Just when I was getting the most frustrated I have ever been with the vast amount of nothing out my way, seeing a 1979 Sylvania Superset console for free AND where I could get to it dropped my jaw. I offered a 20 for it anyway just to have it held for the two days needed for the hired truck to be available, but fortunately the previous owner didn't require that. After a strenuous two days of worrying that something might go wrong, I can finally relax.

It's a remote set with the E48-2 chassis. Something's slipping in the power tuning mechanism, I have to hold down the buttons for a second for the channels to change. No remote of course, but I got one as part of a bulk lot some time ago that I'm not sure is 100% correct for this set; it has the NAP logo whereas the TV has the GTE logo. As expected, the 25VDMP22 looks pretty tired, but it's a small miracle this set survived at all AND I ended up with it. To me this CRT is worth saving for a future rebuild if my Sencore can't wake it up.

Turns out the CRT is a 25VFAP22, I was confused by the dark glass.

shake a ring of keys in front of it.i had the same set,cabinet and all back in the 80s.no remote but i shook my keys to change channels.if you want to get rid of it,let me know

I'd be kicking myself for life if I let this one go.

I see the occasional remote like that with a Sylvania label. I need another 9-volt battery.

I hooked it up to cable. Although the CRT is rather weak it's still perfectly watchable. I'm yet to hook it up to my tester.

Good for you ! I remember Supersets, they had a good picture !

.

Nice find Jon. The CRT dont look so bad, just a
clean & balance should do. They could give an awesome
picture. The blacks are very deep on em.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Thanks! I have to wait a long time between good sets for sure, but I do seem to pick up the rarities.
Thanks, I'll definitely do that.

By the way, the tuner is a 20-position varactor. I hadn't heard of a set with 8 UHF positions.

Zenith TVs of 1980s vintage had one-knob varactor electronic tuners with six UHF channel slots, for a total of 18 positions. These were individually tunable to the local UHF stations in the user's area, so that UHF stations could be tuned as easily as VHF ones as mandated by the FCC in 1975.

I had never heard of a varactor TV tuner with eight UHF channel slots either, until I read your post. Sylvania must have used a different type of UHF tuner in their '80s CRT TVs than Zenith used, if yours has a 20-position varactor tuner.

It's a '79 actually. I'm guessing it was very soon after that Sylvania went with inline CRTs and infrared remotes, which don't interest me. I don't bother with most 80s sets these days.

Late '79-early '80 was the end of the line for large screen delta gun TV's from most companies. In '81, GTE sold the Sylvania and Philco names to NAP (who already owned Magnavox). Eventually, Sylvania ended up being a Funai brand.

Neat! Just needs an Atari 2600 hooked up to it. :)

It will eventually. :) Someday I'll splurge on a heavy sixer.

I would not hook any game systems. They kill the sync separator i.c and there were discontinued 30 years ago> they are great sets I had one the customer gave me about 85 and it needed sync i.c's I had one from a junk set I used for a long time, but I don't remember what I did with it, but it had a fantastic picture. that's a great find. I am happy for you.

Thanks for the heads-up. Does this only apply to Sylvania sets of this era?

Edit: Another shocker: the CRT had very good emissions on all guns! However, it didn't do very well on the life test. I ran auto-restore and now it passes all tests with flying colors, and makes a nicer picture of course. My camera doesn't do it justice. Also, most of my TVs including this one seem to not like my free basic analog cable. Finally, the top of the picture is curved downward in full screen and letterbox presentations. It looks slightly uneven on the bottom as well.

I would not on the Sylvania just because the ic chips inside going to be hard to find to replace. I had scrap a few nice ones because I could not get the chips. When gte sold Sylvania to Phillips. Phillips also got ecg replacement parts from gte. When they did Phillips discontinued a lot of Sylvania designed parts. Its a shame too those sets were about 5 or 6 years old when they did stop making replacement parts/

I think that set I had the Tripler burned out and I did not have one and times where changing and I replaced it with a new zenith that a insurance company gave me because some vandals broke into a house and busted the screen out. Popped a tube in and watched the hell out of it.

that was the last set to have a delta crt.25vdmp22 makes a great picture,(some have said the finest),but not a long life.i worked on way too many sylvanias back in the shop days.60 to 70 percent of repairs were sylvanias.i have a
e45 with electronic tuner that had a shot crt.replaced with rca jug from xl100.looks good but just not what i want.these were really great sets.simple chassis,beautiful crt and decent cabinets.here in cols,ohio,the sylvanias were 100-150.00 than zenith and magnavox sets.this is why so many were sold.wish that dark matrix crt had the life of a zenith tube.

It did have a fine picture it was a great set I had a admiral remote for a rat tuning and certain keys would turn on - off and so on, so I did not need the oem remote. In Atlanta zenith, rca and Sylvania's were everywhere. I have a soft spot for Sylvania and zenith.

I tried Motorola and Zenith clickers which work to a point. The remote in my original post is fully compatible, it just needs some DeOxit.

If you are talking about the 15-37700-1 and 15-37701-1 (ECG792/793, in later chassis, the ECG794) processors, I don't think his E48 uses them. I had a similar set in the early 90s and had no problem with an Atari or NES connected. I did have to randomly replace the stupid 1 ohm 1W fusible resistors for the vertical - they would go at turn on, and a recap of the vertical fixed that.

The ECG792/793 pair was obsoleted, but remnants remain on eBay and with old-school distributorships. I have one of each - in original NAP bags.

Jon post some pics of the chassis please I would like to go memory lane. This brought back memories of when my dad and I had our shop.

I always liked working on Sylvania Supersets. It seemed like they always produced a fantastic picture, and were relatively easy to service.

Even in the 1990's, there were a couple of IC's that were nearly impossible to find. If I remember right (this is going back 20 years), the most common problem caused by the discontinued IC was no color. Without the internet to help, it was much harder in those days to locate discontinued and rare parts.

I remember one customer in particular who chewed me out royally, and accused me of trying to somehow cheat him when I told him I couldn't repair his Superset because I couldn't get the discontinued chip. He then took his set to another local shop, who charged him $25 for an estimate....and ended up telling him the same thing.

I haven't had the back off - I still need a proper 1/4" drive (I was using a 1/4" drive multi-bit screwdriver and the end got stripped) - but I do have this for now, which I think is cool.

It was easy enough to get this screw out by hand.

Yep that chassis had two chips that was discontinued. 1 for color and the other was for sync separator/osc ic for vert and horz. I had plenty of the color but no sync chip. When the sync chip would go out the picture would look it was scrambled like the old pay cable stations would look.

Thank you Jon take your time, but that's it so from what I see so far. Man that's a great set pop a zenith tube in and the picture will blow you away. We if had the internet back in the day hard to find parts would be easier find. If I remember right I had a that Sylvania had a rat tuning set that was really nice cabinet I waited years to run across some chips but I scraped.
Think Atari 2600 would be ok I think it was Nintendo's was not good to some sets. I think that was because the rapid sync and color changes would over tax the ics and make the chips run hot and then go out.

Good to know that they cross to the ECG792/793. I'll keep an eye out for extras.

I replaced the screen shot on the last page. The new one still doesn't do it justice, but gives a far better impression of the color gamut.

If you look closely the picture curves downward at the top and there's a bit of wave near the bottom. Could the sync separator be causing that?

Easier access to older TVs, parts... well, just about anything older is one of the things I like best about the internet.

Your set has only the 15-37701-1, an ECG793.

E42 and earlier chassis used the 792/793 pair, but in your set, instead of the 15-37700-1, you have a 15-43212-1, which crosses to an ECG820. It is the improved version of the old 15-37700 chip, which produced flagging sync/sync unlock, or an out of freq lock when a VCR was connected. They also had problems with the VIR signal, so Sylvania had to upgrade the chip. For this reason, they obsoleted the 15-37700 chip once stock was depleted. I'd venture to say that half of the chips replaced did exactly as they were designed, and that they were replaced in error. Huge learning curve when you couldn't get stable horizontal drive. We figured it out with a VA48, and later had that confirmed at a service seminar. The VA48 ouptut lacked the VIR signal, and told us that the set would operate normally, and act up on VIR signals. Only one station here transmitted VIR at the time. The VCR problem was another headache. My Superset was an E48-5, a close cousin to yours.

Keep your normal/service switch happy - mine got dirty, and I had a nice vertical bounce. Flicking the switch a few times clears it up. Great CRTs..

Here's the layout for the E48...

Super, thanks.

I flicked the service switch back and forth a few times. The picture still dips at the top, but the bottom seems to have improved.

Huh? The CRT *isn't* a 25VDMP22? I thought that was the only delta-gun Sylvania CRT with the dark face.

There are far more black matrix (you call it dark face) CRTs than the VDM. Sylvania used the latest - the VDM was long in the tooth by then... Sylvania used the 25VCZ, VDM abd VFA CRTs in the E41, 44, 45, 46 and 48. The schematic for the E48 shows a VDM, and the E45 layout states the CRT type is determined by the cabinet - ears/no ears, I guess...

Oh yes I have seen and heard of plenty of black matrix CRTs, but the VDM was the only delta I knew of with such dark glass.

Time to fulfill your request. I just had to find out for sure what CRT is in it (25VFAP22), so I used an adjustable wrench to get the back off. I just updated the Flickr album.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/spacec...57654866509318

Awrite ! Ya done GREAT !

i had the exact set back in 84-85.neighbor bought it and at a party,somone fell over the set and busted the plastic cover on the crt.the set had high voltage but no picture.crt wouldnt light at all.i traded her a working 19 inch sylvania for it.found a crack in the socket board.a little solder and it was repaired.had it 2-3 years and gave it to my best friend.the crt died a slow,painful death in a year or so but we lucked into a nice rebuild and he was back in business.set is actually still going as of this year.crt looks pretty damn good for almost 30 years.it is a channel mastr opti chrome series,i believe.

No doubt mine has the original CRT. It has a sticker with the same model number and manufacture date as on the back. I never saw that sort of thing before.

Jon you have got a great set right there. Would you believe I had the same identical set back in the day. The tippler blew out and I never got around to replacing it. You know if we had the net back then I bet a lot of sets would have been saved. After nap bought Sylvania and ecg nap discontinued replacement parts for the Sylvania design's. I always like Sylvania's one of my favorite sets.

Thanks for posting the pictures brings back memories of me and my parents and my sister watching tv Newhart show together after dinner.

Okay, this set has been turning itself off lately. It doesn't act as if the power button was pressed, it flickers and goes out with a low buzzing from the speaker.

Two things run across my mind you might want to replace one the Tripler and the filter cap. that set might have the run cap like the zenith Chroma color 2 sets.

I'm not sure what you mean by filter cap. I hadn't heard of run caps.

This set has made snapping noises while warming up since I got it. Is that a sign of a bad tripler or is it just because it needs a good cleaning inside? Finally, what would I look for in a replacement tripler?

It's the tripler. Especially if it's an original. I just replaced one in the '77 Sylvania GT Matic I have here.

I was able to cross reference the Sylvania part number with a little googling. Mine ended up being this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/291059760580...%3AMEBIDX%3AIT

Thanks. The tripler probably is the original considering that it's just as dirty as the rest of the horizontal output/HV stage. Fortunately CRT emissions were great from the get-go and a single restore zap on each gun brought the life test results back to like new.

i think this set takes a 526 or 556 tripler.