Dumont Club 20

[Electronic M]

Originally Posted by rca2000

I like that"Only" $995...at a time when that would probably buy a cheap CAR...

IIRC Crosley Automobiles (yes they made them...They were glorified golf carts IMO) were cheap enough you could have probably bought a Crosley car and Pilot TV-37 for the money...Though the Dumont was probably roomier than the Crosley.

[Tom Albrecht]

Here's the thread on the Club 20 I procured about a year ago. Similar kind of story, although the mansion mine came from is not quite at the same scale as Hudsonview!

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=262402

I restored it and sold it (although I kept the reasonably OK 20BP4 for my RA-101 Westminster, where it is happily residing now). I'll contact the person I sold it to and see if he wants to provide measurements for the base, which the set has. Or he may be willing to post here.

[John Marinello]

Originally Posted by John Marinello

Quote: Here's the same room from the time period. It's too bad the photographer wasn't standing on the other side of the room, maybe the TV would have been in the photo

Actually, if the photographer was standing on the other side of the room, maybe you would see a prewar set. That photo was likely taken near Christmas of 1944.

Anyone else see how I came up with the date estimate on the third photo??

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by John Marinello

Anyone else see how I came up with the date estimate on the third photo??

I assumed that you had estimated the date from the Life magazine covers, but I could be wrong.

jr

[John Marinello]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

I assumed that you had estimated the date from the Life magazine covers, but I could be wrong.

jr

BINGO!

That's Judy Garland on top, 12/11/44
Other issues are 11/20/44, and 12/4/44
And possibly 12/18/44

Could the missing issue of 11/27/44 be laying open on the davenport??
That would make 5 issues in a row.

Oh, and there's also a wreath hanging outside...

[vts1134]

Any one traveling from around NYC west? I had a uShip transport all set for this DuMont, but the shipper went awol and now it's stranded in NY. If any one is making the trip soon and has any room please let me know.

[miniman82]

I have think Tim P is, maybe drop a PM?

[Kamakiri]

Unfortunately not going that far north, and won't have a vehicle big enough to get it even if I was. I'll be in DC/VA this weekend....

[Kamakiri]

Where, specifically, is the set? If it's near Grimer, maybe he'd be kind enough to hang on to it for you until an alternative arises.

[Tim]

I currently have the set in Northeast NJ. It is safe where it is until suitable transportation can be arranged. Maybe a Kutztown transfer can be set up?

[vts1134]

I have a new uShip auction posted as well. We'll see what comes out of that. Kutztown is also a good suggestion and only a month away. Any one driving back through the Pittsburgh area to get home after the show?

[vts1134]

Well the set is finally home. All I can say is WOW is that a deep cabinet. I can see why these sets were targeted towards commercial settings, who in there right mind would want one of these in their house (besides crazy people like me that is )?

I am currently doing some construction work in the man cave to make a guest sleeping area so my workshop is not accessible currently, but I can't wait to finish up and get started on the restoration.

[benman94]

I ended up purchasing this set from John, as I have thing for sets that you would find in an industrial or commercial type environment (club, restaurant, hotel lobby, break room, a union hall, etc).

Anyway, it's currently sitting in my basement awaiting a restoration. The CRT initially tested marginally, but now tests well in the good after being put on the Sencore and Beltron a couple of times.

Cutoff is great, and emissions on the Beltron reads at around 0.85 mA to 0.90 mA with 5.9-6.0 volts on the heater. The full 6.3 volts doesn't raise the current any further. It's a bit slow coming up, but I'm not terribly worried about it (the set hasn't had a repair since circa 1954, so it likely hasn't seen use in 60+ years); it should produce a watchable picture. I have a handful of dead looking tubes that produce excellent pictures, and a handful of good testing tubes that are unusable; you just can't put much trust in a tester.

I have a hypothesis regarding the brightener: nosing around in the HV cage shows that one of the 8016s is gassy (with a Tesla coil). It's possible some repairman in the past missed the bad rectifier, and put the brightener on the jug to compensate for drooping HV. Or there could have been an issue on the main signal chassis with the video amplifier, or there could actually be an issue with the jug (non-uniform focus, etc). Brighteners were often used inappropriately as a quick "band-aid" fix for an issue entirely unrelated to the CRT. With good emissions and good cutoff, I'm guessing the brightener was used in such a way.

[benman94]

Note the Club 20 in this commercial:
https://youtu.be/n9525dRYiKM

[miniman82]

Just found the same sort of thing going on with a small Arvin set I picked up from the convention, it had a brightner hanging off the CRT but it's nice and bright without it. Chassis was full of nasty capacitors, who knows what the original failure mode was that caused it to be installed.

Another interesting thing is the CRT had a cathode/G1 short that the sencore wasn't able to clear, so I hooked the tube to a microwave oven transformer and cranked up the variac till I heard a snap. Apparently it worked, the tube has great brightness and contrast.