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The most reliable SS chassis I ever saw was the RCA CTC44, which was sort of a production unitized chassis "prototype" that led to the later modular XL100.
We sold two dozen of these (they were pricey) and only had one ever come in for service, and I repaired exactly one more after that that we didn't sell.
RCA also had a run in the 1980s (other than the early 1981 flyback fiasco) that were ridiculously reliable. Once the more complicated chassis came out like the 140 did we see some RCAs come in, but those weren't terrible even if they weren't trouble free.
We also sold Zenith and Quasar at that time, and Zenith was always hit and miss (more misses is you ask me). The "vertical" chassis series was stout to be sure but were constantly plagued by module contact issues, and the later Triple Plus chassis could be glitchy. The nice thing about the Zeniths of those years is that they were 100% modular so as long as you could get a yellow label module, you could fix it easy. The rebuilt red label modules had about a 30% failure rate right out of the box, so I stopped buying Zenith red label boards and rebuilt them as we got them.
The Quasars were pretty good overall but they just felt like they were built out of toilet paper and popsicle sticks. They used paper phenolic boards were Zenith and RCA were using glass and they used garbage trimmers for adjustments.
Sony's of the 80s were pretty good but not without issues.
John
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