Hey from NC

[jsowers]

Hello to everyone in old TV and radio land. I've been collecting radios since I was a kid in elementary school, when, after nagging and nagging my father, I got a 1946 Silvertone console for $5 from an antique shop and it worked when I got it home. I was hooked.

I also have some old TVs I've collected over the years, including my family's first color TV, which resides in my living room. It's a 1969 GE 21" table model. I think it's the KE chassis. It was our main TV from 1969 to 1986 and full of Compactrons, most of them original. I have fond memories of watching Dark Shadows after school on that thing, on UHF because the local ABC affiliate didn't carry it. It's been struck by lightning twice, and fixed by me.

I also collect old Bell System telephones and I have a huge collection of LPs and old Christmas stuff. Needless to say, my basement is full, as is the rest of my house.

I'm recently retired from over 28 years with the same school system working in IT, so I'm hoping to finally getting around to working on some of my collection. I took TV and radio servicing in Community College 30 years ago, but my skills have gotten rusty working on computers.

My avatar is the dial from the 1936 Silvertone in my kitchen. I also have a 1941 Philco table model in the kitchen and a 1942 Philco console and a Danish Modern Grundig-Majestic console in the spare bedroom--all of them working.

I've been lurking for a while and enjoyed reading all the threads on the TVs and radios y'all have rescued and restored and I look forward to sharing my restorations too.

[old_tv_nut]

Welcome!

[Electronic M]

Welcome!

That GE color set sounds interesting. Aside from the portacolors and some 50's models there seem to be comparatively very few tube based GE TVs still floating around.

[Username1]

Hey from NY ! ! No C for me....


as in I'm not from NYC...........

.

[jsowers]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Welcome!

That GE color set sounds interesting. Aside from the portacolors and some 50's models there seem to be comparatively very few tube based GE TVs still floating around.

I've never seen another 21" table model like that one, but I was fortunate to get the chassis from a 25" GE KE chassis console someone wanted only the cabinet from. This was about 1979, so we were still using the TV and that gave me a full set of tubes and knobs. I think I used both of those knobs. Cheap plastic things, they were. The volume knob was metal and never broke.

I posted it in the Apollo 11 thread where you already saw it, but I don't mind posting it again for the others who haven't. I always liked the "blackout" UHF tuner slide rule dial that only lit up when tuned to UHF. It was red and blue.

And about the green picture, I tried adjusting the color balance with a B&W picture years ago, but it made only a little difference. It was before the cataract appeared around the edges. I don't think I ever noticed that until after it had been at my house in a better lit room than our den at home.

[holmesuser01]

What part of NC are you from?

The cataract is pretty normal for sets of this age. Comes with the territory.

I'm up in the mountains near the I-40/I-26 Interchange in Asheville NC.

[jsowers]

Originally Posted by holmesuser01

What part of NC are you from?

The cataract is pretty normal for sets of this age. Comes with the territory.

I'm up in the mountains near the I-40/I-26 Interchange in Asheville NC.

I'm from Lexington, NC. Just south of Winston-Salem and I-40 and just north of I-85. I've been to Asheville before, to see Biltmore House. I also remember listening to WMIT in Black Mountain when I was a kid and FM was new to me.

The cataract isn't that bad compared to some I've seen on this Forum. At least it's not infested with mold. This TV has never been stored in a basement, but it was located several feet in front of our wood stove for about ten years and it got plenty of dust inside. It's always had a wood smoke smell to it from that dust.

I remember many years ago it had an intermittent in the vertical circuit. All of a sudden the picture would pull up from the bottom and you could hear a hum. It buffaloed our TV repair guy, who was pretty darn good. It turned out to be a bad solder joint on the circuit board and I must have found it, because it stopped and hasn't done it again.

[holmesuser01]

When you were at Biltmore, you were less than 2 miles (by air) from me. I'm just across the river from the Biltmore Estate in West Asheville.

I got my first TV from a tech that was totally stumped by its problems. Vertical would collapse when it wanted and instantly come back as normal. No rhyme or reason, and did it warm and cold.

All I did was re-solder the pins on the sync tube sockets, and the vertical tube sockets. One of these pins was the problem, because it's still with me today, and it's still working, although now, it needs new capacitors.

[DavGoodlin]

Welcome to the forum. I like your avatar, it looks like a Silvertone 4569 table model (tombstone table model but with speaker to side) I have that I got from a neighbor when she cleaned out her attic in the 70's

The GE KE chassis and (1970 was KE-II) were the last good tube color chassis GE made. After that came the C1 and L2 which were series string chassis with much of the "extra parts" removed for economy.
The performance showed it. Before the KE was the CB, KC and KD, which were more troublesome.

My first job (in a TV shop) in the late 70s was for a WWII veteran one-man shop which was once a four-man operation connected with a large furniture and appliance store that sold GE since before time.
The store added the Magnavox line in 1976, yet this old-timer despised transistors, and he did a great job of keeping all the tube sets the store ever sold going.
It was his retirement plan; when the KE sets' CRT's got too tired, he lost his customer. I was just learning the trade, but I helped him by spotting those bad solder joints and checking transistors, also hard to see.

[jsowers]

Thanks, Dave, for your comments. I wondered if those GEs were well made, considering ours lasted so long. My dad bought it from Butler-Conrad Appliance Co. like he did most everything else. In those days it was a major expense. We had lots of GE stuff at one time: B&W TVs, toaster, 40" stove, fridge, dishwasher, mixer.

The toaster (1965), stove and fridge (1953) are still in operation. We don't practice appliance genocide.

I remember the GE I gutted in 1979 was still working OK, which made me sad even as a kid in community college. But I got free parts, so I wasn't sad for long. I remember someone else took the picture tube. So at least the parts went to a good home.

My first and last TV repair job in the summer of 1980 was in a furniture store that sold used TVs on time payments. It had been a while since the last TV guy was there and he had a huge backlog of console sets that had been traded in. My favorite was the Motorola "works in a drawer" set. I had never seen such an animal. It was all solid state too. He even had several roundie color sets, but I didn't work on them because they were much older and not popular. Oh, if I only had them today.

My least favorite was a Magnavox tube-model console with little baby mouse feet sticking out of the IF shield. I passed on that one. My most successful was a later model Magnavox credenza from about 1975, all solid state. It just needed a picture tube. It had a gorgeous cabinet and sold the first day he put it on the floor.

My Avatar Silvertone wasn't working when I got it. It had a power resistor that was obviously blown, so I replaced that and was rewarded with a working radio. It should be recapped, I know, but it's so original and I play it so seldom that I've left it as is. It doesn't have any hum at all.

Those Silvertone consoles are smaller than average. Mine fits in a small bit of wall between the pantry and garage doors in my kitchen. I attached a picture of the entire radio. The dial is its best feature. I had a 1936 Sears catalog with it pictured years before I got the radio, which I think was about $5 at an auction sale. They looked so much bigger in the catalogs that I didn't make the connection until a while after I got the radio.

[bars&tone]

Welcome!

[Kamakiri]

I just restored that EXACT console Silvertone for a friend of mine