Quote:
Originally posted by Sandy G
And the ones that ARE made of wood-puh-leez!! It's that cheap shite not even fit for cigar boxes. I remember the old consoles. & some of 'em were quite attractive- you only have to look at some of OUR tvs here at AK to see that ! well, maybe oneday they will come back in style, & these ugly black plastic modified bowling ball carriers will go away...-Sandy G.
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Sandy, I never looked at it that way, but you're probably right. Even Zenith's current production high-end 25" and 27" console TVs are in cabinets made of cheap wood with
printed wood veneer over it (the trade name for the printed stuff is Mac-Tac); so I read in an earlier post to another thread some time back. (Personally, I don't like Mac-Tac because it peels too darned easily, but that's another story.)
You are so right as well about the early console TV cabinets looking much nicer than today's black plastic cubes coming from Korea, China and elsewhere offshore. I've mentioned this before: some of the sets in the black cabinets don't look half bad it you put them in or on a nice wooden entertainment center cabinet or stand (for example, my avatar shows what I did with my TV, VCR and cable box and a modified solid oak utility cart about two years ago; I couldn't be more proud of that installation if it were a big console--the cart's American Oak finish matches the rest of the furniture in my apartment almost perfectly, which is another reason I like it so well).
However, I do agree that the sets in plain black or even silver (RCA and, I believe, Zenith call the silver finish on the cabinets of their new table models "diamond mist" for no reason that makes sense to me) cabinets can look rather ugly when sitting on a shelf, etc. in a living or family room. But that's the style these days, like it or not (a lot of modern furniture doesn't strike me as being particularly attractive, either). The old TVs were made to conform to the styles and decors of living rooms of the '50s and early '60s, when consoles were in style, but things have changed (boy, have they ever) since then.
One other thing which can be done (I recommend, however, that this be done only with a television set which is definitely beyond repair) is to take the chassis and CRT out of the old cabinet and build your new set into it, or, if you don't feel like going to all that trouble, just put a shelf or two in the cabinet, mount a power strip on the back (if you plan to use accessory equipment such as a VCR, DVD player, cable box, etc. with your TV) ... and there you are. I saw such an installation here on AK not long ago; I believe it was Carmine who actually built his Zenith System 3 black-cabinet set into an old console cabinet which once housed a Zenith Great Circle (aka "porthole") TV. This was no simple matter of just putting a shelf in the cabinet and setting the TV on it, maybe also making a frame around the opening where the old set had been to cover up the gaps, then being done with it; no, Carmine's project was actually to build the TV into the cabinet, making the set an integral part of the latter. The finished product looked great, as did his 1967 Magnavox stereo console next to it. That post may still be on AK in one of the vintage TV forums; if you do a search you'll probably find it.
I had relatives who replaced the old worn-out TVs in their entertainment centers with then-new color sets some years (at least a couple decades by now) ago. The TVs were mounted in the cabinets (after removing the old guts, of course) on shelves, and a wood frame was built around the front of the set to hide the gaps. The results in both cases were very good and pleasing.
This, I think, is an excellent way to recycle a well-made cabinet after the TV itself has gone to the junkpile. Many people have done this in the past and have liked the results.
Please note, however, that the folks who ordinarily do this are not television experts; as such they have no idea what to do with the set after it blows a flyback, power transformer, CRT or other large, expensive component, and the repair person tells them it will cost "X" number of dollars to repair the TV. Many times these old consoles (and smaller, older sets as well) are simply put out with the week's trash and replaced with modern portables or table models (on any given week in most residential neighborhoods one can find one or more old console or portable sets sitting out by curbs; I've seen a few of them in the nearly five years I've lived in my small town, and I saw it more times than I can remember when I lived in my hometown in a Cleveland suburb).
But every once in a while you can find an old console set with a bad chassis and a good, restorable cabinet in which you can put your own modern entertainment gear. Even consoles with badly scuffed, scratched, faded, etc. cabinets can be refinished, in many cases, to look as good as or in some cases better than they did when they were new. The possibilities are almost endless. Just don't turn one of those nice old cabinets into a fish tank. (!!!)