Re: Harmonizer question?

Lumpy expounded in news:6sk9mhF6qhlrU1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:

Charmed Snark wrote:

Absolutely. Our kids came along before the IR remote
controls did, however. So call me bitter. ;-)

When I was a kid, back in the early 12th century,
I remember a "remote control" we had for our TV.

I came along later, much after the Lawrence Welk
generation, but I was the remote for our B&W TV
(we only had one, until later, when I dragged more
home and fixed them up).

.. You'd push either the UP or DOWN
buttons and it would make the motorized
tuner in the TV start kerclunking around
the dial from channel 2 through 13.

I was that motor..

UHF
channels had a separate converter box.
Even in LA, there were only two UHF
channels, 28 (educational TV) and
34 (Mexican).

By my time, there were quite a few UHF channels
(even in Canada, eh), but you had be prepared
to do a lot of knob twiddling and rabbit ear
adjustments. UHF channels were especially fussy,
because just be standing near one, affected
fuzzy UHF channels..

The "remote" was connected to the TV with
a thick cable, thicker than a guitar cord.
It was permanently wired to the TV. When you
wanted to store the remote you wound the cable
around a pair of hooks, same kind that you'd
typically find on an upright vacuum cleaner.

I later added a wired remote switch for the
speaker. That was our "mute" button. But that
was only when I was old enough to be trusted
modifying the family TV set.

You still had to walk up to the TV to adjust
the volume. If you opened the little plastic
door on the REAR of the TV you could adjust
TONE (a simple hi-cut filter like in a guitar)
and BRIGHT/CONTRAST and that vertical roll
thing, I don't remember what that was called.
I guess those "advanced user controls" were
behind the plastic door so that untrained
humans wouldn't mess with the settings.

Yea, I've kind of forgotten about that, but let's
see there was:

- horizontal frequency
- vertical frequency
- horizontal and vertical linearity
- vertical sync (and probably horiz sync)
- brightness
- contrast (in addition to the outer contrast
knob on the front of the TV)
- focus

Then when colour arrived (after I left home of
course!), there were oodles more controls to deal
with colour settings.

When the TV didn't work, the guy came out with
his giant mirror on a tripod. He'd set up the
mirror in front of the TV while he was working
behind the box and plug in his huge soldering
iron that was about the size of a clarinet.

My mother would hold the mirror ;-) A tripod
was too high tech for us.

Those guys always had really groovy tool boxes
with a gazillion different vacuum tubes.

At the time, I drooled over those. Now you see
them at hamfests, for very affordable prices.
But usually after all the 12AX7 and power tubes
have been picked out of them. Lots of 5U4GB,
5Y<something> rectifier tubes etc.. I used to
know the names of most of them.

I remember my mom complaining once that it
cost $17 for the repair guy to come out and
replace a tube.

Lumpy

I might still have (somewhere) the "Do It Yourself
TV Repair" books that I cut my teeth on. Things
like "how to bleed the picture tube stored voltage"
before you repair etc. Good things to know!

Speaking of collecting, how many here have saved
books/stuff from the year 2000 scare?

How many still have generators? ;-) I didn't
worry that much, but if I had wanted one, it would
have been easy to justify at the time.

Snark.
.

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