20 Dec
2006
20 Dec
'06
12:51 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Remember "Madman Muntz"?
:)
Ahh - there's a flood of bad memories. What a bunch of utter crap he turned
out. Two or three functions on one vacuum tube. Remove parts one at a time
until the set doesn't work. Then add the last one back in. Sheet metal
from tin cans. High voltage wires with poor shielding.
You've brought back a lot of memories, but not pleasant ones. He was one of
the true characters to come out of our field.
Billy
20 Dec
20 Dec
2:35 p.m.
On 20 Dec 2006 at 9:51, Billy Pettit wrote:
You've brought back a lot of memories, but not
pleasant ones. He was one of
the true characters to come out of our field.
I wouldn't want to have one of his TV's in his collection, but maybe
a Stereo-Pak 4-track tape player or better yet, a Muntz Motors Jet
would find some space here.
--Chuck
4:42 p.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Billy Pettit wrote:
We have a Muntz TV in the radio museum here. Don't know how it made it's way
up to the west coast of Canada. It's all "before my time", but I was told
about his crazed persona in commercials, that's where the "Madman"
attribution
came from isn't it? Haven't had a chance to look at the TV from a technical
perspective.
You've brought back a lot of memories, but
not pleasant ones. He was one of
the true characters to come out of our field.
I wouldn't want to have one of his TV's in his collection, but maybe
a Stereo-Pak 4-track tape player or better yet, a Muntz Motors Jet
would find some space here.
5:24 p.m.
On 20 Dec 2006 at 13:42, Brent Hilpert wrote:
We have a Muntz TV in the radio museum here. Don't
know how it made it's way
up to the west coast of Canada. It's all "before my time", but I was told
about his crazed persona in commercials, that's where the "Madman"
attribution
came from isn't it? Haven't had a chance to look at the TV from a technical
perspective.
Bob Pease remembers Muntz and even notes the verb "to Muntz":
http://www.national.com/rap/Story/0,1562,17,00.html
Cheers,
Chuck
21 Dec
21 Dec
4:37 a.m.
Chuck Guzis wrote:
Bob Pease remembers Muntz and even notes the verb "to Muntz":
http://www.national.com/rap/Story/0,1562,17,00.html
Great story, thanks for finding that..
5:14 a.m.
New subject: Advice for tape drive repair / maintenance -is Earl Muntz-
Billy Pettit wrote:
Ahh - there's a flood of bad memories. What a bunch of utter crap he turned
out. Two or three functions on one vacuum tube. Remove parts one at a time
until the set doesn't work. Then add the last one back in. Sheet metal
from tin cans. High voltage wires with poor shielding.
There is an interesting post later in this thread that links to an
article from Popular Electronics about
Muntz.
I scrounged around LA when I first got here in 1976, and ran across the
Muntz store in Huntington
Beach. It was on the loop of places that was interesting to stop and
visit when visiting junk stores
(this is my justification for not being totally off topic and boring).
They had stereo equipment and TV sets in one part of the store, and odds
and ends in another
storefront. One could find surplus at one time there, of all sorts, but
later it tended to be just
audio stuff. One of the last things I saw there was when Technicolor
had built up a single video
cassette recorder / monitor unit, which was quite a nice package.
Before Muntz quit showing up there, they were selling a kit with a big
Fresnel lens and a screen,
and a kit to mount your TV set upside down, so you could have
"projection TV" with your brightness
turned all the way up.
Also good to visit was ACP, Marvac (pre move), Wright hardware (before
Wright family sold out).
to see what sorts of gizmos were there.
I figured I was very privileged to have the opportunity to visit with
Mr. Muntz as much as I did, as he
was just an ordinary guy to visit with, not what one would have ever
expected.
Jim
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Billy.Pettit＠wdc.com -
cclist＠sydex.com -
hilpert＠cs.ubc.ca -
jwstephens＠msm.umr.edu