National TV-7W Television

[jonboy55]

I picked this up a few days ago. Pretty rare.

Needs a lot of work but a great deal. I paid $50.00.

[Tony V]

Nice find!
-Tony

[Dan Starnes]

Yes, nice find,, very cool.
Dan

[Sandy G]

Wow....How's the CRT ? If it's OK, that's about 2/3-3/4 of the game right there...

[jonboy55]

I haven't checked out the CRT yet. You have to take it out of the cabinet and I have something on the work bench. I'm not worried, I have 4 7JP4 tubes. Also, I'm lucky to have the original 27 page service manual for the TV.

[jeyurkon]

Very nice find! Was it an estate sale or what?

John

[ablethevoice]

Very cool. It wasn't till fairly recently that I discovered that National even made TVs.

[Tim]

Excellent find, especially for that price. Congratulations.

[Tubejunke]

Nice! At first glance I thought it was my RCA 8T-243.

[jonboy55]

I got it at a yard sale. My friends wife called me from a garage sale to say there was an old wood National TV in the driveway. It was about 5 minutes from my house and she said she would stay with it until I got there. It was a large old house - about 90 years old. The owners said they found it in the attic when they purchased the house. They asked for $75.00 but settled for $50.00.

[Sandy G]

Was it National or Hallicrafters who made the 7 incher that had the VU meter in the case to measure signal strength ? Both outfits got into the TV business that seemed to be limitless right after the war, but soon found out they couldn't compete against the Muntzes of the world..Halli stayed in in long enuff to apparently make a few color sets, though, IIRC...

[jonboy55]

National made a 7 inch metal model that had the vu meter. That is an extremely rare TV. Model TV-7M.

[Tony V]

Its cool that your wife "stood guard" until you got there. Does she share interest in your hobby?
-Tony

[Sam Cogley]

Was this the same National that made guitars and amplifiers?

[Sandy G]

This was the National Company of Malden, Mass., that made amateur radio gear. One of their sets, the HRO, was made from 1935, essentially unchanged until 1964. It was a magnificent anachronism, to change frequency bands in it, you had to change one of a set of coils. There were 2 coils for the broadcast band, I think to get all the coils they offered you had to get 7 or 8 of 'em. It was only after WW2 did National make the power supply intergral w/the rest of the radio, before that, you had a separate power supply-the "doghouse", along w/a separate speaker. In 1965, National went from the obsolete to the space age & offered the HRO-500-which was a totally solid state design. Solid state had been used for cheapy shirt-pocket radios for several years by then, but nobody had tried it for a "serious" radio that picked up from 500 KC to 30 MC-the whole shortwave spectrum. And there WERE some problems-but surviving HRO 500s are prized by collectors. Sadly, National couldn't compete against the onslaught of the Japanese, sputtered on thru the Seventies, & died in the Eighties.