The WORST ever
 

Let's have a hall of shame for the worst color sets ever made. In my book the Motorola with the 23EGP22 wins, hands down... unbilievable junk. Nothing else even comes close. Helped me pay a lot of bills, though.

I would say the late 60's GE color sets. The color reproduction was never good on them. Either the fleshtones were green or purple and no way to really get them right. The grass was always green and sky was always blue but the fleshtones sucked. They always had HV and focus troubles of some sort. Dont forget the high pitch noise they always had comming from the flybacks. I could hear a GE flyback a hundred feet away. They had the capability to make a nice quality set but chose not to. I guess thats why you dont see many of them surviving to now. The one that Dwight just got was the first one i have seen in at least 15 years.
-Tony

I say Sony's first 26" set-- with the 710ab22 picture tube
 

They never lasted very long, and you could NOT rejuv them-- they would fade back down right befiore your eyes.(i'm referring to the big sony tube"26", with the DUAL anode coaxial connector, for hv, and convergence)

Zenith CRT's around 1993! Really bad CRT's. I have a 1969 GE color set...got the chassis working but CRT is shorted!
There is also CTC-177 but I think that once the solder joints are repaired they are OK.

No, it has to be that godawful POS Sears set from the early '60s. AS I've said, sometimes the thing would take a dump before the repair guy got out of our driveway good. I don't know who made it, but I think it was made in Japan, & this was before they'd figured out how to make color sets very well.-Sandy G.

magnavox and zenith projection tv,s looking at a zenith now on my bench.
pure shi##y crap. :puke:

My boss at the time absolutely HATED anything Motorola especially their color sets! He passed them on to me to try and repair.
I guess the reason I have so many now is more nostalgia than anything.
I have to say that the GE tube stuff pretty much sucked though with a so-so picture and brittle pc boards after a few years.
Coronado and westinghouse of the era were junk too.

most tube sets that weren't RCA or Zenith seemed to be pretty crappy. RCA's CTC-38 chassis was crap. It's like they decided to go "on the cheap" at the end of the tubed chassis run.

GE sets from the later 1960s all seem to be pretty poor with cheap CRTs and cheap construction.

I have some Motorola B&W sets from 1965 and before. These seem ok with metal chassis ,etc. They went cheap about 1965 and the later stuff does not seem to be built well.

Captain Moody, Yes!!! Coronado's were terrible, but don't forget the crap you could get at your local Western Auto! (True Tone)

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I have a 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 which still works, and an RCA CTC185 half as old but still works as well (after one repair and the ground points around the tuner having been resoldered). Both sets have their original CRTs; the Zenith has never been serviced, and was used quite a bit from 1995-99.

I wouldn't say all Truetone/Western Auto television sets were junk. I have an aunt and uncle who had a WA Truetone 21" console in the '50s; the set lasted through that decade and into the next one, then they got a Sylvania console and gave the old Truetone to me. I had the TT set from about 1970 until 1972; it worked well for me after changing a tube or two.

I know this is supposed to be more of a vintage thread but I gotta vent my spleen.

Zenith CRTs from the early 90s were absolute POS. I've seen more wonky guns on Zeniths than any other brand. That might just be me. OTOH I have a 32" Zenith from about that time frame in my room. Horrible color but for some reason I can mentally tune it out.

How about any recent JVC 32" sets? I just tossed one out last week that had a PCB that was paper thin and negligible framework around it. Both 32" JVCs that have come my way had fatal PCB cracks that killed 'em. Spent way too much time trying to salvage one only to realize it wasn't worth saving.

They still haven't learned...
 

I bought this terrible Korean? set, a 19" Sampo...it was a rebuilt and cheep (guess why?), bled like a hemophiliac and eventually died of a dangerous HV arcing problem that forced it's retirement.

Oddly enough, I saw a $600 HDTV set doing the same bleeding in digital mode. White all over the place.

Wal-Mart wants almost 3500 bucks for a Sanyo 42" HDTV monitor...that's a used car price and NO TUNER! It's a great set but Hell, no tuner??? PAH!

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I recall seeing an HDTV set several months ago at Wal-mart and the picture was crooked! like the yoke was turned crooked.
Don't remember what make it was but this doesn't seem a sign of good quality control on an expensive set of whatever brand it was.

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i have three catagories of the worst tvs made.
1. vintage (sixties) motorola. the quality of the compontents used in their sets was absolutely abysmal. they were extremely hard to service. their picture was not good, even when they were new.

2.hybrids & solid state. sears silvertone, admiral, general electric. actually any one that used compactron tubes AND printed circuit board chassis.

3. ALL late model korean, chinese, taiwanese sets, including zenith.

the BEST tv ever made was setchel carlson.

Am curious, how do you define "best"? Did Setchel Carlson ever build any color sets? What of Dumont? I thought they were the Cadillac of TVs....at least B&W sets. Of the 60's era, I think that the hand wired Zeniths are right at the top even though they can be a pain at times to dig thru the layers of wiring to work on.

Anthony

I have seen photofacts for a Setchell Carson color set...appears to be high quality with hand wired metal chassis modules and test points on rear for horizontal output or regulator current. The Dumont color sets I believe were made in the 60's by Emerson or whoever owned the Dumont name...they don't seem to be the same quality as the '50s Dumont b/w sets.

I had a Setchell roundie I had to give away in one of my many moves through the years, It was built very well and yet quite light for a console, The chassis was aluminium as well as the modules.
Real easy to remove them too, just two thumbscrews.
Wish I had it back...

When did SC stop production? What years did they make color sets? Feeble minds want to know.

Anthony

Here is the recent thread with a pic of a great Setchell rect. color set.

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...4&page=1&pp=15

I read, I think, that they gave up the business about 69/70.

definition of best
 

yes, setchell carlson did build colors sets. i have a 1963 "roundie" that i use as a daily watcher.
the reason i say they are the best is because of the quality of the compontents that they used, the circuitry & the chassis design.
they used simple tried & true circuit designs that utilized very common tubes (every SC set that i know of has at least four 6AU6s). they used high quality resistors & capacitors. they used good phenolic tube sockets. they also lasted a long time before needing service.
due to the conservative design of the circuitry, tubes had a very long life span, if fact, if you find a SC set, chances are good that most of the original tubes will still be in it. it would most likely have a weak / bad picture tube. these sets were known to outlive three picture tube replacements.

the SC "roundie" that i own, i aquired it off of a trash pile about 5 years ago. around that time, i had a NOS 21fjp22 that i installed in it. the only other work i done on that set was replace a electrolytic capacitor underneath the horizontal output module & replace the H.O. tube. i have been using it on a daily basis since then, even to this day.

Can we see some chassis and exterior pics? Pleeeeaaaase? I find any non-RCA or RCA-clone roundie to be very interesting!! :thmbsp:

Thanks for the info Robert1......am with Carmine, I'd love to see some pix too.....the more obscure color sets are most interesting!

Anthony (enjoys ANY pasta)

Heres a scan i got off of an Ebay auction from a few years back. Its of a 1963 SC roundie with the unitized chassis. I used to have the scan of the inside but its now long gone after a computer crash. I apologize for the logo as the seller created this not me but at least it proves SC color roundies did exist. If i recall right, this one sold for $300 as it was fully restored with a nos crt.
-Tony

She's got her hand right about where it would be on his...Damn, I got a dirty mind !! Wonder if anybody back in good ol' antebellum 1963 caught that, too ?!? Nice lookin' roundie, BTW..Of course, I think they're ALL nice lookin'.-Sandy G.

That's subliminal advertising which is saying that you'll turn on all the wimmin folk if you buy this here teevee, you big stud muffin you.

Anthony

Yeah, but look how ghastly white she is...looks like a zombie....Hey ! Wonder if a Pittsburgh kid named George Romero saw this ad, & got him to thinkin'....-Sandy G.

Picture of my Setchell Carlson rectangular CVT modular set.

polaraman

Man, that guy is as clean as a hound's tooth !!-Sandy G.

i will try to get a picture of it while it is playing as soon as i get replacement batteries for my old casio digital camera.

i can tell you one thing, that setchall carlson is a great set.

my sc roundie has a different style cabinet, however, the control layout is exactly the same.
another thing i like to mention is that you should see the audio module that these use.. talk about real high fidelity.
here is the tube layout.

two 6GK6's PP output
one 12AX7 driver
two 6AU6 if amps
one 6AL5 ratio detector.

i also have extra modules for this set too.
i will try to get a picture of it later on

I've got an SC portable (B&W). A dream to work on - pop the modules out and everything's easy to get to :)

The chassis on them stays nice cause it's aluminum. Very nice sets. I wouldn't mind an SC roundie.

Interesting how they were big on 'modules' before everyone else....

Oh yeah, my portable, I restored it and it's beautiful. No AGC control though and it overloads on my house antenna signal. Need to get an attenuator :P But a great set - I used it nearly 24/7 around 9/11 and it never let me down. Oh yeah, and an epoxy sealed flyback, not the crappy wax everyone else used.

Worst TV? By far was a mid to late 80's Goldstar. It took 3 of them to live past its one year warranty. Last one died at 13 months. Biggest piece of crap i've ever bought.

Motorola hybrids.
Magnavox tube sets "the ones that used PC boards"
Sylvania 80s sets
Garbage Electric anything
Panasonic portable tube sets
Westinghouse tube sets.
Many Zenith sets from the mid 80s to late 90s They need to reverse
thier slogan to "The name goes on before the quality goes in"

My vote goes to the Magnzvos line of the early 70s. There was nothing good about the color quality on these sets. My parents bought a 19-inch tabletop Magnavox with a simulated Maple Early American finish. It came with its own matching wood grain table. The damn thing was both blurry and incapable of reproduing anything close to an accurate color picture. It had some feature that added a brownish sepia tint to the color, and the same brownish hue to black and white. IGH. Truly terrible.

I worked for a Magnacrap dealer between '70 & '73 while in college. I remember one year Magnacrap was at the top of the heap in Consumers Report. Sold a ton of sets. About 1,995 pounds worth came back for warranty work. Not as difficult to work on as the 23EGP based Motorolas, but still a POS. They were a big help in paying my tuition.