Mac's Service Shop: A Good Turn
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TEL-A-TURN mentioned in the article Many of John T. Frye's episodes of "Mac's Service Shop" have referenced for-real products, but I do not recall any other than this one being a dedicated, undisguised promotion for a single item. Now, I am not accusing Mr. Frye of benefitting from a good old-fashioned payola-type scheme, but I can understand someone else concluding so. The vaunted TEL-A-TURN pitched in "A Good Turn" is actually a game-changer in the business of television and radio servicing, and therefore deserving of special consideration. A Google search of the term "tel-a-turn" did not, surprisingly, turn up a single photo or even a vintage magazine advertisement. A quick check of my extensive collection of magazines of the same era resulted in finding a couple different versions of ads run by the fixture's maker (click to thumbnail to the left), Rogers Manufacturing, of Lindsey, Ohio. Mac's Service Shop: A Good Turn
Barney always moaned and groaned a good bit about having to "slave away" in Mac's Service Shop; but after having been on vacation two weeks, he found himself strangely eager to get back into his shop-coat. Naturally, he would never admit this. Instead, he came bounding into the service department this Monday morning literally bursting with wild tales of how reluctantly he tore himself away from the arms of the gorgeous, amorous females surrounding his uncle's Colorado ranch. "Howdy, pardner-," he started to greet his employer and then broke off short as he spied an affair of gleaming aluminum standing in the middle of the floor. "Oh, oh!," he said accusingly; "you went and got something new while I was gone. You do it every time. What on earth is it?" "What does it look like?" Mac asked quizzically. "Well," Barney reflected, "at the bottom it looks like an office chair; in the middle, like a metal lathe; and at the top, like a praying mantis - king-size, that is." "Very good!" Mac said with a chuckle. "Actually it's a 'Tel-a-Turn,' manufactured by the Rogers Manufacturing Company of Lindsey, Ohio. You might describe it as a rolling service-bench-and-chassis-cradle for holding and turning through 360 degrees on a horizontal axis any radio, TV, hi-fi, transmitter, turntable, or other chassis ranging from 9"to 25" in width and weighing up to 200 pounds. That four-legged castered floor stand does look like the bottom part of an office chair; the flat bench with the two upright stands at the ends and the chassis-rotating wheel on the gear stand reminds a person of a lathe; and a 'Luxo' lamp, such as the one mounted on top of the speaker stand, always reminds me of a praying mantis." "Why do you call this one a 'speaker stand'?" "Because a little PM speaker is mounted here in the base behind this slotted cover. These two leads from it are clipped to the speaker terminals of a radio or TV chassis held in the cradle. Here above the speaker are a couple of outlets for plugging in a solder gun, v.t.v.m., etc. This switch above the sockets breaks both sides of this cheater cord that connects to a TV set in the cradle. That is good for working on 'hot-chassis' sets. When the cheater cord is energized, this red pilot lamp at the top of the speaker stand lights up and warns you." "I guess the chassis is clamped in these two arms sticking out from the tops of the two stands." "You guess right. A versatile and clever clamp arrangement permits you to fasten any type of chassis, flanged or unflanged, between those two arms. Then turning this wheel on the gear stand revolves its arm, and the chassis with it, through 360 degrees. The arm sticking out from the speaker stand is simply a 'follower' that supports that side of the chassis. The revolving chassis can be stopped and held firmly at any point for most convenient service. The gear stand can be set to any one of three positions on the aluminum bench to accommodate chassis of different width, and the ability of the follower shaft to slide back and forth through its bearing provides an additional 'fine' width adjustment." While Mac had been talking, Barney, who learned most easily by doing, had been busy clamping a TV set in the "Tel-a-Turn." An appreciative grin spread over his freckled face as he turned the little wheel on the gear stand and the chassis turned over on its back and presented its rat's nest of sub-chassis wiring to the sharp light of the "Luxo" lamp. Barney clipped the "Tel-a-Turn's" speaker leads to the chassis and inserted the cheater cord in the chassis receptacle. An antenna was clipped to the set and the switch on the speaker stand flipped on. As the set began to play, Barney turned the wheel so that the picture tube turned back to its normal position. "Hey, a TV for wheeling out on your patio!" Barney exclaimed as he pushed the "Tel-a-Turn" easily about the floor with one finger. "No house should be without one!" "Well, now, I wouldn't go that far," Mac demurred; "but I think we're going to find a lot of use for it here in the shop. You know how hard it is lots of times to prop up a TV chassis so that you can see and work where you've got to. You usually end up working in an awkward, strained position, holding your breath all the while for fear the thing will topple over and smash tubes or damage other parts. Putting such a set in this cradle should end all that. You can work comfortably and safely and see exactly what you're doing. Tools and small test instruments can be placed on the aluminum bench, or the whole set can be pushed over to the scope, sweep generator, and other bench instruments." "Yeah, and after the work is done but we want the set to 'cook' a while to make sure nothing else is going to show up, we can just push it to one side and let it run while we go ahead with work on the bench," Barney suggested. "If anything does show up, we can pounce on it at once. Every part, top or bottom, is immediately accessible. The thing is a 'natural' for working on intermittents." "You're reading my mind," Mac accused; "and don't forget how handy it will be for working on record players." "Where did you run across the thing?" Barney asked curiously. "You remember Red Baker, the service technician at Hinesdale," Mac answered. "You know he has a left arm badly crippled by polio. He does all right with small radio sets, but man-handling heavy TV chassis was practically impossible for him. Well, I dropped in there a couple of weeks ago, and he had one of these. Thanks to it, he's in the radio and TV business. After his son helps him mount a TV chassis in the cradle, he can handle it as well as anyone. He leaves the chassis right in the cradle until it is ready to go back in the truck. The 'Tel-a-Turn' is more than just a handy gadget to handicapped people, people who can't do heavy lifting, or those with very limited bench area. Being made almost entirely of aluminum, it weighs only 37 pounds and can easily be taken right into the customer's home for performing a fairly extensive home-repair job. Using it will certainly be a lot more convenient than working on your knees on the floor; but far more important, I'm sure, is the impression it will make on our customer. Since this impressive affair of gleaming cast aluminum is something he can understand, seeing it in action will do far more to convince him that we are 'really equipped' to do service work than would our using a seven- or eight-hundred dollar oscilloscope. People are funny." "Here in the shop we won't put every chassis in the thing, will we?" "Of course not. That would be foolish and time-wasting. It will be reserved for heavy sets, sets that cannot be safely turned on side or back for service, intermittent sets, turntables -" "Hold it!" Barney interrupted. "If you keep going, you're not going to leave us anything for bench work." "OK," Mac obeyed, "but I have a hunch this chassis-flipper won't be empty much of the time." "What else is new?" Barney asked as he shrugged his shoulders into his shop-coat. "Well, for one thing, we're going to Center City tonight to a service meeting on new color TV circuits. What's more, we're going to make everyone of these educational service meeting shindigs we can from here on in." "That's OK with me, but isn't it somewhat a new policy? I thought you took the stand a technician could learn more about new circuitry, etc., by reading books, studying service literature, and keeping up with the magazines than he could by listening to lectures." "Yeah, I know," Mac said with a sigh; "and that's just another fine example of how stupid I can be when I work at it. It's true some fellows can learn more by reading than they can by listening; but many other fellows are just the opposite. What they hear sticks with them lots better than what they read. Anyway, few of these service meetings consist of straight lectures. The guy giving the talk almost always accompanies it with slides, motion pictures, or actual demonstration of equipment. "However, the technical information you pick up at one of these meetings is only part of the benefit. More important, it seems to me, is the contact it affords the technician with other technicians, with distributors, and with manufacturers." "I'll buy that," Barney agreed. "I get a big boot out of talking to other technicians. It's amazing how often I pick up a tip that actually helps me in my work; but even when I don't manage to pick the other guy's brain, I still enjoy it. Letting our hair down and lambasting our cranky customers is fun. Just knowing the other technician is suffering from the same frustrating exasperations I am makes these a lot more bearable." "Know what you mean," Mac nodded with an understanding grin. "I also like chatting with my distributor in a relaxed and social atmosphere. Really I think we owe it to him to try to attend a meeting he sets up. He goes to a lot of trouble and expense arranging the meeting, publicizing it, etc. Then, if only a few of his customers show up, that makes him look bad. It's a poor return for all the favors he does us. "Finally, these meetings provide service technicians with an excellent opportunity to impress the manufacturer through his representative. Believe me, he relays what he picks up at these meetings. If there is something wrong with the product he is selling or if the technicians have any ideas for improving it or making it easier to service, he provides a pipeline right to the manufacturer. And let's not forget this: Those of us who are deeply opposed to factory service have an excellent opportunity in these service meetings to show the manufacturer we are intelligent, progressive, eager to learn, and completely capable of servicing his product. We can demonstrate there is no need for factory service. "You might say," Mac concluded, "that these service meetings tend to pull all segments of the radio and TV industry together and promote better understanding among them. Anything that does that helps all of us. It would be interesting to know how many service organizations have really been started in a coffee-and-doughnuts session following one of these meetings." "I'll bet a lot of them," Barney said. "But, hey! I haven't told you about my vacation yet. I darned near didn't get back. Those Colorado lovelies weren't going to let me come. Man, do I go big west of the Mississippi! There was this one cute little filly -" And so on, far into the morning.
Posted August 28, 2018 Mac's Radio Service Shop Episodes on RF Cafe This series of instructive technodrama™ stories was the brainchild of none other than John T. Frye, creator of the Carl and Jerry series that ran in Popular Electronics for many years. "Mac's Radio Service Shop" began life in April 1948 in Radio News magazine (which later became Radio & Television News, then Electronics World), and changed its name to simply "Mac's Service Shop" until the final episode was published in a 1977 Popular Electronics magazine. "Mac" is electronics repair shop owner Mac McGregor, and Barney Jameson his his eager, if not somewhat naive, technician assistant. "Lessons" are taught in story format with dialogs between Mac and Barney.
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