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I have 5 or 6 of the Portacolors, some of which work well. I have not yet investigated the ones that do not. These seem to last pretty well with the only weakness that I have found being carbon tracking in some of the controls on the back. Some of these have 700 volts of boost voltage applied.
When the carbon tracking was cleaned out, these sets began working well.
However, that being said, I also have some early GE B&W portables that look very neat, but were very poorly made. All tubes, including the hot horizontal output and damper were mounted on the PC board. These become charcoal and I have only found a couple that I could even hope to restore.
Contrast this to the B&W Zeniths of the era with all tubes on a metal chassis. These are usually fairly easy to get working very well. Overall, GE quality was very poor in the 1960s compared to Zenith or RCA. I would say the the Portacolors are the exception, not the rule.
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