Heathkit Roundie
 

Making a road trip tomorrow to hopefully pick up this Heathkit roundie set a little south of me. Not that I have the room for it, but it looks like it might be in pretty good shape.

Seller also has a Fada 930 set, but no pix.....

I sure wish I could find that here in Florida.. I'd even give up my CTC11 for that..

Nice lookin' set.. Must be a '64 or later w/UHF..

Glad you are getting it. Otherwise, unless one of us "freaks" got it--its fate would be a packer truck.

Made the trip to Pierce, Arizona to pick up the Heathkit and the Fada 930, and also got a couple of bonus items. The Heathkit is a 1965 model that was built by the owner's father, who was a TV service technician. The CRT in the Heathkit is a Sylvania Color Bright 85, which is a Grade A rebuilt. Emissions on all three guns check OK, but even though I got good emissions on the blue gun, I couldn't get the gun balance to adjust properly. I'm going to run the filaments for a couple of hours to wake the tube up tomorrow evening when I get home from work. I even got the original Heathkit manual for the set, plus a few spare parts like a yoke and a few other goodies. The set, of course, didn't come with a cabinet, but I did get the cabinet that the original owner "repurposed" back in 1965 to house the set. Cool.

The Fada 930 is complete and has a rebuilt aluminized CRT with a date code of 1979, so I'm guessing the set was still in use until at least the early '80s. The 12BP4 checks just barely in the "good" zone, so I'm going to try to wake that tube up as well.

The owner had a spare 21-inch rectangular CRT that I got as well. Emissions check barely OK as well, so that one also might wake up. I don't have a set for this one, but if I didn't take it, it would have gone to the dump :sigh:

A few more pictures:

Heathkit GR53 and Fada Finds
 

Wow!! Sweet finds!! :banana:

Is the wood cabinet with the doors the re-purposed cabinet for the Heath?

Someone( probably the father who was a service tech) appreciated the significance of the Fada set, given they re-tubed it in 1979! That would not have been a common thing to do.

I had a GE 16 inch BW set from ther late 50's that I re-tubed about that time for $25

Not 100% sure about the cabinet, but it looks like it might fit the Heathkit, though the chassis would stick out the back a couple of inches. The cabinet was free so I wasn't going to leave it there to get sent to the dump. If it doesn't end up working for the Heathkit, I'll use it for something else.

Gutted tv cabinets do turn up on craigslist... So theres some hope of finding a roundie cabinet that could house the Heathkit.

So after two years, I finally found a cabinet locally to house my Heathkit roundie! Will post some pictures tomorrow.

Here are some pictures of the cabinet I picked up late from a CL ad yesterday for my Heathkit roundie. It's an Asian style TV cabinet, probably from a 50's B&W set, which looks to have been "re-purposed" into a shelf many years ago. The black lacquer finish and the red paint on the inside of the cabinet looks to be original. It needs some touch up, and I'll need to modify the inside to re-position the shelf to accommodate the Heathkit and add a speaker grille of some kind at the bottom, but it looks like everything will fit.

Nice find! Was there really only one assembly manual for the set? I just put together a early 70s Heathkit set, and there were 7 separate manuals for the TV, and an extra one for the optional remote!

HEATHKIT 21" roundie ad.......Sorry about the resolution.

-Steve D.

Did you measure the cabinet? It looks a bit narrow for the set, but then again the photos lack sufficient reference of scale for me to tell with accuracy.

Lol, an Asian Heathkit. I like it! Probably end up looking a little like those Chinese provincial Zeniths, seen a few of those before.

In the early 1950s there was a brief vogue for "Chinese" style TV cabinets. Stromberg-Carlson made a few, but their door designs tend to be more ornate than yours and I believe they always showed people in some fashion. Admiral also made a couple of Chinese cabinets, but I'm not very familiar with those designs. Perhaps other makers, too . . . .

Pretty cool cab, anyhow. I hope you can make everything fit. It would be a nice coup to re-re-purpose it back into a television housing as Nature intended.

Regards,

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Stromberg-Carlson did produce some very elegant Chinese style cabinets in the 1950's. From the 1954-55 model year catalog.

-Steve D.

the Heathkit escutcheon is just a shade under 28 inches wide. The inside of the cabinet measures just over 28 inches wide. I tight fit, but it will go in there once I move the inside shelf down about 10 inches. I'll need to add some trim to finish the front off above and below the escutcheon and then install a speaker baffle and grille cloth at the bottom, but I think it will go.

Just a little anecdote about Heathkit Roundy's about 15 years ago I had a guy stop saying he had a color Roundy that his dad built and he wanted to get it going again come to find out he thought his dad was the ultimate when it came to soldering but apparently he wasn't.... after removing the chassis I swear it looked like somebody had dipped the entire thing into a vat of lead and shook it off I don't even know how it was functioning lots of things shorted together and hooked were they weren't supposed to be... the connections for the high-voltage cage we're literally millimeters from shorting out to the chassis I still don't to this they understand how it didn't spark or short. After much repairs I finally got the set going again he was very happy but I wasn't it was certainly nothing that I would really want to watch could never get the focus extremely right and the color guns another story as others have stated I could never get them balance quite right either but still he was happy because it was his dad's.