Quote:
Originally Posted by radiotvnut
One of the last "real" GE TV's was the "PC" chassis and was probably one of their better efforts. As far as GE quality, it started going down shortly after WWII and some of their tube radios of the '50's and '60's were a major problem with poor quality PC boards and inferior IF transformers, among other things. I once asked a radio repairman what he thought the sorriest radio was and, without hesitation, he answered "GE" in a firm voice.
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Agreed - the level of engineering that went into the PC chassis is evident in some of the materials I got from the closed Portsmouth plant. GE did tests on several different PC board materials - I have samples of some labeled "Phenol1 test, Phenol 2 test, etc. They also tried out some of the Hitachi and Sanyo Jungle chips, which they didn't (thankfully) place in their production sets. They were also using Mitsumi tuners, probably the best among all of the varactor tuners out there. That said, they blew it with the PM chassis - too much GE, too little engineering. What they wasted on getting VIR developed probably would have funded a whole lot of better improvements in their sets.
By the mid-1970's, GE was rebadging Crown, Goldstar and Shogyo radios and tape players. If the model number started with a number, it was imported. Their clock radios form the 70's and even into the 80s weren't all that bad. They imported the boards and assembled them in America - the clock radio cases were 100% US made.
Cheers,