Motorola 16CK1 restoration complete

[Kalamazoo-DJ]

Excellent! This is the stuff I was talking about in the ct-100 post, these things deserve this kind of treatment, I could have never provided heart and soul for that ct-100 in this manner as this set has gotten. Heart and soul is evident in this restoration.

[jr_tech]

That is fantastic! Great job...
lots of hard work and dedication can be seen in this "showroom new" looking set. I have always thought that the Motorolas were the best looking of the early color sets! Anybody have an estimate of the number of these sets that were produced?

jr

[ohohyodafarted]

Originally Posted by jr_tech

Anybody have an estimate of the number of these sets that were produced?

jr

Not sure, but it couldn't be very many. Based on the survivor rate of the CT100 of about 12 to 13% a ballpark guess would be around 500 sets total. John Folsom has the only other two known surviving sets. The 19 inch model came out shortly after this run and was then shifted to 21" production shortly there after.

Some aspects of the set are rather crude, and prototype like. IE: the HV cage is made from two halves of smaller cages (probably from a B&W set) that are spot welded together to make one larger cage. The back of the set (not shown) is from a B&W set that was re-silk screened for this color set. At the top of the back they painted over a label that indicated the set had a "roto antenna installed" in the set. The main chassis has a number of punch outs for items that were installed when the chassis was used to build some other model. Things like this point to the fact that Motorola was not convinced that they would sell very many sets, and used parts from other sets to keep development costs down. If large production numbers had been contemplated, they probably would have had special dedicated parts made instead of recycling and modifying parts from other sets

Bob

[jr_tech]

"Based on the survivor rate of the CT100 of about 12 to 13%"

Ok, I am confused here... on another thread, Pete Deksnis said:

"The traditional estimate of 5000 CT-100 sets produced comes from the original RCA press release issued on the first day of production, March 25, 1954. However, based on my eleven-year quest for CT-100 serial numbers of the approximately 140 known survivors indicates just 4100 sets were produced by RCA, which is far more than any other manufacturer of 15-in. color sets in 1954."

This would be about 3.4% Are there considerably differing estimates of production numbers, or perhaps a guess that perhaps only about 25% of the survivors are "known" by collectors?

Also, if 3 Motorolas are "known" and if indeed that might be 13% of total production, would that not imply about 25 rather than 500 produced?

just curious,
jr

[ohohyodafarted]

JR you are correct... My Bad! Don't know how I came up with the percentage that I got.

So if that holds true, maybe they only made 100 15" sets???? Seems like a rather small number. I would guess it was more like double that at least. In any event there probably were not very many produced.

[WISCOJIM]

Originally Posted by ohohyodafarted

JR you are correct... My Bad! Don't know how I came up with the percentage that I got.

So if that holds true, maybe they only made 100 15" sets???? Seems like a rather small number. I would guess it was more like double that at least. In any event there probably were not very many produced.

Have you and John compared serial numbers to see if that yields any clues?


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