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It looks like RCA had a theme going with the "brick wall" look of its speaker grilles for the 1954 model year. The set pictured above, a few other '54 RCA B/W consoles I've seen, the CT-100 and the RCA field test color models. I have a few books in my tech library with pictures of an RCA color field test set. The set very closely resembles the Merril with the very obvious difference being the placement of the operator controls right out on the front panel instead of being concealed behind the "pencil box" control door as on the final production model we know as the Merrill.
Here's a recent photo of my display room. There has been one other set added since this was taken.
Pictured sets (L-R) are ...
RCA 8-T-241
Fada TV30
RCA 721TS
Zenith 14-1440
Not pictured is an Admiral 19A1. I just recently found time to troubleshoot the cold solder joints in the restoration work of the eBay seller of that set and add tie points to support the junctions of series-connected 3kV capacitor pairs he had used as replacements for the 6kV deflection coupling caps. The cabinet isn't bad, but still needs some work including replacement of its non-original knobs.
I also just finished creating two VHS cassettes of test patterns. The "Indian Head" pattern is great for rectangular-mask sets, but the "WNBT" test pattern appears to have been designed with round-mask sets in mind. The main circle of the "WNBT" pattern is great for portholes.
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