1963 Admiral Color TV Combo

[universaldave1]

I got this from a very good friend who also collects TV's yesterday. The TV and radio work wonderfully, the record changer works, (I'm listening to an ELO LP right now) but it needs a new needle badly. I brought this thing home yesterday after three months of waiting, and I couldn't be happier with it.

 

[tolivac]

Nice set---Don't play anymore records on it until you can replace the stylus or possibly the cartridge.Cartridges that old lose their tracking ability(compliance) with age even with a new stylus.For a unit that old--its in amazing condition.

 

[vac-o-matic]

Absolutely amazing, especially with a working TV! Congrats on such a great find!

 

[human]

that's totally cool. My parents had an Admiral console stereo that had the same tuner/amp and turntable. Dad won it on 'The Price is Right' in 1962.

 

[gottahaveahoove]

Nice.

I just found an envelope with needle cartridges in a drawer I was cleaning out. What kind do you need?

 

[suckolux]

Nice! Memories!

 

[dartman]

Most of the Admiral TVs I dealt with had pretty poor pictures, that thing looks really bright and crisp with excellent color from your pics.
Did your friend go through it and put a newer high brightness phospor tube in it? I used to do that with older square tubed sets I had and it really improved the picture in any set that had decent electronics driving it. I only had a few round tube sets, one was a 61, and might have been a Admiral. I seem to remember that it actually did have a nice picture considering how old it was. I probably rejuvenated or at least cleaned the guns with my beltron. I gave it to my lil sister when she moved out and a delay line or cap or something died and it sent super dark about 6 months later. I finally gave up and scrapped it.

 

[universaldave1]

Thanks for the replies everybody. John, the record player uses an Astatic 17D cartridge and an N41-SD needle. Dartman, he put in an RCA Hi-Lite tube out of a junk set. I've been informed that the needle itself might be just fine, but the cartridge is definitely bad.

 

[kenkart]

No color set

Has as beautiful color as does a round tube!

 

[rohmell]

In My Younger Days

I worked for a vacuum tube manufacturer.

Do you know why US TV picture tubes were always in odd sizes?
19 inch, 21 inch, 25 inch, etc.

The was a superstition among the US manufacturers who believed that even sized tubes were not as reliable.

I say US manufacturers, because some Japanese TV tubes came in even sizes, with nary a problem.

 

[dartman]

The very first RCA color set had a very advanced color decoder circuit that would show more color range then the simplified circuit that was way cheaper and easier to make. They also had a tiny tube that almost always went gassy early in its life so few fully working examples are left.
There are antique radio and tv sites you can Google that can give history and repair info for just about anything like this that you might find.
I saw a prototype Hoffmann color caster TV my tube guys dad got in the late forties I think. He said as a kid they watched the rose parade in color about 1950 when a local channel was doing special shows in color to test and for the few rich folks that could get a early set.
The few pics of working first RCA sets shows them to be very bright, crisp, with great color.

 

[tolivac]

Tiny tube that went gassy?Was this a Nuvistor tube-a small metal tube used in many RCA TV tuners.Scott FM tuners used 3 of them-RF amp,Mixer,LO stage.Some Ampex recorders used them in the mic preamp stages and PB head preamps.A CBS Volumax-first model used them in the gain reduction stages.I have seen those tiny tubes last even a couple decades without problems.At first glance the tube looks like a transistor.I used to have one round jug RCA set that had a very nice color picture.Another I hade the roundie tube was rebuilt like 3 times-the neck seals.The screen phosphors were not replaced-so the picture was a pastel like colors.That set died a blazing death-while working on it the flyback caught fire-was working normally-but the flyback just caught fire and burned-so I shoved the set outside and let it finish.It had the pastel pix tube so no great loss.The tube let out a good boom when it went!That nice RCA set got stolen during storage.It was found in a TV shop dumpster.Some of the best sets were those found in or by dumpsters.One Dumont I found by a road!!Worked perfectly!BW set.

 

[dartman]

CRT

The tube I meant was the CRT. It was like 14" I think and they had major problems getting good ones made, then they would loose their vacuum and go gassy right away.
Oldest set I was given was a 49 Hoffman that was like 14" with a ton of big 6 volt radio style tubes driving it. It did work after I messed with it and managed to barely resolder the cap on the horizontal output tube. Picture was pretty dim and not super sharp but it played and that was good enough for me.
I used to pick up the rejects from several local TV repair shops and fix and sell them myself. Was fun to me and I made OK money and learned a lot of what made late tube to hybrid and solid state sets work and typical failure modes.

 

[tolivac]

Hoffman-remember when I was a kid-little at that-OUR TV was in the basement-the Hoffman-this thing had a GREEN color monochrome screen-surprised we didn't burn our eyes on that thing-remember lots of Mickey Mouse Club,Howdy Doody,Lone Ranger,various cartoons watched on that set.If a special show came on-we all watched together on the BW Zenith set.Also Winky Dink!We hand the thing you put over the screen to draw on-kinda like a marker board.We weren't allowed to do that on the Zenith!

 

[dartman]

Hoffman

One of our friends as kids they had a Hoffman like that. They were called the Easy Vision. The thought was green was better and easier on your eyes.
From what I remember the green was pretty striking but other than that it was pretty bright and crisp for a mid fifties set. My first set was a 21" inch 53 Zenith combo that had a AM radio and cobra matic record player built in.
It also had a very dim blurry picture and the right side and bottom of the picture was cut off due to bad tubes, but it played and kept my room warm. All us kids sat there on weekends and watched the horror flick show and movies till the stations shut down. Back when I was a kid those were the kinds of sets you could get free or cheap. I remember seeing a Philco Futara swivel tube set back when we were trying to junk shop a cheap family set. I tried to get mom to buy it but she didn't trust a TV with a external tube so we bought a 25 buck Zenith with a bad tuner for our family, probably another early fifties set about 68.

 

[tolivac]

I used to stay up and watch TV movies until the stations signed off.One of the stations-UHF Ch#20 had a five klystron transmitter-220Kw.Liked how they turned the Tx off in stages.You would see the Indian Head pattern clear-then more snowy-than GONE!I didn't think that green was easy on my eyes--but it was unique!Well stil1 around-don't know how many hours I spent-and my brothers in front of that Hoffman TV.The Zenith was so much better!Did watch ate night movies later on in life on that TV.Sc-Fi Horror movies seemed to look better in monochrome than color-esp the movie "The Thing" watched on the Dumont from a Laserdisc player.They looked more creepy!