Vintage TV's anyone?

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universaldave1

universaldave1

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 19, 2015
Messages
158
Location
Gardendale, AL
I'm in the process of obtaining a beautiful 1967 RCA Victor CTC-25 console TV from a TV collector and friend in Atlanta. A few weeks ago, I got a 1984 RCA CTC-120 from an estate sale for free. I'm watching it right now. But this CTC-25 is super clean and I can't wait to go back to pick it up on February 20th. My friend said he would do some preventative maintenance on the chassis and find a new CRT. The old one was pretty darn weak.

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I have dealt with the RCA TRANSMITTERS that would broadcast to those sets-and those sets as well.Haven't seen any of those TVs in many years.Used to have some.Got rid of them for a move.Now wished I kept them-and some others got stolen.
 
If you get it working right

The color looks so much more natural than the newer sets.
 
It's already working

But the picture tube is weak. These sets are notorious for being unreliable after being used for long periods, so hopefully the preventative maintenance will help that.
 
1972 GE portable

Somewhere in the dim recesses of my barn, I have a 1972 vintage GE 12-inch portable black-and-white TV that I rebuilt when I was taking electronics in high school. When my grandfather gave it to me around 1980 or 81, it worked, but just barely. There were two more sets just like it in the back of the electronics lab at school and the teacher gave them to me to cannibalize for parts to make one good, working set out of the three.

I haven't turned the thing on in probably 20 years but I don't have the heart to trash it. I tried to give it to Goodwill a few years ago and they said they didn't take any TVs that didn't have a remote control. More recently, they stopped taking TVs with a CRT screen and now they just don't take TVs at all.

I also have a 1996-vintage 25-inch Sears LXI (re-badged GE) set that has now joined the little black-and-white set in the barn after 20 years of flawless service. Like the 12-inch set, nobody wants it and I don't have the heart to trash it. All three TVs in active service in the house are now flat panels (40-inch Sanyo, 32-inch HiSense, 24-inch Samsung). I'll be very, very surprised if any of them last 20 years.
 
If you REALLY want

A natural, lifelike picture, get a round tube color set that is working correctly, nothing like it, not like these over bright garish looking things made today.
 
You absolutely cannot beat a good old CRT set. They last forever and produce (when aligned, converged, purified, etc.) a crystal clear, true to life picture. The newer CRT sets and "phlat-skreen" sets just don't have the same picture.
 
CRT vs flat screens-I have given up on direct view CRT sets.A flat screen TV can have a BETTER picture if it is properly set up.There is no way a CRT set can reproduce 2K and 4K HD resolution material.And no color "smearing" like what was on older sets.When you see flat screens in a store-the brightness,color,contrast are cranked up to max eye blinding levels to compete with the bright lights in the store.When you adjust the TV in its set up menu to "natural" "cinema" or "movie" mode the pictures are more lifelike.Out my way you see a dumpster full of the black plastic cabinets CRT sets-would bet most of these could give a rastor if it was turned on.But folks want HD and widescreen-16X9 instead of 4X3 as on the older sets.And on CRT sets many I have seen that are still trying to be used-the blue color gun is weak-this color phosphor is least efficient and has to be driven harder than the red or green guns for equivelent brightness.So you have to crank up the grid drive and screen level.After awhile you can't crank those up anymore and the CRT is shot.You can try to rejuvenate the tube-but this may only last so long.CRT brightners may prolong the tubes agony a little while longer,too.
 
If I had my way,

ALL phlat skreen sets would be in the dumpster and everybody would have RCA, Zenith, Sylvania, and Magnavox consoles in their homes again. These new sets are just plain ugly too. There is absoluteley no design in them like the older sets with the nice cabinets. Just black plastic. I once gave a phlat skreen set away because I hated it so much. Now I have a 1984 RCA console and I love it. I just don't think there is even any reason to have "4K." Whatever that means.

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You need a digital TV tuner to use any of the old sets now so for most folks they are useless. I used to fix tvs for a money making hobby. Don't do it anymore but still have all the test gear and stuff. My garage used to be full of tvs in various stages of repair and I enjoyed it and had lots of extra money.
Bought my first HDTV a Toshiba 34hfx84 back in 2005 as a 34" CRT set. Weighs 160 pounds and still plays great but finally got a led flat screen and it actually looks great, has excellent black levels and color and is huge.
Problem with many flat screens is they have lousy black levels so picture looks washed out with no contrast. The newest sets depending on what type of screen they use can do almost as good as the best crt sets. OLED can do just as good or better, and some plasmas too if you can afford or find one.
The first RCA color chassis had way better color accuracy but a tiny round tube that also was prone to loosing vacuum and failing early.
People collect them and I redid a few much later round tube sets and most weren't as good as the much later square tube sets becuase of all the advances in pospher technology and overall improved circuitry.
The earliest color set I had was a 61 Magnavox I think and it actually looked OK but my newer Zeniths with the high brigthness sposphers with a black grid around the rgb dots were just way better. Zenith called it their chroma color tube I think. The last sets used vertical color stripes instead of the 3 rgb dots in a repeating grid and all the flat screen sets use a similar setup for the colors.
 
I use all my TV's on channel 16 UHF with a Blonder Tongue agile modulator. Way better than having the TV on a coax cable leash.

It looks like I ruined my Karma tooting my own horn about how great CRT sets are. (They are). Just half an hour ago, a large capacitor in my 1984 RCA failed and the picture went haywire.

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Probably one of the big filter caps on the power supply. If your lucky it may be leaking or bloated so you can visually find it.
I never had a capaciter tester back then so visual and voltage plus subing suspects for me. I bet you can buy or download a SAMS manual for that set and troubleshooting will be easy if you know electronics at all, or get your buddy to check it out.
 
Memories....

I remember our first color set. It was an Admiral with the round tube. One of the first color series was Bonanza IIRC, Sunday nights I think. It was such a big deal to see it in color. When my dad got to see how cool the westerns were in color, that's when the 4th bedroom became his mancave with new "den" furniture and a color portable purchase, because mom and I were not going to watch westerns! It was also fun to see some of my favorites go from b/w to color, like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Those were the days my friends!
 
We didn't get a color set until 1969. Shortly before Apollo 11 landed on the moon, Dad brought home a 25-inch GE color console to replace our 19-inch black-and-white Zenith with "Space Command" remote. Before we got the color set, I used to feel really ripped off when the announcer would say "The following program is brought to you in living color" and it would be just as black-and-white as everything else.

That said, I kinda missed the "Space Command" remote after we passed the Zenith on to my grandmother. We wouldn't get another set with a remote until the early '90s. But the "Space Command" system was a trip. It had four buttons for power, channel up, channel down, and mute. Each button was connected to an ultrasonic tuning fork--no batteries required. The wild thing was I had a plastic hobby horse that was connected to its tubular metal base with a spring on each leg and when I got going really, really fast on that horse, the squeak of the springs would be the right pitch to turn the TV on! Used to scare the hell out of my mom. Ah, childhood...
 
Our first was a Admiral with Remote and we had the antenna rotor on the roof too. Clunk clunk, clunk. Bonanza and Disney's wonderful world of color! On the floor, propped up a few feet away, eyes peeled! It was a moment we all never missed.
 

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