Setchell Carlson Roundie save!

[WCF720]

Part of me hoped another collector would have saved this set, and after a week, I caved in and rescued it! Meet the new addition to the heard, one 1964-65 Setchell Carlson “Early American” designed cabinet, crafted from hard Maple. I’m not 100% sure of the manufacture date, my best guess is ’64-65, the Sams Photofact is dated 1965.

Setchell Carlson (SC), was a standalone company unrelated to Stromberg Carlson. For me, SC is a unique company for several reasons. One, I live in Minneapolis, and the set was made in a neighboring suburb of Minneapolis, New Brighton. They also had offices in St. Paul, I’m not sure of the corporate history. Bart Setchell started his first company in 1928 which was called Karadio. He invented the vibrator supply for car radios making heavy battery supplies un-necessary. In 1930 he formed Setchell Carlson with his business partner, Don Carlson from the Karadio Company. The second point of interest to me is in ’49 SC invented the use of modular construction for their line of Black & White sets, which followed into the Color TV production. Setchell was a creative soul and held over 100 patents. To the best of my knowledge, SC ceased TV production in the early 70’s.

Take a look at the attached pictures, nothing has been done to clean the set, it’s as I found it. Take note of the modules which are held in by screws and a joining connector of some sort. Clever, and you can effectively remove each module to service the various functions of the set; IF, Sound, Video, Horizontal, Vertical, Power Supply, and Chroma. Interestingly enough, the sales brochure boasts the TV will still function with the Chroma module removed, you just view a Black & White picture. Very clever indeed!

I also like the audio circuit design using push/pull outputs (6GK6, similar to a 6BQ5) feeding a two speaker design. Note the speaker array; one with a C16L (6” woofer), and C16H (6” tweeter). I never knew tweeters were supposed to be of a 6” design! Time will tell what it sounds like, but I’ve heard good things from other collectors. The rebuild should be easy with each module being built with point to point wiring, no circuit boards to get baked by hot tubes or failed resistors. In reading other threads on SC color sets; I’ve learned that the circuit was basically an RCA clone, using some of SC’s tweaks. It’s said that the SC sets produced some of the best picture quality in the industry, good enough that RCA sent engineers to visit SC to see what they did to make such a good picture. That is what I read on the internet, believe what you want.

It’ll be a fun restoration; I’ve already located a set of replacement knobs from a fellow VK’er. I’ll keep a picture story board of its progress and I’ll continue its story once work begins.