neat magnavox
 

I picked this up over the weekend. Its in fairly decent shape, for surviving in a frat house. I thought it was neat because it has 4 speakers, phono input and the extra piece of glass over the crt. I dont know much about it, all the stickers and such have been long peeled away. Does anyone have an idea as to the year?

56'-59'maybe

Magnavox clearly bucked the pro-simplicity trend by putting all those knobs right out in the open. I don't think they ever made a TV in the generic 'two big knobs' style of the 50s.

It looks similar to a 24" 55 Maggie I had, does it have a separate amplifier mounted under the chassis in the speaker area?

I had one similar. IIRC the chassis was a two-digit number, like 22-3.

All it needed was a 5U4 when I got it, made a good picture, nice sound all without a re-cap. Originally found in a Long Island City dump in the mid-70s.

I suppose you've checked to be sure no six packs of beer were hidden inside... :beer: :beerchug: :D

Nice, vertical chassis we had one growing up, different cabinet, same knob setup.... Volume pull on off, contrast on right, then all those at the bottom...... Gave us kids lots to do having it all right there for us.... Ours had a spot for UHF, but no tuner, 110 degree deflection tube ?? or just 90 ?? if I remember.... it was nice and short...

Frat House, better check for Baggies.

yea guys i cleaned it up, no booze or doobs, just lots of dust and pretty dirty. ;). Oh, whats with the switch on back for the phono/tv? i know what i does, but isnt it supposed to cut off power to the crt when its on phono? every once in a while ill get a few white lines, but other than that its just black but on? i dont know, but either way it works great. The picture tube has been replaced at some point in the sets life. the cap with the wires that connects to the end of the crt is all spliced together, and its spliced together somewhere else, i havent really felt like climbing inside to investigate, i bought it knowing it worked. This morning when i powered it on, i got sound but no picture until i shut it off and lightly tapped the cap on the neck, where it was spliced. I saw in another post on here that another mag owner had the same issue (thanks for the tip). over all so far, its been a good 30 bucks :D

Didn't sometime around 1958-59 they started offering more "Rectangular" CRTs in B/W TVs ?

[QUOTE=Username1;3087484] Ours had a spot for UHF, but no tuner


Magnavox, like many TV manufacturers of the 1950s-'60s, probably offered this TV with UHF as an extra-cost option for areas with UHF and VHF or only UHF stations. Yours was apparently built for VHF-only areas, although a UHF converter could be used to receive such stations if and when they came to the owner's viewing area. The sets with factory-installed UHF tuners probably sold like hotcakes in areas like Fort Wayne, Indiana or Youngstown, Ohio, which only have (or had, before DTV) UHF local TV stations.

Ooops! Duplicate post.


Magnavox, like many TV manufacturers of the 1950s-'60s, probably offered this TV with UHF as an extra-cost option for areas with UHF and VHF or only UHF stations. Yours was apparently built for VHF-only areas, although a UHF converter could be used to receive such stations if and when they came to the owner's viewing area. The sets with factory-installed UHF tuners probably sold like hotcakes in areas like Fort Wayne, Indiana or Youngstown, Ohio, which only have (or had, before DTV) UHF local TV stations.

Some of the early 50's tubes were actually more rectangular than what came later in the decade, the early 60's is when they really got squared off for the most part.

I believe it was in the early 1960s that round CRTs were being replaced by rectangular tubes, with the switchover being completed in its entirety by 1966; however, I knew of very few b&w sets with round tubes, and those I was aware of had been made in the early 1950s. (I once had a Majestic chassis, 1951 model IIRC, with a 16GP4 CRT.)

The first color TVs had round tubes, but again, by the mid-'60s they had transitioned to rectangular tubes. I think this was a smart move on the part of TV manufacturers, as the round screen made a lot of TV programming look unnatural, IMHO, especially since the picture did not fill the entire screen (the CRT mask on the cabinet masked off the part of the screen the picture did not fill, although the resulting picture did not look natural, again IMHO). The rectangular tube is much better suited for TV viewing, as it is shaped like a movie screen.

Today's flat screens make use of this design as well (every FS TV I've ever seen has had a perfectly rectangular screen), but again, the picture often doesn't fill the screen vertically (due to the program having been broadcast or filmed/taped in 4:3 aspect ratio and being viewed as 16:9), requiring the use of the "zoom" button on the remote to fill it in. The linearity of the picture often suffers when the picture is zoomed in, and the small network "bugs" at the lower right or left corner of the picture almost always get hidden behind the mask.

the crt isnt that round, a little rounder than my 61' RCA but not by much...