RCA CTC5 in "custom" cabinet
 

After a month of FB tag, I finally bought this very interesting set today and pick it up in 2 days. Of course, today I did not bring my truck but there were several times I did and then later appointments were cancelled. :sigh: I was patient as I imagined how many dumb responses he probably got to the ad. Apparently, I was the only local response who knew what it was!

It was in the dining room of a very interesting 1910 townhome only a few blocks from work. The owner was close to my age trying to downsize, 1st generation Italian with many antiques and seemed relieved someone actually understood why the RCA's cabinet was changed.

The owner's parents had renovated a basement rec. room as so many did in 1964. Apparently the original cabinet (photo-finish mahogany) and looked dated among the more "modern" walnut furniture of the era. His father built the cabinet and somehow moved the tuner and brightness/volume to the rear.

I was not able to examine the rear but was surprised the tuner was not placed elsewhere. He offered to power it up, saying it recently played a movie from a VCR, but I declined.:nono:

Attachment 206120

:yikes::yikes:

an set with an 21axp22a??

under vacuum?
or was it replaced with an all glass type? :O

Can you repost the picture again? It didn’t come up for some reason…

I see it OK :yes:

Me too

That cabinet looks heavy

Yes, and very rustic / retro.

And if it indeed has a GOOD intact 21axp22a, then that's a very rare / lucky find!

Is that the metal cone crt if so then that set should be kept in climate control, lol

the specs say it came with an AXP, which is a metal cone crt, but it can be converted with some degree of difficulty.

But the metal cone didn’t stand up to well with temperature changes. So if this is a metal cone crt and it’s good I would say it is rare.

I'm still not getting the pic, but if it's the one I think it was (on FB), then it looked like a 5. I tried contacting the guy, he ghosted me :(

FB marketplace sucks like that.

Congrats on getting that oddball set Dave. I don't see any pictures here either, but I remember it from Facebook.




What's so odd about a good 21AXP22?.... I've got 8 TVs thusly equipped, and a good spare. Granted I have seen 3-4 AXPs that were unusably gassy/down to air (one of which due to necking).

They're not as failure prone as a 15G, but also slightly worse than an all glass tube...I've seen /had ~3 all glass color roundys go gassy too but the sample group for those is bigger.

I do know that back in the day they would use a copper cap of sorts to seal in the vacuum but later melted over the glass tube to keep the vacuum in which was so much better how could they think a copper cap would last.

http://suzaku.live-evil.org/Custom5.jpg

you should be able to see this! :P

the stupid bbs is corrupting the name..


fixed

ElectronicM:
Interesting that you've seen glass roundies go gassy (as opposed to cathode wear-out). I think this may be the first mention i have heard of it.

I don't have a good feel for 21AX's (or any metal cone tube) higher failure rate being due to temperature cycling. Anybody here really know? The leaky 21AX I donated for helium testing at ETF turned out to have physical damage in the metal to metal faceplate seal, which Scotty (the rebuilder in Iowa) did not suspect. He was more suspicious of the metal to glass seals, which were fine. (The damage was a tiny ding, the size of a pen point.) Granted, the leak was obviously much worse than it could have been prior to rebuilding, but that was after the extreme temperature cycling of the rebuilding process, not likely due to daily cycling in use.