View Full Version : Sears Silvertone, Warwick Electronics?


drh4683
01-25-2010, 10:25 PM
This is kind of a spin off of what was being discussed in the estate sales 2010 thread.

The USA made sears silvertone TV's were made by Warwick Electronics (sears model numbers start 528.xxxxx). I've known of Warwick, but I never actually decided to look into who the company was until now. I have looked all over the internet trying to figure out who warwick electronics was, but all I can find are a couple pages about a 1967 lawsuit against sears over house fire caused by a silvertone TV.

There seems to be ZERO information on the internet about warwick and who they were as a company. They must have been gone for years. Does anyone have any information available? Were they based in Chicago?

I always put Silvertone and Airline in the same category, they were both well made TV's that showed similar design characteristics, even though Airline was a Wells Gardner made TV (which there is plenty of info about as they are still in business in suburban Chicago).

So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?

truetone36
01-25-2010, 10:38 PM
I know that their last sets were made in 1977, and that they were bought out by Sanyo in 1978. One of their plants is located about 40 miles from me. I have no idea where the company was based.

radiotvnut
01-25-2010, 10:45 PM
This website does show that warwick made TV's until '77.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/postwar_manufacturers.html

I also read somewhere (can't remember where) that Sanyo bought them out and that in Warwick's last days, Sears canned them as a supplier because of quality control issues. The only other non-Sears product that I've seen that was warwick built were the Library of Congress talking book record players for the blind from the '60's. I've seen plenty of Sears radios, TVs, and stereos that were Warwick built. In fact, I have an early '60's silvertone portable transistor radio that was built by warwick and it's a good performer.

Findm-Keepm
01-25-2010, 11:44 PM
So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?


I'd been told as a kid that Sears/Warwick and Whirlpool were all in bed together. Sears owned a small percentage, with Whirlpool owning the rest.

This reference shows that Warwick Electronics Inc was a Whirlpool holding:

http://www.nber.org/antidump/FDIList.txt

and here:

"Further attempts to diversify yielded mixed results. The company's purchase of Heil-Quaker Corporation in 1964 enlarged Whirlpool's scope beyond consumer appliances to central heating and cooling equipment. But this subsidiary was sold to Inter-City Gas Corporation of Canada in 1986 as Whirlpool refocused its attention on home appliances. Its 1966 entry into the consumer electronics market with the acquisition of Warwick Electronics ended in failure ten years later, at which time the business was sold to Sanyo Electric Company."
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/Whirlpool-Corporation-Company-History.html

Sanyo definitely bought into the company at some point:
"The Japanese television cartel: a study based on Matsushita v. Zenith" Chapter 1 Intro has a reference to this. Google book search:http://books.google.com/books?id=1ilVz9WSx-wC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=WARWICK+MANUFACTURING+CORPORATION+sears+-group&source=bl&ots=426qw3tp4I&sig=S8DC0-OUc3VY6h7c4YFA08CDG3M&hl=en&ei=3XpeS6zmLIrcNqX9yYEP&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=6&ved=0CBwQ6AEwBQ#

Sanyo started SMC (Sanyo Manufacturing Company) in the US in 1976 to acquire TV plants and manufacture sets in the US, skirting US anti-dumping laws. They also purchased the FISHER name at this point. http://www.iccfed.gd.gov.cn/2003/english/corporation/19.htm

Funny how Warwick never trademarked anything - they seemed to engineer products strictly for sale/branding by Sears.

528 Warwick, 564 Sanyo, 5nDime Kmart.......;)



Airline in the mid-to-late 70's was Admiral made. Monkey Wards also had some Japanese-made and (80's) GE-made Airline sets.

Cheers,

Findm-Keepm
01-26-2010, 12:11 AM
Doug,

Your Chromix control on that Sears/Warwick set is probably based on this Warwick patent:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3825673.pdf

Bottom of column 1 under Color Gamut Compressor describes the Chromix citcuitry. Notice how they are talking tint control up until they start to talk about the present invention - can't call it a tint control - already part of the RCA patent!

Now I expect that some of the 15GP22 expert folks here could explain all the technical aspects of the phase relationships and all - I'm lost.:sigh:

Cheers,

jeyurkon
01-26-2010, 12:57 AM
There's a reference to Warwick being in Chicago and purchased by Sears, here http://www.earlytelevision.org/color_tv_cooper.html

John

AUdubon5425
01-26-2010, 05:52 AM
I have a Silvertone portable radio built in '55 by Warwick, so they go back at least that far.

drh4683
01-26-2010, 11:32 AM
It does appear that Warwick was infact a Chicago company. Looking at those patent details indicates "Warwick Electronics Inc, Chicago, IL" and the inventors lived in Schaumburg and Palatine, both of which are northwest suburbs. So we can conclude that engineering was alteast in chicago.

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas? Im curious if there were chicago plants as well. I think I have a 1976 chicago yellow pages phone book somewhere on one of my numerous book shelves. Perhaps they might be listed with an address in there.

drh4683
01-26-2010, 11:34 AM
It does appear that Warwick was infact a Chicago company. Looking at those patent details indicates "Warwick Electronics Inc, Chicago, IL" and the inventors lived in Schaumburg and Palatine, both of which are northwest suburbs. So we can conclude that engineering was alteast in chicago.

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas? Im curious if there were chicago plants as well. I think I have a 1976 chicago yellow pages phone book somewhere on one of my numerous overloaded book shelves. Perhaps they might be listed with an address in there, which is the tail end of Warwick if they were gone by '77.

John Furrey who was one of the designers on the color gamut compressor for warwick appears to still be around at age 69. He is listed as having a home in Schaumburg and then Indianapolis. I'd be willing to bet once warwick folded, he went to work for RCA. Just a though...

bgadow
01-26-2010, 01:36 PM
I have an Airline AA5 table radio from the 50s; I need to pull it back down off the shelf. When I bought it there was something on it, maybe an EIA#, that traced it to be built by Warwick. This might have been before the relationship with Sears. I had heard several places of a financial interest in Warwick by Sears; S,R&Co was big enough that they could have kept them busy all by themselves, I guess. Somebody, in an old thread somewhere, said Warwick had trouble with their solid state designs, maybe HV issues? There are a couple retired Sears techs over on ARF and this kinda thing has been discussed before. Someone mentioned a third Warwick plant but I'm not sure where it was.

Zenith26kc20
01-26-2010, 03:01 PM
When the Warwick/Sears were popular, they had mostly flyback and vertical problems. One of the more "interesting" problems was Sams Photofact had one of the vertical output transistors mislabeled. If I remember right, the sets were complmentary Symmetry output in the vertical. Sams had them quasi-symmetry. The transistors were grayish (both npn and pnp) at the time. I bet many a tech cursed the set when it was Sams fault.
There was also a scan power supply diode that had to come from Sears or it would burn the generic diode out in a few minutes.
I had one for many years and actually sold it one Superbowl Sunday. Once you got used to them they weren't bad to work on.
They were a far cry better than the Sony's with the phase locked loop power and high voltage sets (dual gate switches). One missed part and you rebuild them again.

truetone36
01-26-2010, 06:12 PM
So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas?

Yep, they had a large plant in Forrest City, AR on what is now known as Sanyo Rd.

Findm-Keepm
01-26-2010, 06:28 PM
Doug, thanks to Bryan G, I have the service manual for that Sears - 'tis on microfiche though. If you need it, it's yours.

BTW, the Sears training literature for Warwick sets never calls them "Warwick," but "Source 528" sets.

Zenith26kc20 is right on about the Sears Warwick Ultra I and Ultra II sets as drawn out by Sams - error city in the Vertical and color circuits. The Vertical output transistor polarity gaffe was also made in a Sams for an early Solid State Teledyne/Packard Bell set.

Cheers,

old_tv_nut
01-26-2010, 09:19 PM
Warwick definitely had a plant in the Chicago area for final assembly. Don't know what they did in Arkansas, but it may have been their cabinet plant - several manufacturers built cabinets in the South. I knew a then-young engineer who came to Zenith when the Chicago Warwick plant closed.

Regarding that Chromix patent, it looks like one of many alternate ways to essentially decrease the Q-axis (green/magenta) gain of the color vectors, so flesh tones were forced toward normal hue. All these circuits tend to result in the "tan cowboy on the brown horse riding into the orange sunset." These circuits made greens weak and have a tendency to turn either bluish or brownish. They also weakened magenta and pulled purple colors towards blue or cyan. RCA was the only set with a really different automatic tint. It pulled only the hues near flesh, and left alone pure greens and all colors sufficiently different from flesh tone. The circuit was invented at Motorola, but Motorola never used it. I don't know if RCA actually paid for it - I rather imagine that they got use of it in a mutual patent licensing trade.

truetone36
01-26-2010, 11:32 PM
Warwick was associated with the Thomas Organ Co. at some point as well.

Jeffhs
01-27-2010, 12:38 AM
In 1970 I had a 21" Sears Silvertone roundie color set, made in 1964. The chassis was an RCA CTC-12 clone, but I think the set was actually manufactured by Warwick Electronics.

DANGELOSOLD
01-21-2014, 08:31 AM
Anyone neededing information feel free to CALL me. My father worked for the organization his entire life. I from and lived am in Chicago lived in Forrest City Arkansa and now about 15 minutes from The Thomas Organ Plant. He was the Directer OF Manufacturing and I spent alot of time in all the plants in Chicago, Arkansas and in Sepulveda. Still have a few friends that worked for my father. Randy Cell(818) 903-8133

DANGELOSOLD
01-21-2014, 08:38 AM
Warwick definitely had a plant in the Chicago area for final assembly. Don't know what they did in Arkansas, but it may have been their cabinet plant - several manufacturers built cabinets in the South. I knew a then-young engineer who came to Zenith when the Chicago Warwick plant closed.

Regarding that Chromix patent, it looks like one of many alternate ways to essentially decrease the Q-axis (green/magenta) gain of the color vectors, so flesh tones were forced toward normal hue. All these circuits tend to result in the "tan cowboy on the brown horse riding into the orange sunset." These circuits made greens weak and have a tendency to turn either bluish or brownish. They also weakened magenta and pulled purple colors towards blue or cyan. RCA was the only set with a really different automatic tint. It pulled only the hues near flesh, and left alone pure greens and all colors sufficiently different from flesh tone. The circuit was invented at Motorola, but Motorola never used it. I don't know if RCA actually paid for it - I rather imagine that they got use of it in a mutual patent licensing trade.

If you would like any info regarding Thomas Organ/ Warwick/Whirlpool CALL ME. My father worked for them as a Director of Manufactuing his entire life. I am from Chicago(WARWICK) Lived in Forrest City Arkansas (Warwick) Current about 15 minutes from Thomas Organ. It's a swap meet now. Spent alot of time in all the plants and still have friends that worked for my dad. Randy (818) 903-8133

sampson159
01-21-2014, 06:24 PM
warwick also invented the wah wah pedal and several other music devices.this division was based in rhode island

egrand
01-21-2014, 06:38 PM
DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.

DERI
01-22-2014, 08:06 AM
Warwick Electronics, Zion, Illinois

dieseljeep
01-22-2014, 10:20 AM
DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.
According to the Riders coverage, it appears that Warwick started in the mid to later '30's.
They built a lot of private label products, before they built exclusively for Sears.
I worked on two Warwick solid state sets, one K-mart and one Coronado. The one that had the small SCR power supply, in the rear left-hand corner.
They were identical to the Sears set.

DavGoodlin
01-23-2014, 10:01 AM
In 1970 I had a 21" Sears Silvertone roundie color set, made in 1964. The chassis was an RCA CTC-12 clone, but I think the set was actually manufactured by Warwick Electronics.

I had a Silvertone 21" color that was a CTC11 clone, with a 528 number as well.
The fly was bad:sigh:, so I kept the 21FBP22 and installed it in an RCA I had.
I saw one in just like it in another thread. The cabinet was very nice.

Memnoch4GB
05-05-2014, 11:50 AM
DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.


Warwick wasn't actually in Chicago. It was in a town north of there, about 10 miles south of the Wisconsin state line, called Zion. My dad worked there as a supervisor from sometime in the 50's to the early 60's. The old plant is still there, being used for some local purposes. It was interesting to go there and look in the windows. It's much smaller than you'd expect for a factory of any kind. The jobs there went south when Warwick was acquired by Sanyo, to Forest City, AR. I don't know if there's still any production there, or if those are just more jobs sent out of this country.

TechGuy
02-12-2015, 08:57 AM
My father was the Chief Mechanical Engineer for Warwick from 1965 through 1970. The location he worked at was in Sepulveda, California. Sepulveda is actually in the city of Los Angeles situated in the San Fernando Valley near the Van Nuys airport. There was no TV manufacturing in the Sepulveda facility that I remember, just engineering and administrative offices. Although I do believe that they manufactured Thomas Organs and Vox amplifiers there. I presumed that this was the headquarters as the CEO also worked at this office. I had my first job at 16 working in the engineering department designing and making printed circuit boards in the prototype group.

At that time Warwick also owned Thomas Organ and Vox Guitars and amplifiers. The Beatles used Vox and we got to see the Beatles at Dodgers stadium compliments of Vox and Wawick. Lawrence Welk used Thomas Organs on his TV show and showcased them.

Those days Sears was the 800 pound gorilla and their typical M.O. was to get smaller companies, like Warwick, to make products for them under the Sears brand name. Once Sears knew that a company couldn't survive without the sears business things changed dramatically. As my dad told the story they would send engineers to California to find ways to reduce the cost of the product. Eventually the margins became very thin and the quality of the product suffered. The company had no option but to comply or fear losing the Sears account and going out of business.

Eventually, after having Sears folks interfering with his engineering department too many times my father found employment elsewhere. I didn't follow Warwick after that but presumed that Sears stopped buying from them and they went out of business.

dieseljeep
02-12-2015, 12:25 PM
My father was the Chief Mechanical Engineer for Warwick from 1965 through 1970. The location he worked at was in Sepulveda, California. Sepulveda is actually in the city of Los Angeles situated in the San Fernando Valley near the Van Nuys airport. There was no TV manufacturing in the Sepulveda facility that I remember, just engineering and administrative offices. Although I do believe that they manufactured Thomas Organs and Vox amplifiers there. I presumed that this was the headquarters as the CEO also worked at this office. I had my first job at 16 working in the engineering department designing and making printed circuit boards in the prototype group.

At that time Warwick also owned Thomas Organ and Vox Guitars and amplifiers. The Beatles used Vox and we got to see the Beatles at Dodgers stadium compliments of Vox and Wawick. Lawrence Welk used Thomas Organs on his TV show and showcased them.

Those days Sears was the 800 pound gorilla and their typical M.O. was to get smaller companies, like Warwick, to make products for them under the Sears brand name. Once Sears knew that a company couldn't survive without the sears business things changed dramatically. As my dad told the story they would send engineers to California to find ways to reduce the cost of the product. Eventually the margins became very thin and the quality of the product suffered. The company had no option but to comply or fear losing the Sears account and going out of business.

Eventually, after having Sears folks interfering with his engineering department too many times my father found employment elsewhere. I didn't follow Warwick after that but presumed that Sears stopped buying from them and they went out of business.
IIRC, the word got around, that the Sears buyers were bad news. They would lure in the smaller manufacturers, with a contract that seemed, too good to be true. Once that set up their lines and made the investment to produce the product, Sears would pull the rug out from under them and cut the per-unit price so bad, the firm couldn't make much of a profit.
That's why, the president of Sony Corp wouldn't private-label products.
If you get a chance, read the book, "Made In Japan", written by A. Morita, president of Sony Corp.
I might have the name wrong, been years since I read the book. :scratch2:

Steve D.
02-12-2015, 12:40 PM
Warwick plant. Zion, Ill.


-Steve D.

DaveWM
02-12-2015, 01:27 PM
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.445377,-87.816035,3a,90y,99.1h,83.17t/data=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sYH0Mfw2E9v20Cfv5eGoTCg!2e0

DavGoodlin
02-12-2015, 02:29 PM
Warwick-built Sears TVs from the 60s confused some of us novices who would rescue and fix anything for anyybody in the late 70s.

So used to and familiar with RCA, we assumed Sears sets were made by RCA, excepting the Japan built stuff.
But they seemed to be a different animal. I was almost always able to repair them and it seemed like the terminal issues were few, unlike so many GE and RCA's.

Thanks for all the information. It looks like Zion, was almost in Wisconsin.

1oldgoat
06-26-2015, 12:56 PM
This is kind of a spin off of what was being discussed in the estate sales 2010 thread.

The USA made sears silvertone TV's were made by Warwick Electronics (sears model numbers start 528.xxxxx). I've known of Warwick, but I never actually decided to look into who the company was until now. I have looked all over the internet trying to figure out who warwick electronics was, but all I can find are a couple pages about a 1967 lawsuit against sears over house fire caused by a silvertone TV.

There seems to be ZERO information on the internet about warwick and who they were as a company. They must have been gone for years. Does anyone have any information available? Were they based in Chicago?

I always put Silvertone and Airline in the same category, they were both well made TV's that showed similar design characteristics, even though Airline was a Wells Gardner made TV (which there is plenty of info about as they are still in business in suburban Chicago).

So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?

I can answer your questions about Warwick having worked at the Zion Illinois TV plant as an repair man from 1960 until 1965. There were 2 plants in the Chicago area. The plant in Niles,Illinois made Silvertone radios and record changers. The plant in Zion made Silvertone TVs. We were told that Sears owned 90% of Warwick, I do not know who had the rest. Warwick employees were even given a 10% discount card good at Sears stores.They moved to Forest City, Ark. about 1967, mostly as a union busting ploy. Management could move to the new plant, but union members could not. I went through 2 strikes while I worked there.

Steve D.
06-26-2015, 01:16 PM
Also found this VK post on Warwick.

"Sears Roebuck bought 50% of Warwick in January 1958. Whirlpool wound up owning 57% or Warwick in 1966.

In December 1976 Whirlpool sold the Warwick TV business, along with its Sears contract, to Sanyo. At the time Warwick planned to continue production of electric organs. Sanyo improved the Forrest City, Arks. factory and added 1000 workers to the 300 or so still employed at the time of the Warwick sale.

In short, Sanyo's purchase of Warwick was about the only good story amongst slews of sell-offs and factory closings in the 70's & 80's."

-Steve D.

Findm-Keepm
06-26-2015, 01:49 PM
Also found this VK post on Warwick.

"Sears Roebuck bought 50% of Warwick in January 1958. Whirlpool wound up owning 57% or Warwick in 1966.

In December 1976 Whirlpool sold the Warwick TV business, along with its Sears contract, to Sanyo. At the time Warwick planned to continue production of electric organs. Sanyo improved the Forrest City, Arks. factory and added 1000 workers to the 300 or so still employed at the time of the Warwick sale.

In short, Sanyo's purchase of Warwick was about the only good story amongst slews of sell-offs and factory closings in the 70's & 80's."

-Steve D.

So Panasonic now owns the remnants of Warwick? (Panasonic owns all things Sanyo....)

1oldgoat
06-27-2015, 03:23 PM
I can answer your questions about Warwick having worked at the Zion Illinois TV plant as an repair man from 1960 until 1965. There were 2 plants in the Chicago area. The plant in Niles,Illinois made Silvertone radios and record changers. The plant in Zion made Silvertone TVs. We were told that Sears owned 90% of Warwick, I do not know who had the rest. Warwick employees were even given a 10% discount card good at Sears stores.They moved to Forest City, Ark. about 1967, mostly as a union busting ploy. Management could move to the new plant, but union members could not. I went through 2 strikes while I worked there.

truetone36
07-02-2015, 08:46 PM
The old Warwick plant (later Sanyo) in Forrest City, AR. is now closed and sitting abandoned. I was near it a couple weeks ago.

davet753
07-03-2015, 07:24 AM
Thomas electronic organs was a part of that company. Their organs suffered from some quality issues, but the main problem was their circuit designs. In order to reduce costs, they cut back on the number of independent oscillator circuits (tone generators) and used divider circuits and other tricks to save money. Thomas also focused their efforts mostly on the low-end of the business, which pigeon holed their reputation as a cheap product.

Thomas had an exclusive contract with Lawrence Welk, which provided advertising to the demographic the home organ was marketed to. That helped, but the writing was already on the wall for manufacturers of home organs once the 1970's progressed. If much larger companies such as Conn, Baldwin, Hammond, and Kimball were having a hard time operating in the reality of the new market, a smaller builder like Thomas was doomed.

Olorin67
07-03-2015, 11:55 AM
Ive always wondered about the record changers. Originally Sears got them from VM, then switched to Crescent, but Crescent doesnt seem to have been around after the late 50s. Once source said the 60 s changers were made by Alliance (the Tenna-rotor company) the late 50s to early 60s changers seem to be a continuation of the Crescent design, but may have been made by Warwick. About 1964 the changers changed a bit, with lever controls instead of knobs, more plastic parts in the mechanism, and the size sensor changed from a drop lever like BSR, to a rotating semaphore like Many Garrards of that period. Does anyone know if the later changers were still made by Warwick, or did they switch to Alliance or someone else later on?
Then there are the weird late 50s silvetone 'manumatic" changers that only changed 7" records. Anyone know who actually made those?

earlyfilm
07-11-2015, 06:56 PM
So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas?
For a short time in the 1960's, there also was a Warwick Plant east of US-51 in West Tennessee, between Covington and Dyersburg. That would be Old US-51, which is now called 209 & 210. I remember passing it on my trips north from Memphis. I think it was a little north of Halls, but I cannot remember.

There was a small white wooden sign with a red border and red letters saying "Warwick Plant" that pointed East to a well graded two-lane gravel road, in low rent farming country. At the time, someone said that they made cabinets.

James

JDenenberg
11-13-2019, 03:34 PM
I also worked at Warwick as an intern while studying Electrical Engineering at their Product Engineering site in Niles Illinois:

As an undergraduate at Northwestern University I worked there for two 3-month periods (mid 1960's) on their tvs evaluating production issues (Horizontal hold stability problems on their B&W models) and some issues in the 25 KV supply in their Color TVs.

While working towards my MS in EE I spent two summers (1969 and 1970) at Warwick in their small research department where I developed and patented the PLL FM stereo demodulator integrated circuit that has been used in every FM stereo radio made since 1971.

Warwick was an independent deveoper and manufacturer of TVs and radios that allowed themselves to be dominated by a single large customer, Sears. When sears had Warwick over committed supplying their Silvertone TVs, they cut them off and as Warwick neared going out of business, Sears took them over and after a period of having them supply TVs at a loss, sold the company to Whirlpool (the supplier of Kenmore appliances to Sears). As happened to all of the US TV manufacturers, Warwick had trouble with the change in technology, from vacuum tubes to transistors to ICs and as mentioned by others was then taken over by Sanyo.

Tim Tress
01-01-2020, 02:52 PM
I worked as a Sears bench tech between 1976 and 1979. Warwick did have some squirrelly engineering, probably in an attempt to keep the Sears management happy. The worst TV sets that they made were the series-heater color sets of the 1960s and early 1970s; their tube color sets with a power transformer were a near copy of the RCA CTC16, modified for a rectangular CRT. They weren't too bad. By the 1970s, they were making the solid state Medalist and Ultra chassis. The Ultra was troublesome; it had a lot of flyback transformer failures. Sears bled them dry, and dumped them.

dieseljeep
01-01-2020, 05:43 PM
I worked as a Sears bench tech between 1976 and 1979. Warwick did have some squirrelly engineering, probably in an attempt to keep the Sears management happy. The worst TV sets that they made were the series-heater color sets of the 1960s and early 1970s; their tube color sets with a power transformer were a near copy of the RCA CTC16, modified for a rectangular CRT. They weren't too bad. By the 1970s, they were making the solid state Medalist and Ultra chassis. The Ultra was troublesome; it had a lot of flyback transformer failures. Sears bled them dry, and dumped them.

A tech was telling that the set was built by Wells Gardner.
W-G never built anything for Sears. The management discovered that Sears was too cut-throat and stayed away. Evidently the other retailers weren't that bad, because they stayed with them for years.

zenithfan1
04-22-2020, 11:03 AM
Believe they had a plant in Zion, Illinois too, my dad worked there many years ago. Told me about the picture tubes going down the line and how they put sets together, that had to had been mid 60s. I sure wish he were still here to ask about it.

Drod
05-20-2022, 04:22 PM
My dad was a plant manager for Warwick for over 20 years. They main plant was in the Niles, Illinois area and had 20 some assembly lines. They designed and manufactured most of the Silvertone electronics sold by Sears, from transistor radios to huge entertainment centers. Back then you had one plant for wood cabinetry and one for electronics and final assembly. They had separate plants in Mexico City for that closed market. In the early 60s dad came home with a bunch of books on Japanese. I asked him why. He said that's probably the future. The American electronics industry was hemorrhaging badly from cheaper, better products. Warwick's first move was to build a plant where there was cheaper labor down on the Indiana, Kentucky border. But they quickly moved everything, ironically, to Tijuana Mexico for even cheaper labor. RCA and the others did the same - and quickly as the only profitable plants were those in Mexico exporting back into the US. Dad, headed the move. He went down their and immediately bought up all their largest buildings - the bowling alleys - and gutted them. I think he gave every woman down there a job - smaller hands was a big plus. My favorite memory was seeing the Vox Super Beatle amplifiers.