Muntz in Ohio

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by jeyurkon

Any reason a Muntz would be particularly interesting?

"Mad Man" Muntz was notorious for designing cheap TVs with the smallest number of parts possible. Folklore says he would even go into the plant and start ripping out parts to see if the set would still work.

I have been told that Muntz TVs were sold primarily in larger cities where there were strong local stations.

Kind of a novelty, in short. I wouldn't expect great performance, not that that's a big issue after the switchover to digital broadcasting.

Phil Nelson

[Don Lindsly]

Contrary to urban legend, that model Muntz is comparable to the Admirals, Clarions, TeleKing, Teletone, Sonora, Truetone, Olympic and other mid line TVs of the era. It has a Standard Tuner, 5U4, full wave rectifier, power transformer, 3 IFs and comparable circuit design to the similar products of the period.

Muntz' major differentiation at the time, was in its distribution system, not the product.

Later designs resulted in reduced costs and a change in the distribution.

Don