, loop aerial, instructions etc. Not been used for over 12 years, now in my overcrowded loft along with a non remote version I rescued for spares

I think it is worth saving, they do produce an excellent picture, these sets were very popular back in the day.
I expect most were thrown out due to the digital switch over.

Is that a Nikkai chassis? If so, that answers your Q!

I may be wrong, but I think the chassis was made by Orion.

Mark

[ben]

The drawback is these were non-scart sets, not sure if the chassis was at half mains potential... if so, it would be tricky to fit an input.

[Welsh Anorak]

Yes - these were made by Orion and had a half-mains (yes, I know) chassis.
Years ago we had one in from a nice lady who told me her daughter was getting a shock from the aerial lead. I was obviously concerned and found that the aerial socker must have broken - not uncommon - and instead of replacing the small unit with the isolating capacitors which was an easy and cheap repair, the previous 'repairer' had used a male/female flylead straight into the tuner. I told the very concerned customer that her daughter could have had a very severe shock, so she went back to the repairer (it was a 'proper' shop) all guns blazing as you'd expect. I then heard the shop owner was bad-mouthing me all over the place for getting him into trouble!
It closed not long after....

[Lloyd 1985]

Here you go, some pictures of the one I got going again back in 2010! Also a shot of the original scan coils with a label on them, just in case it's important. The pictures on the set were taken off air from good old analogue, the Teletext page being one about the digital switchover. This was all done at work (no, we weren't a TV repair centre!! We made lift control panels!) when there was nothing to do after the boss did a runner...

Regards,
Lloyd

[Red to black]

The keystone distortion on those small 90 degree tubes are a sure tell tale sign that the scan coils are definitely U/S for all of the reasons previous posters have said, it ended up quite a common fault back in the day.

[Welsh Anorak]

If you have great patience it is possible to strip down the damaged area (it's obvious when you remove the coils) and rewire it. I've done it once or twice when the damage was not severe, but I think yours might be beyond that. As I said earlier, you might like to find a set of 14" scan coils and experiment with them. You won't get perfect results, but they can be acceptable.
BTW. don't run it like that for long as the line output transistor will object in the usual way...

[AJSmith625]

Having just read this thread, in the interest of safety. As already said above most of these sets being quite early colour portables before scart sockets were the norm had live (half mains potential) chassis. However, there was one Matsui / Saisho of that vintage which I cannot remember the model numbers but i am pretty sure it was an Orion chassis, was fitted with audio/video input phono sockets and an AV/TV slide switch at the rear of the set. These were wired into circuit using opto-couplers to provide mains isolation. As this was deemed not to conform to British electrical safety standards the official Mastercare modification was to remove all wiring between these sockets and the main chassis. Stickers were applied next to the sockets and to the instruction book saying that this facility did not apply to this model. Thought I would just mention this in case one had slipped through the net.

Alan.

[Nickthedentist]

ISTR reading something in Television about the scan coil problem presenting a shock hazard somehow too, but I could be wrong.

[Welsh Anorak]

I don't remember that, but a more likely possibility would be the fire safety aspect, though I think the line transistor would have failed long before any risk of fire. Another remote possibility would be a punch through to the CRT neck (like the G11) but I never saw anything like this.
I think the set referred to with the AV switch was from a different manufacturer, possibly Nikkai.