[bgadow]

Well, I did it. I really can't recall the last time I handed over cold, hard cash for an old TV set & it would probably be a long time until I do it again but I'm now the proud owner of a Philco TV-123. It sure doesn't look like much as it sits today but I expect, in time, for it to become a cornerstone of my (shrinking) collection. This was one of the few models on my bucket list.

This was one that Nick Williams found; aside from disassembly & the addition of some rare tubes it's "as found". I was a little taken aback at first when I saw it in pieces but I quickly saw this as a blessing: this makes it worlds easier to move and will allow me to address things in stages. The cabinet is pretty scruffy. I had the pleasure of meeting up with both Al Hagovsky & Nick (et al) and Al spoke highly of Howard's Restor-A-Finish; I plan on picking up a can and giving it a whirl. The best news is that the crt is a strong testing RCA 21AXP22A with a '57 date code. While it would have been neat to me to have an original Sylvania-built crt this is sure nothing to sneeze at.

The chassis looks very clean (though it smells like a mouse house!) Philco seemed to be going for some kind of record judging by the number of caps in this thing. Somebody in engineering must have got a free trip to Vegas from Sprague for specifying all those black beauties! I probably had 2/3 of what I needed on hand but still put in a generous order to Just Radios for the rest. The chassis is marked "Run 1" so pretty early, I guess. I haven't dug around for date codes beyond the crt. I know there were some factory authorized mods installed on some of these but this one appears fairly stock.

I expect this to take quite a while; I'll update the thread as I move along.

PS: If someone smarter than me can knows how to rotate the images, go at it. They're correct on my computer but that's the way they uploaded.