Magnavox First Color TV
 

What year did Magnavox make their first color tv and what was the model?

The answer to that may be a bit murky. One reason that that is so is that Magnavox had a stake in Sentinel Radio & TV and Sentinel produced a color set based on RCA's CtC-4 Chassis, circa 1955-6.
I don't remember Magnavox branded color sets until the early 1960s. They certainly were not color pioneers.

Even when they got into color in earnest, the Maggitboxes never were top performers.

But, at least early on, they often had nice cabinets. The ebony 9-foot combo comes to mind.:banana:

A friend of mine growing up had what I remember as a CTC10-ish Magnavox clone set. Cabinet was quite nice on it too, and had the seperate safety glass front.

I agree with Mal Fuller on the early 60s being the earliest true Magnavox color set. There were Magnavox-branded RCA clones, and the Sentinel probably was the first of those in the Magnavox family. Magnavox and Zenith didn't seem to like to license out any RCA patents from Sarnoff, and they've always kind of done their own thing. But with color TV, that was nearly impossible, so they probably had to give in and pay up to Sarnoff after waiting a decade to think it over.

Charles

So, it appears that Zenith and Magnavox began color production at roughly the same time frame. Can someone here give us the first chassis number and some models which used the first chassis.

I just breezed through the Sams index; the earliest Magnavox color set I see would be in Photofact 517-2, V37-01-00 or the 37 series. That would date to 1961.

When I worked at a Maggot-Vox dealer in the early 70's the cabinets sold the set. Fruit wood seemed to be the most popular back then.
Phil

There was litigation with RCA over bundling patents, and Zenith and some others didn't get into color until they could negotiate a better deal.

First Color Magnavox
 

Hey guys i found it. Here is an ad for the first color magnavox.

Does not say in the ad but where it was posted said 1957 and picture is saved as magnavox 1956.

I think this was the time when a lot of companies showed an RCA clone on paper and then dropped out of color until the 60s.

Thank you Firebird, I was trying to post that same picture but couldn't find the way to do it all of a sudden. Description says it has four speakers, ten watt amplifier, 26 tubes, most of the other controls are under a door beneath the two visible knobs.

Some of the HEAVIEST sets I ever worked on were Magnavox.

As for living a long life, my cousin had a 1967 Maggie rectangular set that never saw service until 1991, when I replaced the vertical output tube. All the other tubes were Maggie branded. I know this set saw daily use all those years.

A lightning strike on the tuner finally killed it. It was starting to look dull and smeary by this time.

The other Maggies usually had bad flybacks that were a bitch to find.

That is probably not an ad but rather a picture from, perhaps, a magazine article describing planned upcoming color TV sets. The set in the picture is a "clone" of an RCA CTC-4, as described here:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_ctc_clone.html

The Magnavox photo is from Popular Science Monthly magazine from October, 1955. Color tv article.

-Steve D.

Did Magnavox produce any of those tvs.

We had a mid-60's Maggotbox in the rec room of my college dorm back in 1978. When the flyback smoked a few weeks into the fall semester, it took the college's contractor almost to Christmas to get a replacement. It didn't look too bad. I mostly watched it for "Addams Family" reruns on WWBT-12 and "M*A*S*H" reruns on WDVM-9. The college trapped-out WTVR-6 for local origination with the other 11 channels split between the Washington and Richmond stations.

Why did I watch so little TV in college? My college had a 13:1 female to male ratio...

I had a 1968 Magnavox. My first color set. 23" rectangle. Not a bad set but a pain to keep it going. Even had Instant on feature.

Everyone thought Magnavox was a higher quality product, but me. I really do like their tube amplifiers. Even their later solid state stereos sounded good. :thmbsp:

The first color set Magnavox manufactured was the U45 series chassis, a 21" round color in 1964. The chassis was used in the following year's sets with a rectangular tube, and was the U904 chassis.

While it used RCA patented circuitry, it was far superior to RCA's color sets. It used better quality PC boards, and seemed to stand up to the heat better. I also feel that it had a better picture. It also had AFC on some versions... something RCA did not.

I know there are a lot of RCA fans here, but after 31 years in the electronics industry, I have to say Magnavox made a superior TV and radio chassis, and their record changers were in a class by themselves.

I agree. I did Magnavox dealer service for alot of years, and worked on alot of the older tube color sets. Other than flybacks being hard to find sometimes, they rarely gave trouble... unlike the RCA's, that ate 6GH8's

The first Magnavox branded color set I know of was a 1955 CTC-4 clone/rebadge (I have the Sam's folder) with virtually no difference between it and the RCA CTC-4 Director. The major difference was that(since RCA's audio stage was part of the power supply) Magnavox left the CTC-4 audio output stage disconnected from the speaker and took a lower level audio feed from the TV chassis and fed it to their own(quite nice BTW) audio chassis then to the speakers.

Interesting, they did the same thing to a high end 1955 B&W set that I had.

Their Amps from that era are top notch and sought after today by Audio types.

Does anyone have a fifties Magnavox color tv?

I don't have a 50's Maggie color but here is my U45 Chassis set. Dated 9/65 and found at an estate sale sitting in the corner where it probably had been since Christmas of 65. The cabinet is in like new condition except for a crack in the plastic control panel. It was missing most of the tubes though. I imagine someone took them out to test years ago and never put them back. The 21FBP22A Hi-Lite tested strong on all guns. I stuffed it with tubes and brought it up on the variac. The filters stayed cool and after a quick convergence it displayed a great picture with excellent sound from 2 6x9 speakers.

My '63 CTC-15 clone is exactly the same way. The audio board is quite bare, only 1 tube. It has the other 2 sockets but no supporting components. It is fed into the preamp and then to the audio amp. I guess these single ended 6BQ5 amps are pretty sought after. They are supposedly class "A" but don't quote me on that.

It's kind of neat to see that Magnavox didn't really change the chassis and the style when going to rectangular CRTs.. That Magnavox in Tim's post doesn't look that much different than the one posted in this craigslist ad.

http://detroit.craigslist.org/mcb/zip/3025185758.html

My first color set was a 1968 Magnavox I got from the shop I worked at in 1974. Needed an alignement an a good set up. Wasn't too bad but it got me by till I found a better set.

I will be interested to see how this Stereo PP 6L6 Amp sounds - I'm making it
from multiple 1940's Magnavox mono radio/Phono chassis.
Their PP 6L6 O/P transformers had old Magnavox Logo of Lion
roaring from 1920's Hornspeaker ! Gave contoured logo a black
background for contrast.

I bet it'll sound sweet!

From what I recall of the schematic the audio output board of the TV chassis was completely populated and ready to drive a speaker they just never connected the speaker to the audio output transformer on the TV chassis(which feels like a waste of parts!) and instead ran a line from the first audio amp(or detector, but I'm pretty sure they picked it off soon after the volume control) and fed it to their own separate audio chassis which drove the speaker.

Most maggies had flyback failures because I doubt the factory dipped horizontal current. My T-933 was running around 225 ma when I got it running. I adjusted the efficiency coil and after two hours it still holds at 189 ma. The color circuit is RCA but with a couple of odd compactrons. The weak point on mine is the tuner! It is a turret but very cheaply made. It would not be a good OTA analog as the fine tuning is a bit quirkey!
A friend of mine had a Maggie roundie for years until a large picture fell from the wall behind it and broke the CRT neck. The chassis was the one with the BIG silver HV cage that had the HV rectifier mounted upside down in it.

I have a copy of the 1957 color tv buying guide and Magnavox has one set offered for $697.00. Although it was an RCA clone

Could you email a copy?

Mine is not done that way, no output transformer. The volume control is the one used for the stereo so they cant pick it off from there. maybe the older sets are that way without the stereo. All the parts to drive a speaker are not there on this chassis(C43).
As far as the chassis is concerned, it is RCA. All the same tubes and components. It's just modified in the audio output and power on/off controls. Flyback failures in this set are no more common than RCA sets.