Show us your vintage B&W sets!

[Tim]

I am a newcomer to this group also and have about 20 sets, mostly late '40s and early '50s. Here is one of my favorite sets. DuMont RA-105 Colony that has been very well preserved. 15" round tube with a rectangle mask. It has AM and FM as well as a Phono.

[Tim]

Doors open.

Okie dokie.

1959 Zenith set. Just got her today. Works but needs some tweaking.

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by polaraman
I finally have the above mentioned Stromburg-Carlson here in Georgia. This thing is a beast to move! Chassis is TS 125. I plugged it up and gave it a try. Very loud motor sound coming from the audio. Needs to replace some caps! I did get a raster but did not try to adjust it to get a clear picture. I had already pushed the set up against the wall. The adjustments are in the back. I am hurting enough from moving this thing 900 miles. It has a tuning eye!!!! Way cool addition for me. The power cords to the phonos are tattered. I will have to replace them before attempting to play a record. This has 2 phono players. There is also another storage area above the 45 phono. It is big enough to keep 45 records. It is a 12" crt. Looks like I will have this running in no time!

polaraman

That SC is a great find; first one of its kind I've ever seen in 30-plus years of electronics experimenting. Glad to hear you got it home OK. Sorry to hear you are hurting so badly from moving the set.

But 900 miles? Where was the set when you picked it up? My best guess is it must have been somewhere just west of Ohio (Kentucky or perhaps just into Indiana), as I have relatives in Georgia which is at least 600 miles from where I live (30 miles northeast of Cleveland).

You are correct as to the source of the motorboating in the sound. This is a classic symptom of defective electrolytics; best to change them all while you are at it, as most of them are bad or going bad (drying out, changing value or opening, but not shorting as a rule) by now. Fifty-plus-year-old caps aren't doing anyone any good, especially if you have problems such as motorboating (they may cause other problems as well, such as sync troubles, AGC malfunctions, etc.)

BTW, I like that cat sitting in front of your console. Guess he/she likes antiques as well.


Best of luck and very kind regards,

[Jeffhs]

polaraman,

Just looked at a few past posts to this thread and found out where you got that Stromberg. I am a very poor judge of distance, but 900 miles sounds just about right to me as the distance between St. Louis, Missouri and Columbus, Georgia.

Kind regards,

[Charlie]

Wow! We have lots of fresh meat here in just one day! That's great!

Jason, Huh, and Tim... welcome aboard!

[Eric H]

Yes indeed! and some very nice sets too!

Antonio, I have a Motorola radio from a TV console, different model but if it has the part you need your welcome to it.

Eric

Originally posted by Charlie
Wow! We have lots of fresh meat here in just one day! That's great!

Jason, Huh, and Tim... welcome aboard!

[polaraman]

I got the S/C from Philadelphia Pennsylvania. I also picked up 3 other sets on the trip. Stopped by a lot of antique stores on the way. I lived in Euclid Ohio from 1993 to 1996. I do not miss the winters there. Got this Philco set at an antique mall in North Carolina. It was in really nice shape and could not pass it up. It does work. I did not have a rectangular late 60's B/W in the collection.

Originally posted by Jeffhs
Holy mackerel! I haven't seen a Muntz TV since the '60s/70s, when my next-door neighbors in my hometown had one. The set died some time in the '70s, I believe, so they used it mainly as a stand for a 19" or larger portable after that, if memory serves. The Muntz had a beautiful cabinet, too, mahogany and with doors in front of the CRT, IIRC. (I like anything with a walnut or mahogany, or even oak, wood cabinet such as this.) They bought their set in the early '50s, so it may have been the same model as yours, only in a different cabinet. They don't make them like that anymore.

hehe yeah Muntz tv's seem to be a little scarce... I've never seen another in person before or after I picked that one up... I'm only 24 so I wasn't around when they were being made :p

but the cool thing about my muntz tv is that back around 1996 or so when I found it in an antique store I pluged it in and it worked right there in the shop and it had never been electrically restored (of course I know better now than to just turn on an antique piece of electronics with out a variac or first recapping the whole thing) but it was so cool that it still worked nicely after all those years...

now the picture is a little off so I'm going to get it recapped but I am going to have someone else do it as the big picture tube in it and such worries me a little... I've only done radios so far and the high voltage in it worries me a little... but since my motorola's picture tube is smaller I don't feel quite as worried or intimidated by it as I am by the muntz...

I too like the big old wood console tv's and radios also... but I'm running out of room and there are still two more tv's I want to get hehe

Antonio

Originally posted by Eric H

Antonio, I have a Motorola radio from a TV console, different model but if it has the part you need your welcome to it.

Eric

Thanks for the offer Eric... I might have mis-spoke though, the radio chassis in my tv seems to be complete, the part I need some hardware to re-attatch is some kind of plunger mechanisim that seems to have been used to kind of slow the opening and closing of the lean out radio part of the tv... here are a couple of photos of the plunger part that is just hanging there with no obvious way for me to see how to re-attatch it to the back of the cabinet.

part photo 1

part photo 2

thanks for any aid you can give me on how to re-attatch the part to the back of the cabinet.

Antonio

[Eric H]

Antonio,
looks like part of that is missing, I suspect the piece next to it that's screwed to the cabinet may have been part of the bracket that held it. Perhaps the Sam's folder for that set might have a picture of it.

Does that cylinder have a spring in it? It looks like brass so you could probably solder a new bracket to it. you could also just use a length of small chain in it's place, justs long enough to hold the radio door in the right position. That wouldn't be original but sometimes we have to make do

Eric

Check your local Lowes hardware store, they have a HUGE selection of strange hardware including loads of furniture bits. As far as chain stores go they have some really neat stuff unlike Home Despot.

Another possibility is to take a look at some of the hydraulic pistons that are used on modern cars trunks and hoods.

Anthony

[bgadow]

The first old set I brought back to life, a few years ago. Has a scratchy audio that I need to trace but otherwise a reliable set.

(I have tried about 10 times but this photo just won't load-I'll try editing it again later with a new pic, maybe from work where my computer is a little faster)

[bgadow]

Here is an early 50s Admiral-the cabinet (bakelite) doesn't show up much in this photo which is just as well as its pretty scratched up. Had this set for years with just one problem, multiple vertical pictures. Finally took a look at it one day and realized I had never recapped it, and it was packed tight with black beauties. The surprise was that the underside of the chassis is coated with rust. But, hey, it works! This is a metal/glass crt.

[bgadow]

One more for tonight, this RCA 170PO42 that I just got running today. I've had this set long enough that I have no idea where it came from or what I gave for it! Pretty dirty set, inside & out, and I didn't hold out much hope for it. Finally found that a bad yoke was killing the hv. Thanks to Moyer here it is, alive again! I didn't think much of this set before, except that I liked the styling, but now I realize this is a cut above the competition, transformer powered, built pretty heavy.