Motel TVs

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Pete Deksnis

..but the thread had reminded me of this sign just two miles from my apartment.

Dude, you need to steal/buy that sign for me!

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[Pete Deksnis]

Phil, I'll look into it for you.

[kx250rider]

This is a thread I put up last year... It's a great sign at a motel in Mojave, CA

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...ght=motel+sign

As far as motel TVs; I've had a few. The earliest was a Hoffman 12" round tube set with no audio and no on-off switch in it. It was evidently designed to go up high, and then there was a radio with a coin box that sat on the bureau, which also provided the sound and the coin-op control for the TV. I have also bad memories of a Packard-Bell 21" B&W table model at the Motel 6 in Lompoc, CA... it was about 1974, and my mother and I stayed a night there on the way to someplace we were going. The TV had horrible reception, and it cost .75 to find that out. I was really upset that I missed my Saturday morning cartoons that day! The first color TV in a motel I saw was a Magnavox tube set at Howard Johnson's in Chester, PA in 1978. It actually worked OK.

Charles

[bgadow]

There is one of those RCA signs in the next town over. Or, maybe was. Seems as though when I rode by there Saturday the whole big sign was gone. Could be wrong. Will have to check it out. These seem fairly common, must be early seventies? I haven't seen one with the old RCA logo. I saw a Tv by the dumpster at one very old motel last year. I guess that place just used whatever they could buy cheap as it looked to be a Chromacolor II console!

[Sandy G]

The one "decent" motel here had a big ad on their sign-"COLOR TV !!" & each one of the letters was in a different color. After asking around, I'm reasonably sure they had roundies at one time-But that was a looooooong time ago, & the motel shut down about 20-25 yrs ago, basically due to a lack of business. I rarely, if ever went out there when I was a kid-there were supposedly a couple of "Ladies of the Evening" who plied their trade outta that motel, & I would have gotten a pretty good beating if I'd been caught out there...

[HomerJ]

OLD-TV-NUT I love those postcards. Looks like 50's-60's? I was born in 1968 but if I could go back in time for a week it would be mid 50's. I don't know why but it just looks so inviting, warm.

[old_tv_nut]

Here's one I found that appears to have a pay meter attached.

[HomerJ]

Look at the carpet and the wall treatments!! Oh please Mr Einstein, invent a time machine!!

[drh4683]

those are neat photos. I always like those 50's-60's motels. Before the yuppies moved into Downers Grove and destroyed its character, there were many 50's era motels on Ogden ave. All of which had that "COLOR TV BY RCA" sign which was hanging below the motel sign. All the motels had those great neon signs and most even had "TV" in the neon.
Unfortunately, I wasnt around when those mural TV's were in use. I doubt any motels were using tube type color sets in their rooms back in '83.


Id like to find these old motel color sets, but I think they are long gone. I was fortunate enough to find a motel set last year. However, I wasnt aware that it was a motel set when I found it. It was a tube type Ford Philco hybrid set. It had a peice of woodgrained contact paper that covered the entire top of the set which matched the rest of the cabinet (plastic photofinish). I figured it was to hide some bad scraches. Captianmoody was interested in it and I gave it to him. When he pulled the contact paper off, it revealed "DAYS INN" which was branded onto the cabinet top. Most likely from a local Days Inn in berwyn where the set came from. that one was from around 1972 I think.

This thread reminds me of a movie with what appears to be a CTC-38 or 39 in a motel room. Heres a few screen shots from the 1974 film "The Conversation". Gene Hackman is in the motel room with the CTC-38/9. Notice that it has the mural TV vhf tuning knob. The movie was supposedly filmed in december of '72. So that set was probably 1 or 2 years old at the time.

[radiotvnut]

There were a bunch of "rent by the hour" motels around here in the early to mid '90's all owned by the same person. Most of their sets were late '70's RCA 19" XL-100's with rotary tuning and a built in AM/FM radio. They did have a few older tube RCA's left and a few early '80's RCA's with the single knob varactor tuner. The reason I know that is because the owners thought I would repair them for $5 or $10 a set just because I was a kid. Around the same time, a retired TV man gave me a bunch of 18" Philco hybrid color TV's (and remains). None were worth repairing so I wound up junking them. These belonged to Travel Inn and the man that gave them to me said they were replaced by Zenith's in the early '80's. In '97, I bought 20 19" GE rotary tuner PC chassis motel sets for $5 each from Motel 6. These were from the early to mid '80's and most of them still somewhat worked. Yeah, I got in a little hot water with my parents when all of those got brought home! I doubt there are currently any rotary tuner (let alone tube type) motel sets in use unless they are used in very low end motels.