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Back in the mid to late 70's when I was servicing TV's, there were two things that myself and a friend did on New Years:
(1) When the new phone books came out, we looked through "Television" in the yellow pages to see who was new and who went out of business. There were always 4-6 pages!
(2) Pick up the latest retail tube price list from out distributors-there were three or four from different distributors and I still have most of them! The first tube we would look up would be a 6JE6/6LQ6 to see what the latest price was! They would list in the $17 bracket back then.
There was a "TV shop" here in Knoxville in the late 60's to early 70's (if you want to call it that) called "Big Orange TV Service" that took up a whole page. (later a half page) All of the shops would talk about them as their van was a virtual tube warehouse as that was all they could really do. It was full of Zenith tubes on long trays in their Ford van. (I remember Bobby Parker who was Mgr/parts sales of Graybar-Zenith Distributor saying, "Well, at least they use a good tube!)The ad would say that we will fix your TV in your home or no charge-we will not take your TV out of your home. They butchered more TV's and it was a father/son operation. The son was goofy looking at that time with waist length hair with a hair brush attached to his belt like a cell phone today. (don't write me about this-I had long hair too) I remember running a service call to an elderly woman's house for a 1959 Zenith B&W TV with power tuning. They were built like a National Cash Register in those days-never gave much trouble but you didn't want to disassemble one either! Big Orange had taken it apart completely for whatever reason-couldn't fix it and just threw everything back in the set in pieces and said there would be no charge and left! They apparently couldn't do any actual trouble shooting-just plug tubes. I'm sure the ad attracted the masses and if the set was beyond their capability, they left usually damaging your set. There were many sets that they filled up with new tubes and actually got out the door with payment in hand only to find the set still was not fixed. Don't know whatever happened to them either. No one ever knew where their "shop" was either-most likely the van.
Later I worked for Dan Geddings TV Service. He was a good Zenith tech but what a redneck!! He really was a good man but it had to be a Zenith and only that brand. He hated RCA because of what they did to him in the mid '50's. One day he reached for a 12BY7 tube and in the Zenith box was one but with an Admiral brand on it. Boy was he mad! Yup, he took it back to Graybar. (tube manufacturers always traded back and forth as it was expensive to set up tooling for a particular tube. Everyone knew what others did and bought so many pieces to save their cost and would package in your brand. Light bulb manufacturers did/do it too)
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julian
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