Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve McVoy
You need to separate the CT-100 from the 21 inch sets that followed in terms of difficulty of convergence. The CT-100 had very few adjustments and convergence is easy to do. Of course the tube only produces a 12 inch picture, so errors aren't as visible.
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Steve, thanks for the information! I was unaware of that, as these sets were out of use when I started servicing color.
The first shipment, in 1954, of the CT-100s to Western Tennessee was only five sets.
Two of these five sets went to WMCT, the NBC affiliate in Memphis, one set to the home of a senior executive at the station, the fourth set to a Memphis doctor, and the fifth set was purchased by the owner of a TV repair shop 80 miles north of the station, where four month later, I started working repairing radios, cleaning the shop and general odd jobs and slowly graduated to B&W TVs.
Although the CT-100 was purchased through the Memphis distributor, the south bound freight truck actually left his set at his shop the day before the other four were delivered to the Memphis distributor.
When shop owner called about the RCA tech who was supposed to come out to set the set up, he was told he would be up in about two weeks. Since my impatient future boss had owned and operated his shop for 30 years and he had taken the RCA color training course, he said that he would set the set up himself!
Now, this was a statement that he quickly came to regret, as he was never able to get the set working. It turned out that something had jarred loose in the CRT during shipping and the resulting short took out some other components in the set. It was about a month and two trips by the RCA tech before he ever saw a full color image on it. He was never willing to talk about that humbling experience. He kept the set in his shop and used it as a display curiosity, sometimes turning it on to impress a customer. He would not let anyone else in the shop touch that set.
I moved to Atlanta in the spring of 1959 and there my experience on color TV was limited to the few remaining CBS 205's that the other repairmen hated and Admiral 1956-58 models. The Atlanta shop had a contract with a store that purchased a warehouse with 137 mostly non-operational Admiral dealer returns. The store contracted with us for the labor to repair them, with Admiral giving a 30 day parts-only warranty starting with the sale date.
The store kinda forgot to tell their customers that they were buying old used TVs. I switched careers and retired from TV servicing in late 1960, and never looked back. Since then, I've only repaired my own sets and a few for my friends.
James.