Salvage electronics from analog TV

The business next-door to my job specializes in regular consumer and audiophile A/V equipment, and there is an almost inexhaustible supply of stuff set out for the trash to pick through...
TV's, receivers, amplifiers, DVD players, DJ equipment, speakers, obsolete stock items such as Sirius interfaces (got more than a dozen NIB items just for the enclosures) bundles of different cables, wall-warts, heavy-duty TV mounting brackets, and so on.
Point is, apart from the obsolete new in box stuff, cabling, or mechanical items such as mounts, there is no clue as to why those other things have been trashed, or for how long they have sat out subject to the elements. We know that there is often a knock-on effect when something fails, so why take devices with unknown history and use them in a project as a 'student'?

Start with known good parts in your projects and the chances of success will be much greater, IMO.

ronsimpson said:

When I started parting out TV sets they looked like this. Easy to cut out the parts and they had long leads.

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Pure electronic eye candy!

JimB

Ron I've seen & repaired a few radios & Tv's with valves/tubes, I wish just one of them was anywhere near as neat as that.

ronsimpson said:

When I started parting out TV sets they looked like this.
View attachment 118589

Click to expand...

Not like that, as it's not a TV

Looks more like an audio amplifier.

But they were good days!!

Interestingly, the UK company KB (Kolster Brands) were very late adopters of PCB's, and actually made Colour TV's hardwired like above. Everyone else had long since moved to PCB's well before colour started in the UK. A handwired Colour TV was a fearsome beast indeed!,

Another interesting PCB fact, the company GEC used double sided PCB's way back before colour TV, and they were of appalling low quality, you gave it a nasty look with a soldering iron and the track peeled off the board.

I used to have an Am Kb table top set, sold it the thing always sounded distorted, despite many bits replaced & aligned.
Didnt Hmv have a go at weird Pcb's, looked like pressed out out tracks glued to the board, or was that something else.

dr pepper said:

I used to have an Am Kb table top set, sold it the thing always sounded distorted, despite many bits replaced & aligned.
Didnt Hmv have a go at weird Pcb's, looked like pressed out out tracks glued to the board, or was that something else.

Click to expand...

I don't think it was HMV, they became part of Thorn (along with Ferguson and Ultra) a VERY long time ago.

Mickster said:

The business next-door to my job specializes in regular consumer and audiophile A/V equipment, and there is an almost inexhaustible supply of stuff set out for the trash to pick through...
TV's, receivers, amplifiers, DVD players, DJ equipment, speakers, obsolete stock items such as Sirius interfaces (got more than a dozen NIB items just for the enclosures) bundles of different cables, wall-warts, heavy-duty TV mounting brackets, and so on.
Point is, apart from the obsolete new in box stuff, cabling, or mechanical items such as mounts, there is no clue as to why those other things have been trashed, or for how long they have sat out subject to the elements. We know that there is often a knock-on effect when something fails, so why take devices with unknown history and use them in a project as a 'student'?

Click to expand...

To be fair, a lot of these types of places are pretty incompetent, an old Internet friend of mine lives in Cardiff, and just down the road is a Music Shop, who also offers a repair service. Every night he goes round (or at least he did) and goes through the skip, he takes loads of stuff home, repairs it, and sells it on - often there's very little wrong. I went down to visit him, and came back with a car full of music audio bits

I think I've mentioned before?, an old (well young ) work mate of mine is a musician, he worked where I used to, doing radio repairs. He was approached by someone he knew to see if he wanted to buy a faulty Fender Guitar amplifier, EXTREMELY cheaply - I think it was only £10 or so, only 2-3 years old, and the seller explained he'd took it to numerous music shop repair places and no one could mend it. So he asked my advice, and I said 'snap his hand off', it's a valve amplifier - they are EXTREMELY simple things, and unless the transformers are duff it won't cost much to mend.

I also predicted what the fault most likely was, the anode loads of the triodes - I (like a fair few here) come from the valve era, and this was an incredibly common fault (they didn't fit decent quality or high enough wattage resistors, and they always go high or O/C). So he bought the amp, he took it to pieces (I wasn't getting paid, let him do the work ), I powered it up and ran a voltmeter across the anodes, as expected a number of them were low. So I gave him suitable replacements and showed him which ones to change (again, his amp, his work!). Needless to say, when he tried it, it was perfect.

I say him again the other year, first time since he moved jobs (so probably 15 years), he's still got the amp, it's still perfect - although he has changed the output valves a couple of times.

Morale of this story, there's VERY few decent service engineers out there these days (and it's going to get worse), and even the better ones are too young to know anything about valves, and can't seem to repair them - valve stuff is childs play - you basically need a screwdriver, a multimeter, and a soldering iron, that's all the equipment you need A scope 'might' be nice, for the once or twice a year it might save you a little time, if that often.

So as long as you get round next door regularly (so as to avoid rain damage) you can probably get lot's of great stuff that doesn't need much repairing.