ebay roundie

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2197267225&category=3638

Looks like a nice set. Too bad its in CA. If any of you guys get it, please save the tinted CRT lens for me as I really need one bad for my ctc16!

TV

Wow! Just saw that set a few minutes ago on ebay. It brings back memories for me, as I had an old RCA in the early '70s something like that one (though I'm sure mine had a CTC15 chassis). Whomever gets this will own a piece of RCA history, as they weren't making that many roundies by the late '60s (the design was being phased out in favor of the then-new rectangular tubes); the company had switched to rectangular tubes exclusively by 1970 or so.

I've always liked that particular design of RCA TV (like the '68 roundie on ebay). I knew someone in my old neighborhood who had an RCA color console of the same vintage and control layout, and the junior high school I attended as a kid in the '70s had RCA monochrome 21-inch sets in huge metal cabinets, with the same one-knob VHF/UHF channel selector (push to fine tune on VHF, with the same fine-tuning control operating the UHF tuner when the VHF tuner was set to the UHF position between channels 2 and 13) and the illuminated channel selector window above it. (The illuminated selector on RCA's late-'60s sets, in which individual numbers on the VHF and UHF knobs were illuminated and showed through the knob, operated on the same principle; I liked those too.) I always liked those lighted channel windows, with Zenith's Spotlite panels, not to mention the kind that projected the channel number in the center of the knob, being my favorite kinds of illuminated panels. When the new on-screen channel displays came out years later, I immediately liked them as well; I just thought of them as a modern replacement for the old backlit selectors, and I like them every bit as well as I liked the older design. What goes around comes around.

One nice thing about the OSD displays: There is no pilot light to burn out and need replacing every few years. That was one drawback of the backlit selectors; if the pilot light burned out for any reason, it was nearly impossible to tell what channel your set was on, although I guess that wasn't thought of as a problem with those sets as there weren't as many TV stations on the air in those days (most cities only had, at most, two or three stations, unless you lived in New York or Los Angeles). In cities with just a few stations, it was easy enough just to look at the screen and change channels until you found the program you were looking for, if you couldn't see the number on the channel selector. Most people didn't even bother replacing those pilot lights when they eventually burned out; as long as the TV itself worked, that was all that mattered.

One more thing (as Peter Falk's Lt. Columbo used to say on the 1970s NBC-TV detective series of the same name). I was very sorry to find out that the picture tube in that '68 RCA had had the neck snapped off. :( For the life of me, I don't know how that could have happened. :dunno: The seller says the back is cracked, which could explain the damage to the tube--oh, well. (How on earth could the tube have been damaged WITH THE BACK ON? Seems to me as if someone may have taken a baseball bat to the back of the set and given it a good whack, right in the center of the CRT cap. This would have wrecked the fiberboard back and guillotined the CRT neck at the same time, of course; talk about killing two birds with one stone!) All I can say to that, however, is that the set owner was extremely lucky the tube didn't implode when the vacuum let go.

Doug, I've got an RCA 21GVP22 or 21GUP22 that has given up the ghost (arcing and filaments out). Would that safety glass work on your set?

hi chad,

If the lens is the darker/grey tint, yes please! Im interested! Id like to get my ctc16 back to original looking crt.

Thanks!

I think it is grey colored...will post picture. If it is the type you need, you will have to tell me how to disassemble the safety glass.

I am going to guess on the CTC-20, that RCA offered it at a HUGE discount. Color tv was still pretty pricey in the 60's and even in the early 80's. Not throw away "grocery store" items like they are now. RCA probably wanted to use up excess inventory and figured it was a way to get people into color tv. I remember going on house-calls with my Uncle in the late 70's and being amazed at some of the people who still had a B&W tv as their ONLY set. I have always loved "roundies". I remember as a kid I had a friend whose parents had an Admiral roundie with the tilt out door with all the controls (even the tuner) I thought that was soooooo cool. We'd watch cartoons at his house. My parents first color tv was one of those RCA 19" Consoles. (circa 1966) I wish I could find one of those now. I remember the day the flyback burned up in it too, because I left it on when I went out to play and came in and the house smelled. I even lied and said I didn't leave the tv on. I also remember when I was little, I "pitched a fit" and slammed the door and a picture that was hanging on the wall behind the tv fell down, cutting off the neck of the CRT while my dad was watching it. (boy was I a brat) The sparks flew and I never saw dad jump out of the chair that fast.....