View Full Version : sad conversion..
freakaftr8 11-02-2010, 04:59 PM Here's a nice blonde General Electric TV cabinet modified to hold some POS Sony. :no:
My mind spins in cirles boggeled as to why simeone would do this to an antique. :scratch2:
No affiliation..
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/eby/fuo/2035797306.html
David Roper 11-02-2010, 05:06 PM Modded? Butchered they mean!
wa2ise 11-02-2010, 05:40 PM That is exceptionally crappy. They didn't even cut straight. :thumbsdn: :nono: :sigh: :screwy: :saywhat: :dammit: :yuck: :cry: :puke:
M3-SRT8 11-02-2010, 07:20 PM Pa-thetic...
Eric H 11-02-2010, 08:50 PM Doesn't even qualify for the word conversion, Hack is more like it!
ctc17 11-02-2010, 10:54 PM SAD! I would be embarrassed to show that work to the public.
RitchieMars 11-03-2010, 03:36 AM This is the kind of dumb crap I dread to see. If someone was going to attempt something like this in the first place, they could at least find a presentable way to do it. You cut the cabinet out to expose the very modern controls of the crap television you've tucked in there, and you've pretty much destroyed the retro "look" you were going for in the first place.
If I could get any point across to people in regards to vintage televisions, it's this: No matter how many old televisions are around, and no matter how inexpensive they might be to acquire, the point is that they don't make them anymore. Irreversibly installing a modern set into a vintage cabinet creates a novelty at the expense of destroying an antique. It's not wise in terms of investment in the first place, and it's pretty much like giving the finger to those who spend so much time restoring and preserving these sets. Scrapping the chassis of a vintage set in order to do something this absurd, is more or less throwing away the actual antique and destroys any chance there might have been for someone to give it the appreciation it deserves. It's simply criminal in my mind.
dieseljeep 11-03-2010, 08:45 AM Somebody probably scraped that chassis 40 or 50 years ago. People would ask me to "gut" these old sets all the time. They remember paying a lot of money for that set when they first bought it. They thought they could use it for another purpose, book shelf, record cabinet etc..
Jeffhs 11-03-2010, 10:39 AM I would be embarrassed to show that work to the public.
So would I, not that I would even think of doing such a thing. There is a right way and a wrong way to do these things, of course, and this is definitely the wrong way. One would think that if they were going to do something like this (!), they would have at least put a matching frame around the opening in the front of the cabinet to make it look halfway decent, as was noted by RitchieMars.
It looks to me as if this was a slap-dash hack job. I wouldn't dream of having this thing in my apartment, even though it looks half decent with the doors over the CRT closed. The view of the TV itself, however, with the doors open, is terrible; as wa2ise noted, the opening wasn't even cut out properly, and the TV itself is one of those black plastic cubes that ordinarily don't last longer than the warranty period or two years, whichever comes first. :no:
People outside our hobby do not realize the value of these vintage and antique TVs, which is why so many of them wind up being gutted and the cabinets used for other purposes -- or the entire set winds up on a curb, to face a certain death in a landfill, even though the set may still have some life in it or may need only minor repairs. One of the best examples I ever saw in my life of a TV being kept in active use even after its owners got tired of it or upgraded was a 1951 RCA Victor 12" round-screen b&w set (chassis KCS-47, IIRC, in a mahogany console cabinet with doors) originally owned by members of my church. The family donated the set to the church when they replaced it with a new set. The TV was put into service in one of the youth rooms until the church was remodeled in the '80s.
I don't know what happened to the TV after that, but it's good to know the church got some use out of it long after it had been removed from active service. I'd much rather see a vintage TV used this way than to see it unceremoniously put out on a curb just because it was replaced by a color set or, nowadays, a flat panel, or the set gutted. Too many of these vintage sets are still usable, some requiring only minor repairs, and as RitchieMars said, they don't make them like that anymore (what I always say about vintage Zenith radio and TV sets, although this can apply to any really good make of entertainment equipment as well).
jr_tech 11-03-2010, 04:19 PM Well, "workmanship" is not a term that would come to mind when seeing this botch job, but I suspect that dieseljeep is likely correct in that the original chassis was long gone by the time the "conversion" was performed. I also suspect that the conversion itself occured many years ago... the Sony looks to be approx mid 90s vintage... why would anybody today hack up a console TV to install a 15-20 year old Trinitron?
Now a question... As collectors, if a common empty early to mid 50s console was offered to you, what would you do:
1. Turn it down ?... landfill for sure.
2. Take it and hope to find a chassis somewhere ?... difficult "inside straight"
3. Take it and try to find a collector that can use it?
4. Take it and use it for firewood?
5. Take it and use it for something ? Flat panel, Fishtank, A/V equipment rack... ?
6. Other options?
If 1 or 2, how long would you hold onto it before giving up?
jr
RitchieMars 11-03-2010, 05:07 PM Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's necessarily a bad idea to do something creative with an empty cabinet. I see old television cabinets all the time that were converted to be used as some piece of furniture, and in many cases quite tastefully so. If the original chassis was already gone and the only way to make it into a usable television was to fit a modern set inside, that wouldn't be so bad if it were done right. But that's assuming that the original chassis was long gone. But what if it wasn't?
Exhibit A:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sroi90-43j8/SM1uO3t4YFI/AAAAAAAAAYE/I0ZnMMI_Vc0/s1600/old_tv_01.jpg
Exhibit B:
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_sroi90-43j8/SM1qXdtyOYI/AAAAAAAAAVk/vNzZMAwt6Vs/s400/old_tv_19.jpg
Fish-Tanked... and not because they had an empty cabinet to play around with. It was a working set that someone willingly converted into a fish-tank because it was seen as a creative way to "recycle." In this case, the idea seems to be that you're saving the environment somehow by recycling these old, useless B&W televisions. There's nothing on television worth watching and even when there is, no one wants to watch it in B&W.
That's the type of mindset that I personally try to steer folks away from. I don't mean it to crap on anyone's creative initiative, but it's not like it's destroying something they care about. I know they can't all be saved but I'd like to think that by the time I'm in my 40's, I can still find a few old sets around that don't have fish swimming in them.
jr_tech 11-03-2010, 05:43 PM Ouch! That was a nice working set.... Solid Maple ? :tears:
jr
RitchieMars 11-03-2010, 05:51 PM Probably. It appeared to be an otherwise pristine late-50's RCA Deluxe.
http://deus-ex-machine.blogspot.com/2008/09/convert-your-old-tv-into-fish-tank.html
bandersen 11-03-2010, 06:07 PM How good of a fishtank do they really make anyway ? Seems very awkward to maintain and all that humidity is probably tough on the wood.
jeyurkon 11-03-2010, 08:57 PM Well, "workmanship" is not a term that would come to mind when seeing this botch job, but I suspect that dieseljeep is likely correct in that the original chassis was long gone by the time the "conversion" was performed. I also suspect that the conversion itself occured many years ago... the Sony looks to be approx mid 90s vintage... why would anybody today hack up a console TV to install a 15-20 year old Trinitron?
Now a question... As collectors, if a common empty early to mid 50s console was offered to you, what would you do:
1. Turn it down ?... landfill for sure.
2. Take it and hope to find a chassis somewhere ?... difficult "inside straight"
3. Take it and try to find a collector that can use it?
4. Take it and use it for firewood?
5. Take it and use it for something ? Flat panel, Fishtank, A/V equipment rack... ?
6. Other options?
If 1 or 2, how long would you hold onto it before giving up?
jr
Well, I've already told the story of my Sylvania. It comes closest to 2. The cabinet never left our family though, and I swapped the chassis out of another version of the combination console to restore it. But now I'm left with the other cabinet to do something with.
I still worry about what's happening to the one I missed in Columbus, OH. I hope it's in good hands. If it get repurposed I'd like to get my hands on the chassis, etc. It would let me make use of the empty cabinet I have. Did I mention I was considering turning it into a cedar linen cabinet like my dad had done with the one that I turned back into a TV console?
The Columbus one is not likely to end up as an aquarium, but possibly a cabinet for storage or liquor.
My inclination is to save everything and make it work forever. That just not reasonable though. I do hate to see rare examples of the past disappear though.
The sad conversion is in a class of its own. A class that should never have existed.
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