The one thing I miss
 

Back in the day walking into a tv store gave you a similar feeling to walking into a new car dealership. The wooden cabinets had a distinctive new set smell.

Yes! I am 66 and I remember that. There were shops all over downtown Baltimore and later, there were shops in the suburbs. There was even a Lafayette Radio store about 1.5 miles from our home.

Tubes on the shelf behind the counter and CRTs in stock...

I was 8 in 1971 when my parents decided to take the plunge into color TV.
The store was a Zenith and Motorola dealer and smelled like a furniture store mixed with warm dusty electronics.

what does any of this have to do with color tv?

Buying the first color TV was a special event, for most first buyers.
Most held off buying one until there were more programs in color, which seemed to be around 1965-6.
Also, many stations had the large capital investment of converting to color programming.
It took a while for a few of the networks to set up for color programming, as well.
Maybe this statement, doesn't have anything to do with color TV, either. :sigh:

'Specially when there were used sets for sale, there was the scent of lemon oil and Old English from keeping the cabinets spiffed up

Even Radio Shack smelled good back in the early days. :)

In our shop it was the smell of smoke. The 4 insiders all smoked
& when you opened the door it would billow out. Smoke while you
sell, fix, talk on phone, eat, or drop a deuce. We smoked like fiends.
Folks were tolerant back then, not like now. Most now try to carve out
a 100 ft radius where anything you do offends them.

BTW the shop remained smoke friendly to the end abt 4 yrs ago.
We were the last Mom & Pop for miles around. One day abt yr 2000
the board of health came by & hung no smoking within 20' of doors
on the whole strip mall. He came in talked while we smoked & said
nothing, bought a new Sony a few weeks later.

73 Zeno:smoke::smoke::smoke:

I'd love to continue the thread with my anti-smoking tale. :yes: But can't figure how to connect it to a CT-100! :scratch2:

Pete

It would be nice to get a picture of a bunch of 21" color sets in a showroom on this thread.

Color TV - like automatic transmission and free long distance, is taken for granted anymore.

What I miss is that experience of looking at all the CRT sets in one place, many places had them on but the three places I worked that sold them did not do that like the department stores.

Again, i miss THAT SMELL To quote one of my favorite bands from the 70s'

"oo-oh that smell, caint cha smell that smell,oo-oh that smell, the smell that surrounds tubes":smoke:

I miss 8 track tapes.
LOL

Seriously? And did you get that quote from Married With Children?

I would miss them if I was old enough to remember seeing them in stores. :) If only they could still be had that easily.

I dunno, guys, I made a livin' offa the Evil Weed most of my life-Either growing it as a crop, or printing labels to package it in. There is hardly anything grown on a farm that is HARDER than raising & harvesting Burley Tobacco-It is quite literally a 13 month, 8 day a week job. It is HIGHLY labor intensive, whether its gassing the beds, settling the seedlings, transplanting them to the actual beds, tending the young plants, "Suckering" then topping them, cutting them around Labor Day, hanging them in the barn to cure, grading them & selling them about Christmastime. During the growing season, they get covered w/a sticky "Wax" which makes them MUCH fun to handle. Its ALWAYS about 1500 degrees in the Backer Patch, the plants themselves are flimsy & easily broken, except, of course, when you're trying to cut off extra stalks-"Suckering", & then cutting the blooms off the top-"Topping". These are designed to make the remaining stalk's leaves to get as large as possible, for the best yield. Whrn you cut the plants about Labor Day, you have to hang them in the rafters of yr barn to let them "Cure". THAT'S Big Fun, too, you're 25' in the air, trying to hoist heavy, sappy tobacco plants & hang them on a too-skinny board, not to fall, & not to bump into the plate sized wasp nest right over there. Its also hotter than hell in there, & a barnful of curing tobacco plants puts out a smell that will make yr eyes water. Aroung Thanksgiving-Christmastime, you then have to unload yr crop from the upper reaches of the barn, & try not to destroy the leaves. If its a hopefully damp day, the tobacco will be "In Case", & you can tie it in knots. Otherwise, it is like any other leaf, dry & brittle. Then you put it in big baskets & haul it to market. Hopefully, the buyers won't find too much to fuss about your crop, & you get a nice fat check for Christmas. But if you honestly put all the time you've spent busting yr butt for that Big Fat Check, you'd prolly find you've earned about .75 an hour...

...

I'd LOVE to have all you smokers talk to my Mom... But you CAN'T-She died Aug 208 from COPD, & Emphysema. She smoked from the time she was 15, about 1940, till '77, when she was hypnotized. But the damage was already done. She "Lit one offa one" for most of the 1st 20 yrs of my life. COPD/Emphysema is a nice little disease-Just kills you a LITTLE each day, nothing to bother you with, really... Until you realize that shortness of breath makes you wheeze like you just ran a marathon trying to get from yr bed to the bathroom...

I sure don't miss the smell of all the places around town where smoking used to be common...but I do miss the smell of our hometown GE/Zenith dealer, Evey's TV. I have a few things that came from there when he retired and you can still take a whiff and be transported back!

I've seen the effects of that, yikes. My mom fortunately uses inhalers now, and never chain-smoked. Kind of counter-intuitive that I didn't get into that or drinking, considering that I grew up around those who did both in excess.

"It's an unhealthy habit I don't encourage in others son. Get smart; give it up by not taking it up". Dan Aykroyd, a.k.a. Joe Friday, Dragnet, 1987.

Let's just say I DON'T have a very good feeling towards tobacco.. Even though it fed, clothed, educated, & provided me a soft, cushy life... It took my Mom from me.. THAT I can NEVER forgive.. Never will forget seeing her in her coffin...It was about this time..The "Hard" look was gone from her face... She looked like the "Winnie" we all knew & loved, that had been absent for SO long.. Her little hands weren't swollen anymore...DON'T smoke.. If you do, STOP. Period. End of discussion..

Anyway, while I don't remember any distinctive TV shop smell, I was in Tel-Star drooling over a console once, no idea what brand it was. The shop sold appliances too, didn't realize until I found an old Polaroid of mine with the shop sign in the background. I guess my semi-BPC 1989 19" color set was unsatisfactory to me even back then. I was stoked to get that 19" set though, I hated my B&W Admiral so much I took it apart even before I got my own color set as I recall.

Third time I'm trying to type the exact same set of thoughts that login expiration erased twice on trying to post while at work this afternoon.

I've always associated tube electronics most strongly with the smell of cherry pipe tobacco and found it to be a pleasant scent. The tech that gave me the knowledge to go from collector to restorer smoked it. His shop and the tube radios he had for sale had that smell to them as did some sets I had acquired before then. My grandpa Ed smoked the same stuff too.

It should come as no surprise that when I realized I was old enough to smoke I quickly moved to cherry pipe tobacco. I know it's not the best for my health so I try to keep it to once a week and I've refrained for over a month at times...But tend to crank it up to ~4 times a week when college gets rough. I figure it's very low risk compared to those folks who like to smoke chains. I don't get addicted this way and the nicotine high is easier to achieve when I'm not dulling it's effects by having it too often.

Ah pipe smoke. My first job in a shop was w/a 60 yr old WW II vet who was in France, had a real sense of humor was winding down but knew GE faults thoroughly. Came in at 11 sharp went on the road from 1:30 on and that was it. His favorite trick was to make noises just when I plugged in a set.

Still some of his 57-69 GE fact'r'y manuals and if I catch a whiff of pipe tobacco in them anymore, Im in that shop again, with the tube boxes facing me from the back wall and a KE chassis likely on the bench. Burkum Riff something it was called, black pouch. It added atmosphere to the dusty relics of a once-upon-a-time 4-man shop.

Was not much fun riding from home and back close to the ashtray in the service wagon, Dodge Colt, a three diamonds product. The tube caddy reeked when we took it in the homes.

Getting back to the "tv smell"...


I have LONG noticed that vintage RCA sets-- back to at least the CTC5 era ..this includes console stereos too--have 'their own smell". I can't really describe this--it is NOT a bad smell, but a UNIQUE one. Not really a metallic odor, not a wood odor. Just that ol' "RCA SMELL" .

Well if your old enough buying a color tv back in the day was a really big deal and the smell from the new sets enhanced the buying experience much like the new car smell does for buying cars and trucks. People had to lay out a lot of cash back in the day and the whole process was a lot more exciting than buying anything today in electronics.

Ok got to know, would this not be the case for buying your first b&w too? High cost and not much on?

The Sony colour set my Mam (or Mom, vowels move around in regional English English) had a characteristic warmish smell, quite pleasant. Talking of pipe smell: I could always tell when Uncle Reg had come for a visit as you could smell his pipe as soon as you walked in the door & for hours after he'd gone. Mam was a heavy smoker & she got lung cancer, it reduced a strong Woman to an invalid, I wouldn't wish it on anyone. When I see teens smoking it makes me feel so sad for them. BTW I've never smoked..

........... that was "RCA tube tobacco" yer tube sets were smokin'.......

Far too often I click on a thread thinking it's new, only to find it's been on going for a while,
or even more than a year, and I've been missing something good.........
I start reading from page 2, then go backwards.....


Sandy; Tell me where I can get yer first book, and by now I assume yer well into
yer second, so please post a link when it's out.....

.

Not so..Their SS sets have the same smell usually. So--it is not tube heat--and this is noticeable even when the set is OFF, if you remove the back or such...

It may INDEED have something to do with the wood cabinets--not sure the plastic ones do it...

My earliest remembrances of my Mom was curled up on her lap/chest-HARD to believe I was EVER that small-nursing a milk bottle, while she & my Dad watched Huntley-Brinkley Report on NBC, on the big Zenith B/W. The "Den" was quite small, & that Zenith was a 24 or maybe a 27", FULL of tubes, & IT could certainly "Fog" up the room. She didn't smoke when I was layin' on her like that, well as I recall. She was a TINY woman, I could pick her up by the time I was 11-12 or so, put her on my hip, & stomp thru the house w/her squallin', screechin', laughin' to PUT ME DOWN !! Oh, to be able to do that just one more time...

Fog up the room huh? Oh man, imagine what a place with a TV like that would do to my glasses when stepping inside on a cold day.

You have to understand that people's wages weren't that high back in the late 50's and 60's In fact I read where the Rca CT100's price was about the average salary of the American worker. The other problem was when you laid out all that money the number of color shows on was very limited. I remember going thru the tv guide to see what was on in color and those were the shows we watched regardless if we liked them or not. It was a very special time.

To answer your question yes although I wasn't old enough to remember when B and W came out, I'm sure going from radio to tv shows beamed into your living room had a very dramatic effect. But the fact that the developement of color was right along with black and white, which led to the classic battle between Rca and Cbs. But somehow when I was small my dad took me to a tv store and there was some show on in color which was one of the most amazing things I had seen. I guess you had to be there.

[QUOTE=Jon A.;3111758]Seriously? And did you get that quote from Married With Children?

Busted!
Al Bundy is my idol.
LOL

Unboxing the new sets
 

I remember un boxing the new sets in the early 70's. Wow the smell takes me back too of the cabinets and the smell of a new set as it heats up. It was like christmas for me. Setting up those sets was a breeze for me. Sure miss that.

[QUOTE=zeno;3111746]In our shop it was the smell of smoke.

The same at Columbia Appliance in the early 70's. One of the guys would smoke a deck of Luckies during working hours. Non filtered, of course.
After hours when the hard stuff came out is when he did some serious smoking.

I smell that every morning still
 

When I fire up my 1960 Color RCA I get that every morning when I watch the news. Love that. Watch all my old shows on it too.

I guess the you KNOW what I mean. No ONE ELSE seems to. It is a rather "uinique" smell-- the "RCA SMELL". not sure what causes it either.

Until you mentioned that, I had forgot it, but I do remember a specific smell from new Sony color TV sets around 1979 when I got my first new one (and first new color TV set of any kind). It was probably a mix of "that transistor radio smell" with the glue smell from the semi-real wood cabinets of their larger tabletop models of the time.

8 track heaven!
 

How many do you want? I have mostly Rock music. I have a nice component deck as well to go with the tapes. I will add some smoke smell if the price is right!:smoke:

Cool thread, I remember unboxing new Chromacolor 2's in the late 70's.
I LOVED the smell of them out of the box, and of course the showroom floor on a Saturday when they were all fired up, all tuned into a Nebraska-Oklahoma game.