Acme radio and TV repair 1957 to 2018 Lomita Ca (2018) | Hacker News Reader

Acme radio and TV repair 1957 to 2018 Lomita Ca (2018)

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33 pointsfortran7710 comments

I've watched a number of his videos. He has a hobby of finding old CRT TV's and "resurrecting" them (basically replacing the minimum amount of parts to get them working, the focus being on the diagnosing part). Here's one that he gets to work that he found in the desert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lZIJQ-cKDs

Great video. A beautiful view into electronic repair shops before everything became printed on proprietary ICs and locked down. Before everything became anti-consumer and shipped off overseas. Before Wal-mart and Amazon unilaterally and unapologetically killed off small businesses and the communities built around them. A slice of history from a different, better era.

"I've even had people say the color TV's have evil spirits in them and they don't want one in there house"

Even taken literally, it's not such a crazy notion when talking about modern TVs.

Yes, back when a 24" color television cost $3,400, inflation adjusted. Back when you had to spend $1,000 on a service call for new tubes.

Back when televisions did not have an operating system and did not have to boot up. Of course, you would have to wait for the tubes to warm up before you could watch.

At least the channel changed instantly. And even by the 70’s, tubes were typically pre-warmed (not very eco-friendly, it’s true) so they turned on pretty quickly, especially compared with boot-up time.

I hate to be so cynical, but swapping out a nine to ten tubes on a service call seems like he was fleecing his customers.

"So the customer was probably in for about a hundred bucks?"

"Yeah we would try to, yeah that would be the ... the main objective..."

Just felt a strange vibe there.

Back in the late 1940s through the early '60s many small shops and general stores in North America had public tube-tester boxes, along with a supply of the most common replacements, so folks could save a lot on upkeep costs. For those uncomfortable with reaching into what were usually chassis-grounded televisions and radios, complete with their low-level shocks, hum, and that special vibration on the fingers when touching the metal even when turned off or unplugged, having a technician do all that for them was a necessity. Clearly a home repair service would need to charge for that value-added work. Where TV repair folks made their big bucks was in bringing the TV set into the shop for a new flyback transformer or picture tube and not on simply replacing chassis tubes.

For something that old, those tubes probably needed it.

The problem is that for electronics of that vintage, everything probably needed to be swapped out.

Vacuum tube electrodes crystallize (like incandescent light bulbs). Capacitors leak. Switch contacts oxidize. Paper insulation breaks down. Heat cycles crack solder joints. etc.

Guitar amps are similar.

It's one of the reasons to laugh at someone with their "vintage" 1962 BigName(tm) Guitar Amp if they paid a lot for it. If the amp hasn't actually been modded to hell and back such that it barely resembles the original, practically everything in it has been replaced--likely multiple times.

Feel free to enjoy your amp, that's what they're for. Just realize that your 50+ year old amp is a living, breathing example of the "Ship of Theseus".

Never visited that shop because I could fix my own stuff, but I am from the area and frequented many other electronics shops. The only one still standing is Torrance Electronics (3 miles away from where Acme was). Torrance Electronics opened around the same time as Acme.

https://torranceelectronicsinc.com/

The sign outside is worth something--sadly.

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