Show us your vintage B&W sets!
 

I began collecting vintage TV's with round CRT's about 5 years ago when it occured to me that one of these would make a really cool period and conversation piece in my living room. I started looking around and putting out the word to my circle of friends and one day got a tip that there was a 1948, 10" Admiral bakelite consolette at an antique shop a couple of hour's away. Well it was in really tough shape, major crack in the top of the cabinet, most of the tubes were missing, and even the knobs were missing. The price was also too high but I just hadn't discovered the 'network' yet and let me tell you, these vintage sets are really hard to come by in Ontario, ...so I bought it. Then began all the phone calls, at first trying to find a good 10BP4 CRT (the picture tube was also shot). I eventually discovered the AWA and the radio swap meets and the rest is history. I had to buy another cabinet for that set, and another complete Admiral just for the right knobs, but eventually did get it fully electronically restored and polished to a nice shine. During that project I developed a keen interest in these early post war marvels of technology and that interest led to a full blown desire to collect more and more. Now I have filled my home with them and the collection spills over into the shop where the unrestored ones still await my attention. I would be ready to open a Vintage TV Museum any day now, if it was only a practical thing to do. The cost of heating the display building alone would never be recouped by the take at the gate. Anyhow, when I get time I'll eventually be sharing these sets with visitors to my website in Virtual Museum mode.

Vintage TV collecting has not entrenched itself yet like the well established hobby (and business) of radio collecting, but in the past 5 years it sure has seen a rapid growth curve. I'm glad I got started when I did, my collection is now pretty much big enough and I limit my collecting now somewhat selectively to just those few B&W sets I still desire to find or vintage round screen color sets.

I've enclosed an after restoration picture of my first set that launched my collecting hobby and invite all of you to share your pictures and collecting stories with us.

Rob

B and W tvs
 

Rob:
Boy, that is opening a can of worms! Do you want them cronologically or alphabetically! Allright, how about a 7" Emerson. Ummm, lemme see if I can do this.....

Marlin

Marlin,

Nice Emerson 600! That is one of the ones still on my wish list. If you'd like I could store it for you. ;)

Rob

Hi Rob, great group you got here!
OK, here is one of my newest favorites, a 1953 + or - Philco 21" floor model with a "Golden Grid" Tuner whatever that means. It must work though because it really pulls in the stations even without an antenna!

This is an old set you can actually watch.

Eric

Hi Eric,

Glad you could drop by! That is a great early 50's set. Yes one you can watch! Great sound too I'll bet. Didn't they make a car about that same time, early 50's, with a front ornament that looked like the pencil box with that Vee below it? :D

Rob

Rob, I believe you are referring to a chevy. The "V" stands for V8. Come to think of it I have several television sets which grills that look sorta familliar. maybe I saw them at our neighborhood classic car show.....
Marlin

I always thought the "V" stood for "Victory", after the US won WWII. But that was always an educated guess, seeing that I've never seen a television with a V8....but then again I wouldn't put anything past Rob :p:

Beautiful Crosley 9-408
 

Here's my Crosley 9-408. Bought from a friend in NY, I restored it about a month ago.

Excellent RCA 721TS
 

Here's an RCA 721TS that I bought unrestored from a Canadian collector. It took me over a month to get it cleaned up and working since it was once used in a bar and was covered with tobacco smoke residue. Here it is, working again..

GE 800C
 

Also bought in Canada, here's a GE 800C working again.

Pathe 12-2
 

Here's a Pathe 12-2 that I restored some time ago.

Re: Excellent RCA 721TS
 

JS,

That 721TS is a beauty now. After all that hard work, why on earth are you selling it?????

Rob

RCA 721TS
 

To answer that question, I'm selling it because vintage tv is now more than a hobby. I used to work for a leading long-distance phone company which is now in the news for the worst accounting scandal in US history. Vintage electronics is my job now.

Some products and services we offer are:

1 - We buy, restore and sell vintage radio, tv, hi-fi and guitar amplifiers.

2 - We design and build tube guitar and hi-fi amplifiers.

3 - We restore vintage electronics for those collectors who already have the sets but lack the time or expertise to do their own restorations.

When I acquire an especially rare set (there were fewer Crosley 9-408's made than RCA 630TS's) I hold onto them for private display in my home.

One of my goals is to increase the number of surviving antique sets that are also working antique sets.

This has been something I've wanted to turn from a hobby into a career since I was 12 years old. The ultimate goal of my business is to bring America's consumer electronics industry back to its former glory in the same way as we all love to bring pictures bact to the screens of classic tv sets that have sat dormant for decades. I hope to market a 100% American-made tv set within 10 years. Please visit my Web site and have a lok around. The URL is http://home.earthlink.net/~amptechsys. Here's my AboutMe page on eBay, also http://members.ebay.com/aboutme/jshorva65/

Thank you for the reply.

John

John,

Sorry for you that the bean counters at the phone company got caught doing what they and bankers do best. A lot of people that trusted the system have been burned badly.

I wish you luck in your enterprise. It is great when you can turn something you love as a hobby into something you will also enjoy as a mechanism for buying groceries. Looks like the 721 will buy you a few groceries.

I have one of those 721TS's obtained from a mutual friend (I'll bet) who happens to also live in New York State, the Crosley looks awful familiar :) , and wouldn't think of parting with it. I'd like to restore it someday myself. I just have so many to do I don't know which one to tackle next and other matters keep me distracted of course. I don't buy any of these ever to resell however, just for the private collection. Someone's gonna get a nice complete collection someday.

Rob

Can't get much rounder than this set. A Stromberg-Carlson TC-10

Chuck

RCA 721TS
 

Dear Rob,

Yes, this one set will pay most of the bills here for the month. I also received a phone call yesterday from someone in Oklahoma who will be paying to have his RCA 8-T-241 professionally packed, shipped to me, restored by me, re-packed and shipped back. Why? Because he has owned the set (in working order) for years until just recently when the tuner was damaged by a visiting grandchild. He removed the tuner and had it professionally rebuilt. He thinks he may have reinstalled it incorrectly since he reinstalled it himself and is not experienced with electronics. The set also was working with all of its original paper capacitors unreplaced when it worked. I plan to evaluate the condition of the set and either confirm or disprove the customer's suspicion that the paper capacitors may finally need replaced and then, if necessary, relace them. My own suspicion is that the rebuilt tuner, now properly aligned by the rebuilder, may be producing an IF for which the chassis is no longer properly aligned. Armed with sweep and marker generators and a frequency counter, I plan to do RF sweeps on each channel, verifying that the tuner is set up to produce the correct response curve, check the response curve of the IF amplifiers, and then likewise align the set's IF amplifiers back to factory specifications if my suspicions prove to be true.

Incidentally, I also kept my Crosley 9-408 for a second reason besides the fact that it is less common than the similar RCA 630TS. My Crosley set appears to have been kept in a climate-controlled environment for many years and cared for very well. Although both sets are complete and the finishes are almost equally nice on both the RCA 721TS and the Crosley 9-408, you'll notice that the Crosley's finish looks almost like it would have looked when it was new while the RCA's has dulled just slightly from age. The Crosley also works as well as it does and produces all the correct waveforms and response sweeps flawlessly without the need for replacement of even one of its original paper capacitors. The set is powered up weekly, always with a Variac, protected by a 2.5-amp fuse, displayed in a room that's climate-controlled between 65 and 85 degrees and never left unattended with power aqpplied. If any capacitor does eventually fail, I'll replace them all.

John

And you guys guessed it, I'm the mutual friend! :D

You guys have more sets in common than you realize.

John, I was stunned to see wat the 721 is going for!

about 5 years ago I sold a 721, 830 and another 48 RCA for $200
that's $200 for all three!!

Someone please shoot me now <LOL>


Eric

Chuck,

Are you the one that scored one of these N.I.B. recently? Totally awesome set!

I've got three Zenith Portholes now, a Raytheon 12" Porthole, and a Teletone 209 suitcase 7" porthole that also qualify as 'round'. I just scored my latest Zenith, a 12" with doors last weekend. These true portholes are soooo cool!

Here's a picture of the new one and the 16" I had before to it's left. Both have identical cabinets and identical patterned doors.

Rob

Rob,

Yes, that's the NIB Stromberg. Your right, the porthole style is pretty slick to showoff. So far I haven't found another, just a couple more projection sets.

Chuck

RCA 721TS
 

Dear Rob,

I suspect that the presence of Channel 1 on the dial may be part of the reason my set is going for over $1,000. My GE 800C only went for $249 although it's nearly impossible to find those locomotive-style Bakelite cabinets in good condition. Virtually every one of them that I've seen except that one has at least had one crack somewhere. Many that I've seen had most or all of the top grille smashed out. I really think that Channel 1 is the attraction.

John

Wholly geez! :eek:

Makes me wish I'd have held on to more of my collection! But then again, most of the good stuff went to Rob, so at least it's all loved :smlove:

1940's 10" sets
 

Many of the 10" sets made prior to 1949 are likely to have Channel 1. I just count the positions in the photos that are posted on eBay and I'm almost always right about which ones do have Channel 1 vs which ones don't. I just bought an RCA 630TS for $150 that has Channel 1. Buy-It-Now wasn't originally an option, but I convinced the seller to sell it to me for $150 with Buy-It-Now since the set was listed in Collector's Guide to Vintage Television as having an average unrestored value of $175, was missing a knob and needed a small piece of veneer fixed on the front. It's going to cost me quite a bit to have the set professionally disassembled and packed since the seller didn't want to attempt it himself. I'll also have some money involved in the veneer repair. I bought a complete set of knobs for the 630TS on eBay recently so I have the replacement knob on hand. I even have a spare 10BP4 (had two, but used one of them) and saved a dud to have rebuilt if necessary. What I don't have but hope to find are replacements for a missing HV cage, back cover and 2 knobs for my Fada TV30 (also a Channel 1 set). The cage and back shouldn't be hard to find as they're pretty much identical for the 630TS and all its clones. The knobs, however, are going to be harder to find because, although any 630-clone knobs will fit the shafts, the Fada knobs are cosmetically different.

John

Round is good. Round is cool. Check out this partially restored '48 Zenith 12".
Pardon the bad exposure, the flash washes out the picture. I found it in a small town antique mall trying to work but looking funny. I talked them down to $150, hauled it home, parked it on the bench, and proceeded to hand wind a power choke. 2000 turns of #32 wire. I thought I was going to choke! A couple of caps, two good 5U4's and a few other tubes and this is what I got. Still needs recapping but I hafta make a living sometime.....
Marlin:p:

Hey folks: Anybody else watchin' the GE mirror in lid set on ebay? It ends tomorrow evening and already is at $7500.00+! Auction #2115928008. Sure wish I was rich!
Here is a photo I lifted from the ebay auction.
Marlin:eek:

Moderator's Note: That auction has closed and the set sold for $12,300.01. See http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=2115928008

I saw it the moment it was posted and have been following it with interest. Nowadays, generally only well funded museums or wealthy collectors can afford to obtain historically significant gems like this. Thirty years ago you could still trip over this sort of thing at a yard or estate sale and have it for a working man's pay. Not any more.

Rob

Many of these gems were actually DELIBERATELY DESTROYED years ago because they were considered DANGEROUS. For those who don't know the background, pulse and rf supplies for high voltage were not developed until after the war. These pre-war sets used a second power transformer and usually a 2X2 rectifier with much larger filer capacitors to develop the 7.5kV second-anode voltage. These supplies were not energy-limited like the more modern flyback-pulse or rf oscillator supplies. These old supplies could easily continue producing high voltage at sufficient current to kill while loaded with body resistance. Body resistance normally presents such a heavy load on rf and flyback circuits to limit the output current to a level that will produce little more than a very unpleasant shock to a healthy adult. A picture tube only draws about 1mA of beam current from the hv supply. Pulse and rf supplies normally have high impedances which tend to limit their output current. I still wouldn't recommend touching the hv circuits of a flyback or rf supply with power on and also recommend discharging the filter capacitor(s) before working on them.

When restoring one of these pre-war gems, use extreme caution around the high-voltage supplies, never work near them with power applied and always discharge the filter before working on the hv circuitry.

John

Here is my Stromberg Carlson. My next door neighbor gave this one to me about five years ago...

My old BW sets
 

Here's my limited collection of old BW sets. See my post in color sets for explanation for lack of pics.

1. Stewart Warner 12" round. Made in 1949. I can get a picture, but I also got this set prior to learning that recapping is a good thing. Once recapped, this set will look really nice. The strips in the tuner are not all there, but I still can get it to work on cable. This one is a tabletop.

2. Zenith 21" made about 1958. Here's a good worker. Nothing special about this VHF only metal tabletop. A set similat to it is pictured in the AS THE WORLD TURNS book published in 1996. The child pictured would eventually become one of ATWT's executive producers. I'll eventually scan the photo and picture of the set. This one will eventually get a full recap, but it works after replacing some caps in the vertical and correcting other "repairs" done before I had the set.

I am always looking for old sets, but I'm not sure when "primetime at curbside" here is.

Here is my Bakelite Admiral just after the restoration was finished playing a 1949 commercial for Joy dishwashing liquid when the set was barely 1 year old...

And here is my TV project for next winter. It's my first porthole television set, a 1951 Zenith Blonde Console...

hi Rob I see that you are from Ontario..i was passing through Napanee last week and notice the guy who runs the flea market there has 2 or 3 vintage TV sets for sale..i am into the audio side and picked up a nice reel to reel for a good price..just thought i mention it

Your Blondie is sure a beauty!

Good luck in your restoration effort. This system is worth fussing over!

1961 philips
 

Hear is my antique t.v[IMG][IMG]http://168.103.222.44/photogallery/tv.jpg

They don't get much bigger than this one. Will be my winter project, a 1948 RCA Berkshire Regency. All 6ft and 550lbs of it.

http://myvintagetv.com/regencyfront.jpg

Chuck,

Do you need a special class of license to tow that package? :)

Wow, now that is an entertainment center! I have never run across any info on those but understand that it uses the same basic 4 chassis projection set as all the RCA projection receivers like my own 9PC41's, but with additional chrome plated (I think I read somewhere) radio chassis. Correct me or comment on this if I am wrong.

Your's is the first photo I have ever seen of one of these. That will be quite a project. Great score!

BTW. at something like 250 lbs, my 9PC41 was impossible to move about on the carpet until I installed hidden 2" casters underneath. I am a firm believer in hidden casters wherever possible on these vintage consoles.

Rob

Rob,

Yes, you are correct the TV chassis' are the same as used in all the '48-'49 RCA projection sets. If you want to see more of the set look here :

http://www.myvintagetv.com/rca_berkshire_regency.htm

I have a 8PCS41 that is restored and a 9PC41 not worked on yet. The 9PC41 has the remote control.

This is sitting on moving blankets, that's how we moved it into position. Since this picture was taken I put teflon coasters under it, great for wood floors.


Chuck

Chuck,

That is a real collectible piece there. It cost about 1/4 what you could buy a house for when new. Wow!

I have the remote for my 9PC41 also. I haven't gotten into restoring the one of mine that I plan to keep yet. Too many proyects on the go.

Rob

Just wanted to bring everyone up to date on the latest additions to my vintage b/w collection.

At a local auction this week, I picked up (for $1 each) a Motorola and a Philco B/W console both from circa late 1950s. Both produce picture and sound, one has a brightness problem (but a good CRT) and the other has insufficient vertical sweep. The Philco has what looks like a Predicta chassis inside a traditional 50's-style console cabinet. I'll snap some pics of it later this week.

Here's the REALLY EXCITING NEWS!!!

Part 1 -- I've almost finished recapping the Fada TV30 (channel 1) that I bought from Tim (with the original Owner's Manual) and all I need next is to get a coil slug, a few knobs, a hv cage and a back. I've got those projects in progress.

Part 2 -- My RCA 630TS (channel 1) arrived yesterday. All I need for that one besides recapping is a back, a few knobs, a safety glass and a bracket.

Part 3 -- I just won an auction for a Fada 799 (channel 1, near mint with original Owners Manual and a full raster) today. Here is a pic of the set which I hope to be receiving sometime in the next month. An educated guess tells me that it's likely to produce a picture after cleaning the tuner, recapping optional like with my Crosley 9-408. The seller tells me that she acquired it from the original owner. It appears to have been taken care of very well and probably stored in a climate-controlled area of the house.

John

Fada 799
 

John,

That 799 is gorgeous! Great score. How are you gonna have it shipped??? I'd be nervous about any other way than personal pickup if it was my deal.

Rob