Philco Ford
 

So, where have all the Philco Ford televisions gone?

I don't see any locally and don't see many, if any, posted here.

in my lifetime,over 6 decades,i have come across approx a dozen philco ford sets.owned 5 of the 12.havent seen one in about 30 years now

I had a 19" Philco Ford color hotel set once, I shouldn't of sold it. It was a tube hybrid with an excellent picture.

I've had a few small bw portables, 2 tube & 1 solid state, all from Taiwan as I recall. I had a late 60's color console but that was nearly 25 years ago. A friend of my fathers had a solid state console that must have been about the end of the line before GTE swallowed them.

But, I haven't stumbled upon one in some time. Why? I'd say, they didn't have much market share by the 23v era & they tended to be lower-end sets. Just not many got saved, I guess. They built their own color crt's for a time, but not long (I think Zenith bought their plant) & I don't know that their own tubes lasted as long as some others. (I don't have much to base that on, though)

Ill second what Zenithfan said: I had a neighbor with a 1970 19" color hybrid that I worked on. Had I ever seen one at the curb I would have grabbed it. I saw the same set years earlier in a motel in Palm Springs. Not many Philco's seen in motels and I stayed in quite a few during the 1970s

The SS sets using the "BOSS chassis" Philco built prior to the 1974 sale to GTE had an RCA XL100 SCR sweep section and modules that plugged in using a Magnavox-style white plastic female side, just pins from chassis side. I saw a few and sold a console once. Cold solder connections were the main issues IIRC. Too bad this was the last one but GTE did good with teh Philco-only name but it was relegated to GTE's lower priced models.

A small rural shop I know sold Philco TV even after Philco took a NAP. I have an ad from 1987 showing a long-time Philco corner store in town still was moving them. Ad was a console model, likely NAP by then.

The "Ford" was in the name from 1967 to 1974, though Ford owned Philco since 1961 (?)

I've got a Philco roundy CTC-16 clone. The one not turned on....The dump I lived in when I took that pic would have a (15A) breaker trip if I ran all 4 sets at once.
http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/...y/DSCN0429.jpg

This is cool stuff. Keep the pictures coming.

We had a Philco Ford refrigerator back in the 70's.
http://www.wa2ise.com/radios/ph-nf.jpg

Hi Tim.. well, i suppose that they're rare.. I've never saw one yet..:no:

In the olden days a mop & pop shop would usually sell a
high demand set like Zenith or RCA and also a lower demand
value line. We were Zenith & Admiral. Philco became a value
line in the early 60's. Market share was very low & the
quality not so hot. The hybrid was a decent set. When you
get to solid state sets it starts getting expensive to keep up
with technology on a small scale. Hence you get the buy outs
& shut downs of brands. Sylvania could use its own chassii
in Philco & keep the old dealer network. Results are getting a
few more % market share & save a ton on engineering etc.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

I agree Zeno . my father said to me that Philco was not very good...

After Phillips bought the television end of GTE, they used the Philco brand (along with Sylvania) on product lines including TV, VCR, and Audio. Philco was geared mainly towards independent dealers, and sold through a network of wholesale distributors.

Being as Magnavox was headquartered in Knoxville in the late 80's and 90's,they were pretty hot sellers around here. Philco sponsored radio broadcasts of UT football games, and they're slogan was "Philco, Your Better Buy".

Once Crosley started contracting with Phillips to build their brown goods line, the independent dealers migrated in that direction and Philco quietly faded to the background.

The TV shop here in town carried Zenith plus all 3 NAP lines, but I rarely saw anything Philco the times I stopped in. I have some in-laws that we visit every few years; last time I was in their living room they still had a mid-80's NAP Philco console, rather nice.

The Philco modular sets were a breeze to repair; getting modules was a problem for a while, as PTS chose to incorporate mods from Philco, not only for the PTS stock, but also for Philco-Ford rotating stock. We had a few months where we had to fix the modules, not an easy task, as getting to the module test points was difficult. We ended up soldering short wires to some test points to get easier access. Most repairs were transistors. Looking at a newly-repaired PTS module gave clues to the "top 10" problems - fresh solder/new components were noted and annotated on the schematic, to aid in future repairs.

The horizontal and vertical osc modules went the most, followed by the Chroma demod/amp board. For us, power supplies also got eaten every other lighning storm.

I still have a bunch of their monthly service notes - useless now, as I've not seen a modular (or any other Philco-Ford color) set since 1989.

1965 Philco Color TV brochure
 

1965 Philco Color TV brochure:

http://www.bretl.com/tvarticles/docu...TVbrochure.pdf