Roundscreen,
First, welcome to AK. I've been a member here for about 18 months, give or take, and can say there is a very fine group of antique TV and radio collectors in these forums. I've gotten a lot of help finding troubles in some of my old sets from the guys here, so I can recommend AK highly, in its entirety.
I had a Sears Silvertone roundie in the early 1970s. It was an old set one of my neighbors in my hometown had had sitting in his garage for some years, but after I got it home (thank goodness I only lived one street over from where this fellow was, because the set was in a metal cabinet, had a round glass 21FJP22 CRT, and weighed at least a ton), I managed to get it to work halfway decently after a couple minor "repairs" under the chassis. I put the word "repairs" in quotes because these, I blush to admit, were not true repairs (I've been working with electronics, TV, radio, ham radio, etc. since I was eight years old--I'm now 48) and heaven knows I should have known better, but the thing was I didn't have a replacement handy for the circuit breaker at the time, so I jumpered across the old one. The on-off switch was bad as well; I jumpered that too, and simply used the line cord plug as an on/off control.
The set worked--well, not perfectly (the convergence was way off, and I didn't have a dot/crosshatch/bar generator at the time as this was my first in what eventually evolved into a long string of color sets), but I was thrilled anyhow at having at least gotten this thing to make a color picture on the three (at that time) VHF network stations from Cleveland. It continued to work well the next three years, surviving a 20-mile move and being carried up three flights of stairs
when I moved (the first time) in '72, but in the latter part of 1973 I managed to ruin the video amp/output circuit board while trying to replace a defective video output tube (6AW8). I did not realize that the replacement had one slightly bent pin, and I was pressing down on the tube to put it in the socket; suddenly I heard a sickening crunch and watched in horror as the tube socket clunked to the bottom of the set.
I used a 1961 Philco 19" b&w portable TV the next two years until I moved back to my hometown in 1975. (A 12" Sharp portable I had also had since 1970 had bitten the dust some time earlier; just what went wrong with it I don't remember anymore, as it has been well over thirty years since it went bad and I got rid of it.) I left the Silvertone roundie behind for the home's owner (my dad's second wife who divorced him in '75, when we left and went back to my hometown) to deal with; not knowing anything about old televisions, she probably put the thing out for the trash eventually.
That Silvertone was, as I said, the first in a very long string of color TV sets I owned from then until now. Most of them (in fact, every one except the last three sets I have owned) were trash-day finds; I managed to get every one of the older sets working--again, not perfectly, but well enough to watch on the antenna in our attic.
Times change, however, and in 1979 I decided I wanted a new set, so I bought a Zenith 13" portable, which worked well for the next three years; then I bought another 13" Zenith with one-knob electronic tuning. That set still worked when it was replaced by an Emerson 19" color set (rectangular tube and electronic digital tuning) in 1989. The Emerson was replaced by a Zenith 19" table set which I still have, and in fact the Zenith works exceptionally well even now, despite the fact it was made in 1995, roughly the middle of the period when Zenith's quality was taking one heck of a nosedive and was headed fast for rock bottom (some time before Gold Star acquired the company and made an utter shambles of it--grrrrrrrr!).
I moved again, of necessity, into a small apartment in a small northern Ohio village in autumn 1999. I did not take either small portable color set with me, but bought a new RCA CTC185, which is in the living room in my apartment today and makes a beautiful picture, especially since the cable system in this small town was rebuilt from the ground up last spring.
Say what you will about the quality of RCA's late '80s-'90s TVs, but my set has not given me one bit of trouble (except for the RF antenna port snapping off the tuner PC board after I'd had the set a few months) since I bought it nearly five years ago. I was kinda' upset that the warranty did not cover the cost of the repair, but....that's the way it goes, I guess. What's important is that this TV makes a very good picture on cable (this is the first TV I've ever owned with a dark-tint inline CRT and automatic color controls--the picture looks like a picture postcard on every station) and works whenever I turn it on, no problems whatsoever (knock on wood).
Again, welcome to AK. As I said, this is a grand bunch of folks, all willing to help out fellow members with any problems they may have. I for one look forward to seeing more of your posts in the future.
Kind regards,