Sharp TS-103 14" Japanese market TV restoration

[TV-collector]

Hi,
I remember this? 50s japanese movie.
I saw it in the 70s and it teached me to search for an old japanese TV set!
One set was in the laboratories of the creator of the animal.

Would you like to point me to a free site to watch it again.
I am common with vintage japanese TVs today!

Regards,
TV-collector

[kramden66]

When I can I will try to take pictures of the TV sets , I don't think the movie is on line for free

[cj_reha]

Finally wrapped the Sharp up for good! Work got really busy for a time and hobbyist stuff got put on the back burner for a bit, but I finally put the finishing touches on the restoration. I am glad it was relatively straightforward to get working.

Really the only complaint I have left is there being too much width, requiring the vertical being cranked to compensate. I don't believe the chassis has a width adjustment so the best course of action would probably be trying different horizontal output tubes, but considering it is entirely original with all Sharp-branded tubes, I'm inclined to leave it. Anything that isn't a test pattern specifically designed to amplify flaws looks just fine, and this set is really more of an interactive display piece rather than anything I'll ever use as a daily driver. It's firmly good enough!

Also, through cleaning the safety glass and CRT, I discovered it has a defect! There's a super tiny bubble in the face of the picture tube in the lower left corner. I don't think I've ever seen that before.

Hopefully more to come soon. I have a handful of interesting Japanese color sets in the restore queue and I think they will make very fun threads!

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by cj_reha

Really the only complaint I have left is there being too much width, requiring the vertical being cranked to compensate.

Should be able to reduce width by increasing value of resistor feeding the H.output tube's screen grid. Of course HV will be reduced commensurately, which usually is tolerable.

[cj_reha]

After a number of years, I finally tracked down the schematic for this set! I've been importing some service data compilations for Japanese-market TVs, and one of the volumes has the TS-103 in it (along with many of their other early sets, back to their first, the TV3-14T). I suppose I've got to eat three-year-old crow; TV-collector was completely right about its age and I was wrong! The release year is listed as Showa 36 (1961)



Good to finally have some concrete data on it in case it breaks in the future. But I have to say, it has been strikingly reliable aside from some fiddly tube sockets

Full-res picture of the schematic here: https://imgur.com/a/xbwnyf7

[Username1]

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Good Job! Nice Set! Sharp made some top notch stuff back in the day.....

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[TV-collector]

Hi,
That is good news, some things take a while, sometimes years.....
I know, what I am talking about.......
Time is running like sand......

It is a problem, that japanese collectors doesn't share informations with us.
I have one good friend over there, but he doesn't collect TVs or has friends in this TV busyness.

Some years ago, I made bad experiences with the boss of the japanese collectors club.
He wanted to know, how I could find him online and who is the (bad) guy, who bought me all the old radios, TVs and shipped them to Germany!

I had to search for him here for a source of vintage transistors, but the other way round he didn't answer my questions about schematics and missing knobs.

Another problem is the complicated language.

It is easy, to get in touch with collectors in Europe, north & south America. But not with japanese collectors.
If they were interested, they could show their stuff here or in an european forum.
It is maybe different to the audio-fools.

Happy weekend,
TV-collector

[cj_reha]

Originally Posted by TV-collector

Hi,
It is a problem, that japanese collectors doesn't share informations with us.
I have one good friend over there, but he doesn't collect TVs or has friends in this TV busyness.

Some years ago, I made bad experiences with the boss of the japanese collectors club.
He wanted to know, how I could find him online and who is the (bad) guy, who bought me all the old radios, TVs and shipped them to Germany!

I had to search for him here for a source of vintage transistors, but the other way round he didn't answer my questions about schematics and missing knobs.

Another problem is the complicated language.

It is easy, to get in touch with collectors in Europe, north & south America. But not with japanese collectors.
If they were interested, they could show their stuff here or in an european forum.
It is maybe different to the audio-fools.

Happy weekend,
TV-collector

I've had the same experience! The Japanese collectors are a more insular hobbyist community than any other group I've ever tried to contact or be a part of. I am acquaintances with one sympathetic collector who has helped me with some hard-to-find service data (mostly sending me physical copies in the mail), but the language barrier makes communication difficult, and he's pretty apprehensive about sending parts. One of my late friends was a prolific collector of vintage Japanese computer systems and had the same problems, with one Japanese collector telling him off for stealing their "cultural artifacts"

[Electronic M]

What surprises me is that Japanese collectors aren't on this forum and other American forums using us as a resource to purchase Japanese made US market TVs... There's still a good number of surviving sets across the US, both Japan and the US use NTSC (yeah there's only workable channel overlap on the upper half of VHF and probably UHF) so compatibility with their local standards would be fairly good, and there were many cosmetically (if not also electrically) unique Japanese made US only models.

As a collector of primarily American TVs (the number of Japanese sets I have is pretty good too), part of me sees stuff like European adapted American GE portacolors, PAL Demodulator Hybrid Zeniths in the hands of foreign collectors and thinks "I'd like to import one of those to the states"..... There ought to be someone in the Japanese TV collector community who at least has had a version of that thought with regards to Japanese export models in foreign countries cross their mind.

One thing that I do somewhat understand is the service literature thing. I believe they're very serious about copyright over there. Granted, it seems a little bit odd to care about it on something as obsolete, low monitary value, and niche as much of what we're into collecting is.
Once the OEM no longer is capable of supplying the service documents necessary to maintain something it becomes an important duty of the collector community to preserve that documentation and prevent its total loss... Often the most effective way of preserving documentation is to make it findable and available. If one collector has it and dies then that literature is probably lost, but if 10 collectors have a piece of literature and one dies there's still 9 copies out there.

[cj_reha]

I've seen a handful of American sets go up for auction on the Japanese sites over the years, so I think there's at least a little bit of interest. There was recently a Predicta Debutante listed at about ~$300 starting; I wonder if, considering the rapidly inflating price point of Predictas, it will some day become cheaper to import them from Japan than to find them domestically

WRT the service data, the unwillingness to digitize or share is definitely driven by Japan's highly strict IP laws. My aforementioned Japanese video game/computer collector friends go through hell trying to save or digitize anything. On the vintage computer side, most of the software and disk dumps available online are from American collectors spending sometimes hundreds of dollars on importing original disks to image, fighting the Japanese collectors who also want them to use, or at least "preserve." And after all that time and money, Japan's often-humid climate doesn't make magnetic media recovery very easy at all...

I think the presiding collector mindset over there is basically that if you can't get original copies of service data or (in the case of computers) software, the equipment is to be retired.

[jhalphen]

Hi to all,

in Japan, there are exceptions. i have a good friend, Noriyoshi T., retired, ex-Japanese JAXA space program (among other things), we met in Tokyo in 2013 and he was kind enough to guide me around the NHK and Sony Museums.
To stay busy, he repairs anything electronic, lots of hi-fi (Braun and B&O specialist), and several Predicta TVs. He's also made a specialty of adapting vintage car radios from the Western to the Japanese domestic FM band.
His Blog, updated weekly, via Google translate :

https://ameblo-jp.translate.goog/vrc...en&_x_tr_hl=en

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

[cj_reha]

Jerome,

I would love to meet him! I am always happy to talk to more collectors willing to bridge the international gap

[TV-collector]

Originally Posted by cj_reha

I've had the same experience! The Japanese collectors are a more insular hobbyist community than any other group I've ever tried to contact or be a part of. I am acquaintances with one sympathetic collector who has helped me with some hard-to-find service data (mostly sending me physical copies in the mail), but the language barrier makes communication difficult, and he's pretty apprehensive about sending parts. One of my late friends was a prolific collector of vintage Japanese computer systems and had the same problems, with one Japanese collector telling him off for stealing their "cultural artifacts"

You took the words right out of my mouth.
That has historical reasons, Japan was a closen country for some hundred years!
They all speak english, but they are not in GB-forums busy!

I saw a TV report, that there are places, which are forbidden for non-japanese people.
They could share with us, showing pictures and so on, but nothing.
My friend bought me everything I wanted, bit nether wanted to thank in my name to the orignal owner.
When I wanted to know something, he had only one friend, he could ask.

He doesn't want to be a "crime" to help, that rare historical stuff leaves the country.

With his help I have now a nice japanese collection, from early sets (30s), 2 hornspeakers, early post-war.
roundies with 7" & 2 sets with 10" CRTs and some 14" and the very rare 17"/70° sets from most interesting or rare companies.
One set makes me big trouble, it is a 10" Urakawa, ultra rare, destroyed by DHL (after that, we took them no more ).
We bought the set without knobs.

Because I bought the literature, radio & TV electronic magazines, I have only one advertisement without picture of that company.
My friend was not able, to find something out.
A picture should help, to build some re-productions.

My literature contains japanese pre-war television, nice pictures, the sales literature from old TVs is nice, too, I bought what I can get, if it was from the 50s.
That gave me an overview.
Today it might be possible, to scan and translate into german/english or what ever.
My 1953/7" Toshiba is missing the lid and the knobs, but I have the sales literature for it, reproduction by the picture might be possible.

My 1954/7" Toshiba is missing its knobs too, but I was able to buy the 14" version of that year with the same knobs.
Only the decals are missing, but I have only a b/w picture, now I have a problem with the reproduction. What is the color?

O.K., btw., since 26 years I try to get the knobs for a Westinghouse H-196, I should buy a complete set, parts set, only to get them, before I die.

Regards,
TV-collector

[TV-collector]

Originally Posted by jhalphen

Hi to all,

in Japan, there are exceptions. i have a good friend, Noriyoshi T., retired, ex-Japanese JAXA space program (among other things), we met in Tokyo in 2013 and he was kind enough to guide me around the NHK and Sony Museums.
To stay busy, he repairs anything electronic, lots of hi-fi (Braun and B&O specialist), and several Predicta TVs. He's also made a specialty of adapting vintage car radios from the Western to the Japanese domestic FM band.
His Blog, updated weekly, via Google translate :

https://ameblo-jp.translate.goog/vrc...en&_x_tr_hl=en

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

Bonsoir Jerôme,
Just saw my Nippon Columbia TV-1 from 1953.
https://ameblo-jp.translate.goog/vrc...en&_x_tr_hl=en
His set has all knobs wrong!
Mine is complete.
I own the follower with the 10" CRT, too.
Japan has a terrible "missing-knob-problem" and a "mice-attack-problem"!

Cordialement,
TV-collector

[TV-collector]

Originally Posted by cj_reha

And after all that time and money, Japan's often-humid climate doesn't make magnetic media recovery very easy at all...

I think the presiding collector mindset over there is basically that if you can't get original copies of service data or (in the case of computers) software, the equipment is to be retired.

Don't forget the earthquakes......... and the limited space in most flats and houses....

Regards,
TV-collector