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Back in the dark times, 1967, we bought our first 25" color TV: An RCA. It ran for 3 weeks, before it had a fire that burned the wall behind the set. Under warranty, of course. When the dealer called to tell us that it had been fixed, my mom informed the dealer that the set was coming back into this house over her dead body.
THEN, we bought a 23" Motorola. It got 3 CRT's in just over 2 years, but NOTHING was ever done to the chassis, ever. No tubes, nothing. Then, it moved to MY bedroom, where It ran perfectly for years. Then, the folks bought a new Magnavox console... their first fully solid state set. It had a few issues, but once the known problems were addressed, it ran fine from 1973-74 until 1980, when it got hit by lightning. They bought their first remote TV, a Maggie, in 1980, and it ran with zero repairs until 2003, when I gave them the 46" Mitsubishi, and a 32" Philips set.
So, our tube sets were the RCA and the Motorola. Even though our RCA nearly set the house on fire, the RCA sets were my favorite sets to repair when I started doing repairs for a living. Like some of you, I would buy a case of 6GH8's about once a year for stock.
Rarely even saw a Zenith anything in my shop, but I did start buying cases of Zenith 6GH8's when they started offering them over the RCA's. I've still got around 15 of these tubes on hand, and a big box full of 5GH8's.
I sure do miss the days of tube TV's. They were a class all their own.
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