Just when I was getting the most frustrated I have ever been with the vast amount of nothing out my way, seeing a 1979 Sylvania Superset console for free AND where I could get to it dropped my jaw. I offered a 20 for it anyway just to have it held for the two days needed for the hired truck to be available, but fortunately the previous owner didn't require that. After a strenuous two days of worrying that something might go wrong, I can finally relax.

It's a remote set with the E48-2 chassis. Something's slipping in the power tuning mechanism, I have to hold down the buttons for a second for the channels to change. No remote of course, but I got one as part of a bulk lot some time ago that I'm not sure is 100% correct for this set; it has the NAP logo whereas the TV has the GTE logo. As expected, the 25VDMP22 looks pretty tired, but it's a small miracle this set survived at all AND I ended up with it. To me this CRT is worth saving for a future rebuild if my Sencore can't wake it up.

Turns out the CRT is a 25VFAP22, I was confused by the dark glass.

shake a ring of keys in front of it.i had the same set,cabinet and all back in the 80s.no remote but i shook my keys to change channels.if you want to get rid of it,let me know

I'd be kicking myself for life if I let this one go.

I see the occasional remote like that with a Sylvania label. I need another 9-volt battery.

I hooked it up to cable. Although the CRT is rather weak it's still perfectly watchable. I'm yet to hook it up to my tester.

Good for you ! I remember Supersets, they had a good picture !

.

Nice find Jon. The CRT dont look so bad, just a
clean & balance should do. They could give an awesome
picture. The blacks are very deep on em.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Thanks! I have to wait a long time between good sets for sure, but I do seem to pick up the rarities.
Thanks, I'll definitely do that.

By the way, the tuner is a 20-position varactor. I hadn't heard of a set with 8 UHF positions.

Zenith TVs of 1980s vintage had one-knob varactor electronic tuners with six UHF channel slots, for a total of 18 positions. These were individually tunable to the local UHF stations in the user's area, so that UHF stations could be tuned as easily as VHF ones as mandated by the FCC in 1975.

I had never heard of a varactor TV tuner with eight UHF channel slots either, until I read your post. Sylvania must have used a different type of UHF tuner in their '80s CRT TVs than Zenith used, if yours has a 20-position varactor tuner.

It's a '79 actually. I'm guessing it was very soon after that Sylvania went with inline CRTs and infrared remotes, which don't interest me. I don't bother with most 80s sets these days.

Late '79-early '80 was the end of the line for large screen delta gun TV's from most companies. In '81, GTE sold the Sylvania and Philco names to NAP (who already owned Magnavox). Eventually, Sylvania ended up being a Funai brand.

Neat! Just needs an Atari 2600 hooked up to it. :)

It will eventually. :) Someday I'll splurge on a heavy sixer.

I would not hook any game systems. They kill the sync separator i.c and there were discontinued 30 years ago> they are great sets I had one the customer gave me about 85 and it needed sync i.c's I had one from a junk set I used for a long time, but I don't remember what I did with it, but it had a fantastic picture. that's a great find. I am happy for you.

Thanks for the heads-up. Does this only apply to Sylvania sets of this era?

Edit: Another shocker: the CRT had very good emissions on all guns! However, it didn't do very well on the life test. I ran auto-restore and now it passes all tests with flying colors, and makes a nicer picture of course. My camera doesn't do it justice. Also, most of my TVs including this one seem to not like my free basic analog cable. Finally, the top of the picture is curved downward in full screen and letterbox presentations. It looks slightly uneven on the bottom as well.

I would not on the Sylvania just because the ic chips inside going to be hard to find to replace. I had scrap a few nice ones because I could not get the chips. When gte sold Sylvania to Phillips. Phillips also got ecg replacement parts from gte. When they did Phillips discontinued a lot of Sylvania designed parts. Its a shame too those sets were about 5 or 6 years old when they did stop making replacement parts/

I think that set I had the Tripler burned out and I did not have one and times where changing and I replaced it with a new zenith that a insurance company gave me because some vandals broke into a house and busted the screen out. Popped a tube in and watched the hell out of it.

that was the last set to have a delta crt.25vdmp22 makes a great picture,(some have said the finest),but not a long life.i worked on way too many sylvanias back in the shop days.60 to 70 percent of repairs were sylvanias.i have a
e45 with electronic tuner that had a shot crt.replaced with rca jug from xl100.looks good but just not what i want.these were really great sets.simple chassis,beautiful crt and decent cabinets.here in cols,ohio,the sylvanias were 100-150.00 than zenith and magnavox sets.this is why so many were sold.wish that dark matrix crt had the life of a zenith tube.