Early Emerson TV's (1947-49) Any Good?

[M3-SRT8]

Are they? What are their strong and weak points?

Thanks;

LJB

[Old1625]

Probably a "middle of the road" designed set. I had a table model with a 12LP4 that had gone gassy, and never did find another to replace it. It was a pretty set, but I had to downsize at the time, and it went into the dumpster.

[snogcel]

Greetings!

I have an old 1948 vintage Emerson set, which works pretty well. While Emerson was considered to be something of a "low end" brand, I've seen quite a few Emersons around and still kicking.

The set's weakest area is the power supply. To avoid using a costly power transformer, they used a couple of voltage doubler setups instead, built around selenium "stink bomb" rectifiers.

Sporting a cluster of nine electrolytic cans mounted on the chassis, along with a ballast resistor unit that gets amazingly hot during operation, I'm always expecting to smell something bad at any time. It keeps on going, though.

Reception is just so-so, but looks pretty good when I set it on Channel 3 and use an old analog cable TV box for reception. All of the controls are on the front, and for good reason: Everything seems to need touch-up adjustment during the course of regular viewing. But the set gets a lot of "Wow" comments from visitors!

If you've got one, go ahead and fix it up - it should be worth the trouble.

Good luck!

[M3-SRT8]

Yup. Sounds like my 630 TS, sans the power supply mods. I think the Emersons look pretty.

I kinda like tweaking it...the 630TS, that is.

LJB