tims roundscreens
 

Hi ak my name is ed. Tim gave me 3 roundscreen color sets in july. A emerson,silvertone and philco. I repaired the emerson and silvertone. haven't had the time to fix the philco. Tim asked me to post pictures so here they are. i will also post pictures of my other sets. Most of them are roundscreen color sets but i do have some cool looking b-w sets too. :)

Well ALL RIGHT!!!! :yippy:

I'm glad to see them live again! How much work did they need?

keeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewl
 

great looking sets mate....great to see them operating! :D

Welcome aboard, pal ! Nice to see a few more old roundies saved from oblivion ! Think you'll like it here-there's quite a contingent of us old TV nuts, most of whom are willing to share their experiences.-Sandy G.

Hey Roundscreen! The pictures look pretty good on those sets! Would also like to hear what it took to get em going and also some chassis pix :naughty:

Thank you. i am glad u like them. The wood on the emerson is so cool. Tim repaired the safty glass on the emerson and he did a nice job. Here is a list of repairs. emerson- tubes-1 power filter-hv wire and cup-horz cent control- resolder grounds and tube sockets-clean tuner- cap in vert.
silvertone-repair flyback-resolder grounds and color tube sockets-replace horz out,damper, hv rectfier and reg tubes-replace horz afc diodes.
Good thing i wrote this stuff down. I have been running the sets so more problems will show up. yes i am a tv nut, big time. been doing this for over 25 years. here is a picture of the emerson chassis also check out this1950 emerson b-w . picked it up in the east side. It was in a attic. It Has a working metel crt.

Welcome, Roundscreen! I like that Silvertone...I always liked their sets. My mother has a high school yearbook with an ad for the local Sears store and they have a pic of the TV department. Probably the first place I'd ever seen a picture of a roundie.

Woah, nice pictures :)

Mine aren't that good yet :( But they will be :)

Hey, is it me or is the Emerson chassis a LOT like a CTC-15? And it looks like my Sylvania 580, which is a CTC-15 ripoff, I think. It just screams "RCA". nothing wrong with that though. Did anyone besides Zenith have their own design in the roundie era, or were they all repackaged RCAs?

Welcome Roundscreen!

Nice jobs on those sets! Takes a lot of patience to get one of those babies going again. The Emerson chassis looks like a CTC-15 clone... or at least it does from the angle i saw in the photo.

Will be looking forward to seeing any other sets that you might have/had.

Hi ak.
bryan. what year was your moms high school year book? I think the silvertone is a 65 or 66. Charlie and nasadowski you are right. ctc 15. i have a ctc 15 down stairs and the chassis looks almost the same. the crt in the emerson has a emerson tag on it. Here are some pix of my ctc5.
I have 2 of them 1 deluxe and a super. the super is buried under other sets.
when i dig it out i will post.I use the rabbit ears on my sets. { don't have cable}.the tuners in old sets pick up some stations better than my 32" rca.
:)

Damn, Ed, MODERN TVs should have as good pictures as yr old roundies do ! Great lookin' sets ! Is it just me, or is watching an old roundie make you feel you're watching Something Special ?!? Guess it's just left over from when I was a kid, & ALL color sets were roundies, & getting to watch one WAS special-there weren't that many around, & not that much stuff was in color.-Sandy G.

excuse me if my typing isnt great tonight, there is a kitten asleep in my arm!

that ctc-5 is great! i dont recall seeing that model before. yep, almost anything looks better on a roundie!

mom graduated in 66 so that would be about right. maybe someday i can sneak it out for a pic. iirc, shows a guy with a guitar & amp posing there with the tv's.

Hey Roundscreen,

Add my welcome to the list. You have some great sets in your collection. Your CTC-5 "Asbury" produces a beautiful picture. I also have a CTC-5 Deluxe model "The Wingate". You can see it and the complete CTC-5 model line up and other goodies on my site:

http//:community.webtv.net/stevetek/StevesCT100

Steve

Sandy you are right. The modern tv does have a nice picture. Some roundies have better focus but the picture is not as bright. the tuners in old sets seem to hide static and over the air noise better. yes watching a roundie is something special. like when we were kids. i liked going to my aunt and uncles house and watching cartoons on there rca roundie. Bryan. I would like to see that picture. My typing is bad . And i don't have a kitty on my arm.
Steve. thank you. I will check out your site.{ asbury} So cool how rca gave the sets names.

Those are all beautiful sets with amazing pictures. You are to be commended sir.

Now can you please explain how a Re-Max real estate ad fits in with a burning, wrecked car? :scratch2:
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/att...chmentid=23514
http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/att...chmentid=23515

Well, all right. The spot takes place on the set of an action movie being shot. The actress is selling her house, and for comic relief the agent flies over the scene in his hot air balloon to tell Actress (wearing the NTSC-accurate red in the first screenshot) that he sold her house. Whatever.

roundscreen - Zenith, Admiral and Motorola gave their sets names too. Zenith, if I remember, named their sets well into the '80s.

I get the feeling that as nice as your Asbury looks, the pictures may not be doing it full justice. Impressive, indeed.

Hi ak
carmine That is a vary good question. sorry i do not know. i was too busy messing around with the camera.
color trakker. someone should bring back putting names on tvs. Do they still make all wood cabnets? i haven't seen one in a long time.
steve- i checked out your site and that wingate is a vary good looking tv. the ct100 is awesome. your whole collection is awesome. the sets and screen pictures .How do you get such good screen shots with flash on?
My camera is a 1 yo cannon power shot A300 paid 340.00 with the tax.
dirt cheap. been working vary well. does eat battries when u use flash.
but most of them do. When i resize the pictures some detail is lost.
Here is some more eye candy. this is a rca i found in the trash. ctc20
the cabnet is water damaged on the top. i wish i was better at repairing the cabnets. Have alot of them that need refinishing. the chassis is clean. yes the crt has been changed. the old one was shot. It looks funny with the dark green screen. the old one is more blueish.

Roundscreen,

First, welcome to AK. I've been a member here for about 18 months, give or take, and can say there is a very fine group of antique TV and radio collectors in these forums. I've gotten a lot of help finding troubles in some of my old sets from the guys here, so I can recommend AK highly, in its entirety.

I had a Sears Silvertone roundie in the early 1970s. It was an old set one of my neighbors in my hometown had had sitting in his garage for some years, but after I got it home (thank goodness I only lived one street over from where this fellow was, because the set was in a metal cabinet, had a round glass 21FJP22 CRT, and weighed at least a ton), I managed to get it to work halfway decently after a couple minor "repairs" under the chassis. I put the word "repairs" in quotes because these, I blush to admit, were not true repairs (I've been working with electronics, TV, radio, ham radio, etc. since I was eight years old--I'm now 48) and heaven knows I should have known better, but the thing was I didn't have a replacement handy for the circuit breaker at the time, so I jumpered across the old one. The on-off switch was bad as well; I jumpered that too, and simply used the line cord plug as an on/off control.

The set worked--well, not perfectly (the convergence was way off, and I didn't have a dot/crosshatch/bar generator at the time as this was my first in what eventually evolved into a long string of color sets), but I was thrilled anyhow at having at least gotten this thing to make a color picture on the three (at that time) VHF network stations from Cleveland. It continued to work well the next three years, surviving a 20-mile move and being carried up three flights of stairs :eek: when I moved (the first time) in '72, but in the latter part of 1973 I managed to ruin the video amp/output circuit board while trying to replace a defective video output tube (6AW8). I did not realize that the replacement had one slightly bent pin, and I was pressing down on the tube to put it in the socket; suddenly I heard a sickening crunch and watched in horror as the tube socket clunked to the bottom of the set. :(

I used a 1961 Philco 19" b&w portable TV the next two years until I moved back to my hometown in 1975. (A 12" Sharp portable I had also had since 1970 had bitten the dust some time earlier; just what went wrong with it I don't remember anymore, as it has been well over thirty years since it went bad and I got rid of it.) I left the Silvertone roundie behind for the home's owner (my dad's second wife who divorced him in '75, when we left and went back to my hometown) to deal with; not knowing anything about old televisions, she probably put the thing out for the trash eventually.

That Silvertone was, as I said, the first in a very long string of color TV sets I owned from then until now. Most of them (in fact, every one except the last three sets I have owned) were trash-day finds; I managed to get every one of the older sets working--again, not perfectly, but well enough to watch on the antenna in our attic.

Times change, however, and in 1979 I decided I wanted a new set, so I bought a Zenith 13" portable, which worked well for the next three years; then I bought another 13" Zenith with one-knob electronic tuning. That set still worked when it was replaced by an Emerson 19" color set (rectangular tube and electronic digital tuning) in 1989. The Emerson was replaced by a Zenith 19" table set which I still have, and in fact the Zenith works exceptionally well even now, despite the fact it was made in 1995, roughly the middle of the period when Zenith's quality was taking one heck of a nosedive and was headed fast for rock bottom (some time before Gold Star acquired the company and made an utter shambles of it--grrrrrrrr!).

I moved again, of necessity, into a small apartment in a small northern Ohio village in autumn 1999. I did not take either small portable color set with me, but bought a new RCA CTC185, which is in the living room in my apartment today and makes a beautiful picture, especially since the cable system in this small town was rebuilt from the ground up last spring.

Say what you will about the quality of RCA's late '80s-'90s TVs, but my set has not given me one bit of trouble (except for the RF antenna port snapping off the tuner PC board after I'd had the set a few months) since I bought it nearly five years ago. I was kinda' upset that the warranty did not cover the cost of the repair, but....that's the way it goes, I guess. What's important is that this TV makes a very good picture on cable (this is the first TV I've ever owned with a dark-tint inline CRT and automatic color controls--the picture looks like a picture postcard on every station) and works whenever I turn it on, no problems whatsoever (knock on wood).

Again, welcome to AK. As I said, this is a grand bunch of folks, all willing to help out fellow members with any problems they may have. I for one look forward to seeing more of your posts in the future.

Kind regards,

First, Carmine, I think RCA still offers a couple of wood (wood grained hardboard?) style cabinets.
I guess naming models got to be a bit corny or old fashioned some years back. My CTC 5 "Wingate" for example was named for an RCA engineering executive.

Roundscreen, I'm glad you enjoyed my site, Thanks for the kind comments. From the looks of the fine off screen pictures you provided, I don't think you need much advice on picture taking. I took the CT-100 Rose Parade pix using a borrowed digital camera. I had no idea what I was doing. Just dimmed the room lights and shut off the flash. The picture tube provided the light source. The other off screen
pix were shot by a friend using the same technique. I'm currently shopping for a digital camera to update my web page.

Steve

Thanks jeffths. The people in ak are great. They have so much knowlege in electronics and It is an honor to be here. You kinda started out the same way i did. the first set i worked on was a 1962 19" b-w zenith my dad gave me. the switch was bad so i solderd in a jumper. Wish i still had that set. it ran for many years. In 75 i bought a rca 19" xl 100 color. the only thing i did to that set was clean the tuner and That set got alot of use. Sold it in 86. Oh the crunch of a pc board. sends a chill up the spine. I did that to a rca roundie. man was i pissed. i did fix it but it diden't last long so i used the set for parts. When i bought my house in 79 i started building my collection.
now i have about 40 working sets and way to many parts sets. Please don't get me wrong i think rcas are the best sets ever made. next in line would be zenith. look at how many of the old ones we get working. and they work vary well. :)

set names
 

Regarding set names - I didn't work in that department, but I think at Zenith they used to refer to an atlas for town names, and then do research on a long list of names that had been used by other manufacturers to make sure they hadn't been used already.

If there's someone else from "big Z" on this forum, maybe they can straighten me out on this. :scratch2:

UH, did I miss something? You worked for Zenith? Man, get ready for a bunch of questions!!! :thmbsp:

Old tv nut what department did you work in? how long?

OK folks, slow down and don't get your hopes too high.

I have been at Zenith since 1975 and I'm still here at the reorganized Z/LGE. However, I worked in the advanced development department (now R&D), so I can talk theory about the old sets, but have little knowledge of what was in actual designs. My initial work at Z was analog integrated circuit design for chroma demods. The guy next to me worked on the color oscillator section, and together we came up with a reference design for a one-chip color section. Then product development took the result and adapted it to actual product design.

Before Zenith, I worked at Motorola, starting in B&W TV, then for a while on a video player (EVR, developed by CBS labs and the famous Peter Goldmark)that never made it in the market, and then in R&D on analog IC design.

These days, I'm into "technopolitics", representing the company in standards-setting bodies like ATSC and ITU, pushing adoption of digital TV technology.

So - don't expect much from me in terms of "what was in chassis number xxxx" - I'd have to find a source just like anyone else. :scratch2:

old_tv_nut

---

Andy,

Seems to me that you got it exactly right. Much as Thomson aquired the RCA name for marketing purposes, that's where LG and Zenith stand. I can't speak for Old TV Nut, but I assume there is no free standing Zenith engineering dept. as we knew it. There are LG badged and Zenith badged receivers designed for different market segments and price points. Some are probably clones, I suspect the Zenith name still has some profit potential to the LG corporation, especially in the U.S. When the LG name becomes more established down the line, the Zenith logo will quietly be phased out.

Steve

Steve,

I think the Zenith lightning-bolt logo on sets made by LG for the North American market already has been retired. I've seen LG-manufactured sets with the LG logo (not Zenith's once-famous lightning bolt) advertised in Circuit City, Best Buy, etc. flyers in our Sunday newspaper, so I think we can safely conclude that most if not all vestiges of the Zenith Radio (later Zenith Electronics) Corporation have faded into oblivion.

Jeff,

Point well taken. I still see Zenith products along side LG products in our So. Cal Best Buys and Circuit City stores. This includes plasma, direct view sets, DVD players and some VCR's. I don't know how much of this is stuff left in wharehouses or is still being produced. Old TV Nut could probably answer this question.

Steve

Zenith exists as marketing and an R&D department, no manufacturing or consumer product engineering. I already told you a little of what I do in R&D - the rest is that old cliche' - if I told you, I'd have to shoot you. :D

Got a sales flyer in the last couple weeks from a local independent tv/appliance store. They used to be a GE/Zenith dealer but now are associated with "BrandDirect" which I guess gives them some buying power, and now they carry all kinds of brands. On the front page of the flyer is a Zenith console tv, " 25" Traditional Console TV, comb filter, color temperature control, SEQ Front Surround, Tri-Lingual Menu System, Only $599" Has the "Z" logo. Next to it, for $200 less, is a table model Toshiba 32". Take your 200 bucks and buy a tv stand!

you got that right Bryan! I suspect that Zenith & RCA charge that much for their crap (oooppss TV's) because they probably sell so few of those and consoles are for a select "specialty" market. I don't know when consoles became so out of fashion, but they are hated and I suspect that only "older" people still try and buy them. At one of the last estate sales I went to, there was a new 27" RCA console. The estate sale people must have thought it was old because they had it priced at $40.00 and someone snagged it for $20.00 on "half-off day" I would have snagged it for $20.00! RCA is by far the lesser of the two evils. I wouldn't touch anything with the Zenith logo now with a 10 foot pole.

I saw a very late model Zenith console in an estate sale recently, priced at $95...still on sale at the half price sale on sunday. These zeniths must be better than the awful bad crt sets of the early 90's though?
Also saw some brand new Zenith consoles at the appliance store on the square in Denton, Tx. This store appears to have been there since the 40's.
They were priced around $795.
And, I got a 1993 RCA console at the Texas Recycles day last year. It works almost perfectly...great crt, just a slight amount of misconvergence. Someone just wanted to get rid of it. I do think the RCA 1990's 27" consoles generally have good CRT life and good performance.

Time warp
 

Google search "Zenith console TV" and you'll come up with current models B27A74 27" $749. & B25A74R 25" $599. The traditional wood style complete with brass hardware is like viewing a 70 or 80's era set. I can't post the pix but maybe someone might.

Here is a pic of the B25A74R from the aforementioned sales flyer.

Modern RCA consoles
 

Bryan,

RCA (Thomson) has (or had) at least two traditional console color TVs about two or three years ago, and two other models in more contemporary console cabinets, so Zenith was not the only manufacturer still making console color sets (albeit with unreliable GoldStar guts and CRTs [!]) in the late 1990s. I googled "RCA Console TV" a few minutes ago and came up with pics of several of these sets. Tried to upload them here but they won't go. :(

The GS-built "Zeniths", granted, are not good sets at all, from what I've read about them in message boards (sci.electronics.repair for one), and, like yourself, I wouldn't buy another one. However, I have a 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 table model 19" set in my bedroom that works almost as well today as it did when it was new. That was my main set the first four years I had it; it worked well, never a bit of trouble with the chassis or CRT, and none today. I don't use that TV much anymore, as I bought a new RCA XL-100 just about five years ago, but I keep the Zenith as a backup. Works well enough on cable that it will probably be my main watcher again when my RCA set eventually goes bad and either can no longer be repaired, or the repairs would cost more than a new set. However, the RCA still makes an excellent picture on cable here, through a cable box and with the cable connected directly to the set, so my Zenith might be sitting in the bedroom for quite a while.

That new zenith is good looking. uh goldstar. I worked on goldstar tvs in the 80s. Fixed them under warranty. Also repaired alot of them when I had my store in the 90s.They were a good tv for the price. Most of the repairs were simple. The zenith goldstar problems were rauland. A63ADGP22 and the 27 inch crts . power supplys in the chassis could not take current draw when the crt would short. I see alot of rauland tubes in video game monitors. Replaced alot of them.
Here are some pictures of more wood. This is the philco I got fromTim.
This is one cool set. solid state tuner and If. Also a tuining eye. {needs tube}.6KD6 horz out tube. No hv regulator tube. I ran it about 10 min and flyback transformer started tor get warm. oh oh. This set has a horz bias control.{ Bias the horz output and it will control the hv}. The control was up all the way. I turned down the horz bias and silicone the fly. Now it takes a hr before it gets warm. The red gun was weak so i hit it with my b-k on low setting. Also replaced caps in the vert out, Resolder bds, Cleaned the controls and tuner.I think it Works good for an old bag.

Here is a picture of the chassis.

Man, those are GREAT pictures ! I have simply GOT to get my Zenith roundie workin'...-Sandy G.

I don't know WHO buys consoles anymore, though I suspect it's old people. I think a lot of poor people have them too, and that's not surprising. Granny dies, kids don't want console, it goes to the Salavation Army, ends up going into its 2nd home....

I've seen roundies still in service in depressed areas. They work, they're 'good enough', and they last. Well, until a flat panel screen became a "must have" status symbol...

On that old Philco - was that another badge engineered RCA design, or did they have any origional ideas in it?

Oh yeah, anyone ever make a roundie with automagic fine tunning? That was always a neat feature that seems to have taken forever to catch on, though IIRC, it's just a few parts and a varactor diode. Ditto for automatic chroma gain, which RCA didn't have even in the CTC-16s.