CTC-5 Strathmore!

[Whirled One]

[I was going to post about this earlier this week, but I'm now finally getting around to it...]

This past Saturday, I was in Ohio to pick up the RCA CTC-5 "Strathmore" that Kinzbird was offering for sale here several weeks ago. I've got to say-- I'm just amazed at how beautiful this set really is! The cabinet is truly in superb condition, and is really just a darn nice looking console any way you look at it. Well, I think so, anyway. I've never seen a 50's color set in person outside of a museum, so what do I know...

These two pictures are ones I took right after a friend and I hauled it up to my apartment. [NOTES: In the "doors open" image, it looks like the volume/brightness knobs are missing, but that's because I had removed the chassis before transporting it, and the bracket holding those controls has to be removed in order to pull the chassis.]

I really like a lot of the little details on this cabinet, such as the round metal accents on the doors, the elaborate multi-layered mask and bezel around the picture tube, and the lettering ("C O L O R") painted in gold on the inside of the front glass.

Right now, I'm cleaning up the chassis a bit (it's pretty dusty!) and doing some preliminary tests, but hope to re-install the chassis in the cabinet this weekend and soft-start it to see where things really stand. The 6BK4 HV regulator has an open heater, though, so I'll have to dig another one up first.

Just as historical notes, here are some tidbits about this particular set provided by documentation and suggested by clues from inspection:

About half of the tubes are still original. Most of these have date codes of 56-48, but a few have 56-43 and one has a 56-39 code, thus suggesting this TV was built in December 1956 or early 1957.

The CRT is apparently also original, as it too has a 56-48 date code. Amazingly, it still tests good, with strong emission! [all three guns read in the low/mid 80's on the 0-100 scale on my B&K CRT tester.] Cool! That was a big relief.

All of the tubes, including replacements, are RCA brand. There is an old RCA service tag on the chassis dated 1972. Kinzbird's receipts suggest that it was indeed repaired exclusively by RCA service techs. I see a few "orange drops" in the vertical section, but the set otherwise appears to have seen rather few repairs in its day. Just when this set was taken out of everyday use is not known, but after the family bought a new TV, they simply unplugged this set and left it sitting in the corner of the living room-- where it remained until the day I picked it up..! It's certainly been cared for extremely well during its life.

After it was built, this TV must have sat in a warehouse or dealer showroom for quite some time before it was sold. The down-payment receipt is dated October 10, 1958, so it would have been one or two model years old at that point. This payment receipt suggests that the total price paid for the set was $574.32, which would certainly have represented a fair discount from its original list price in 1956. [I don't know what, if any, of that is sales tax or interest/carrying charges, or if there was a trade-in involved as well.] This follows reasonably from the information on Ed Reitan's web site that says that RCA did in fact continue to offer various "leftover" CTC-5 Deluxe consoles having full doors (like the Strathmore) well into the CTC-7 era. [I suppose sales of all CTC-5 sets were poorer than RCA expected, but I guess the top-of-the-line models were particularly sluggish sellers if RCA was still trying to sell off two-year-old inventory..!] Note: Does anyone here know what the original list price of a Strathmore was? In any case, it would appear that Kinzbird's Grandfather got a pretty nice deal in 1958..!

Anyway, I was just rather excited to get this set, and though I'd share some info and pics with the group. :-) Any further info (or corrections) about this particular model appreciated!