Hey from NC

[jsowers]

Thanks, Dave, for your comments. I wondered if those GEs were well made, considering ours lasted so long. My dad bought it from Butler-Conrad Appliance Co. like he did most everything else. In those days it was a major expense. We had lots of GE stuff at one time: B&W TVs, toaster, 40" stove, fridge, dishwasher, mixer.

The toaster (1965), stove and fridge (1953) are still in operation. We don't practice appliance genocide.

I remember the GE I gutted in 1979 was still working OK, which made me sad even as a kid in community college. But I got free parts, so I wasn't sad for long. I remember someone else took the picture tube. So at least the parts went to a good home.

My first and last TV repair job in the summer of 1980 was in a furniture store that sold used TVs on time payments. It had been a while since the last TV guy was there and he had a huge backlog of console sets that had been traded in. My favorite was the Motorola "works in a drawer" set. I had never seen such an animal. It was all solid state too. He even had several roundie color sets, but I didn't work on them because they were much older and not popular. Oh, if I only had them today.

My least favorite was a Magnavox tube-model console with little baby mouse feet sticking out of the IF shield. I passed on that one. My most successful was a later model Magnavox credenza from about 1975, all solid state. It just needed a picture tube. It had a gorgeous cabinet and sold the first day he put it on the floor.

My Avatar Silvertone wasn't working when I got it. It had a power resistor that was obviously blown, so I replaced that and was rewarded with a working radio. It should be recapped, I know, but it's so original and I play it so seldom that I've left it as is. It doesn't have any hum at all.

Those Silvertone consoles are smaller than average. Mine fits in a small bit of wall between the pantry and garage doors in my kitchen. I attached a picture of the entire radio. The dial is its best feature. I had a 1936 Sears catalog with it pictured years before I got the radio, which I think was about $5 at an auction sale. They looked so much bigger in the catalogs that I didn't make the connection until a while after I got the radio.