Nice RCA on eBay

[Eric H]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...287864243&rd=1

Originally posted by Eric H
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...287864243&rd=1

Nice roundie! It doesn't look like it's playing in color though.

[Charlie]

Hell... that set is so nice looking that it wouldn't matter if it didn't play at all!

Is that a CTC15? 16?

[drh4683]

according to the rca service info I have its a 1963 set, called the "Chalfont" and is a ctc15. Too bad its too far, would love to have that one.

[Carmine]

Hell... that set is so nice looking that it wouldn't matter if it didn't play at all!

Yeah, I gotta agree! I'm not even much of an RCA fan, but I gotta admit that's a great looking set! If only I could find a roundie Zenith with a similar look!

If I still lived in Phoenix, I'd bid! one thing that sucked out there was that it was a virtual desert for old TVs! I had nothing to get a fix with beyond a few early solid-state Sylvanias.

[bgadow]

I have a CTC-15 with this same control panel, different cabinet. This is the first time I've seen a posting of another with that panel-I thought it must have been pretty common because I once had another 15 that I parted out, a combo with the tv tuner under the lid, and it used the same panel. The jury is still out on whether I will keep my 15 or not.

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by jasonlava
Nice roundie! It doesn't look like it's playing in color though.

It might be showing a color commercial at that. Perhaps there's too much light shining on the CRT. Those old roundies weren't as bright as today's dark-tint rectangular tubes. I once had a 1964 roundie (chassis bore a striking resemblance to RCA's CTC-12) on which the picture washed out as soon as any kind of light hit the screen.

My RCA CTC185, on the other hand, has a dark-tint inline tube; light shining on the screen doesn't seem to bother the picture, but that's one of the nice things about dark-tint tubes. Zenith's Chromacolor line of the '70s was like that as well.
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Oooops! I just looked at the picture of that Chalfont set on ebay, and noticed that the image of CBS' Face the Nation (click on one of the thumbnails alongside the ebay image to see this) doesn't look like it's in color. In that case, the color control could be all the way down or the color circuits are defective; weak or dead 3.58-MHz burst oscillator tube or circuit trouble are likely if increasing the color doesn't bring it back.

Also, the seller, IMO, seems to be just a bit too confident that the set will work in any signal area using only "a nice pair of rabbit ears" as an antenna. Rabbit ears do not work in many areas; my small town is an example. I live in an absolute fringe area for Cleveland TV, at least where the VHF channels are concerned; one station does not come in here at all without an amplified outdoor antenna or cable, and the other two are fair to poor at best.

That RCA might work in a prime signal area using only rabbit ears, but I wouldn't count on getting decent reception any real distance from the transmitters without a good outdoor antenna. I think the statement about the TV working on rabbit ears anywhere is just a selling point, and an uninformed one at that.

One more. I did a double take when I saw the backlit channel selector window of the set. At first I thought it was tuned to channel 0(!), until I took a good look at the window. The tuner was on channel 8. Looked to me like the indicator drum (or the bracket supporting the indicator lamp socket) was off just a bit so the neon indicator lamp was not shining directly on the drum, or else the neon bulb itself was weak and not illuminating the drum as well as it should. In fact, I'm amazed the lamp was working at all, in a set that old.

[Charlie]

Notice that the seller really never mentions anything about the set being color. It may be possible that he/she doesn't even realize that it's a color set. They might just think it's a black and white!

Keep in mind, this could be a young person selling it. Sometimes, younger generations are surprised that TV was around in the 50's and 60's. Sad, but true.