I've been meaning to ask this question for awhile. Need a Zenith expert. Did Zenith ever use RCA CRT's in their sets? At least as replacements? I have a 1967 20X1C38 with a 22" CRT. CRT has a date of 1971. The reason I ask is that this one has an RCA colorama but had the Zenith green cataracts. I know "colorama" means rebuilt, but the green gooey cataracts? I know you can install a RCA CRT into a Zeninth and vice versa but this one is odd. The cataracts have been removed by me(very nasty). I'll take RCA cataracts all day long. :D

What's the EIA number on the RCA tube with the green halo? It's quite possible that it was made by Rauland/Zenith and rebadged for RCA.

Over the years, I've seen two early RCA XL100 consoles with the upright solid state chassis that had green halo around the CRT. To my knowledge, the CRT's were original to the set.

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That Colorama 22JP22 is a obvious replacement in your set. 22J's were not that great of a tube as I replaced many of them. They looked great when healthy but did not have the life of a 25X. CRT cataracts are NOT peculiar to only Zenith tubes but to all bonded face CRT's where the mixtures of the Corning, DOW or GE resin was mixed inappropriately. The resin also absorbs water or humidity which helps this process along such as stored in a damp basement or garage. The mixtures of resin were not a big deal in the day as it didn't seem to make a difference and looked good but only time proved this one out. At time of installing the bonded face, you mixed a curing agent to make it set up as it DOES NOT come premixed for obvious reasons and many people either put too much or too little curing compound in the mixture. However, mostly age, humidity and sunlight are responsible for the "cataract".

When replacing tubes, you went for price and Zenith CRT's from Graybar (or other distributor) were more expensive than RCA or others.

However, Yes, Zenith did use RCA tubes on many occasions. We were a Zenith dealer and repair shop and saw several RCA tubes with a Zenith label pasted right over top the RCA label. They didn't bother to take the RCA label off. Boy this sure made Dan Geddings mad as he was a Zenith die hard! One time he opened a 12BH7 tube from a Zenith box and the tube was branded "Admiral" with red label. Dan took it back to Graybar for replacement and he was really mad because he hated other brands esp Admiral. It was and still is common practice for all manufacturers to trade around as it is very expensive to set up tooling for a specific tube or light bulb. I wonder how many of those tubes got "misboxed"? As often stated, "A rose by any other name still smells just as sweet"!! In being curious, I wonder if anyone up the line boxed the "Admiral" labeled tubes thinking "what difference does it make"? It's the same tube! And rebranding it would be more costly, unpractical if not impossible at that plant.

At one time the manufacturer who could make or source CRT's would stay for market share of sets sold and sales would sometimes exceed production limits. This is probably what hurt Curtis Mathis as they were 100% dependent on outsourcing. Their later years used Samsung for 13" color & B&W, Sharp for 19" and Magnavox for big screens.

In updating this post, I have seen about 4 Zenith TV's with original CRT's that were rebranded "Zenith" over on top of the RCA label. Yes, we scratched our heads at that time on that one. Likely it was a lazy employee on a Friday afternoon. One person I could've asked is Jack Van Hutton who was a field engineer at Zenith but he passed away years ago but I will see what I can do to find someone else who might know about this.

I was expecting an RCA CRT to have "RCA type" cataracts not the green gooey stuff that the Zenith CRT's had. But it just goes to show that it could have any type of bonding agent. Yes it is a replacement. 26th week of 1971. The set was 4 years old. At least the CRT has great emissions and life. Cant find the EIA number on the label.

There was a lot of swapping going on among the manufacturers. Before Zenith had its color crt plant running they used rebranded RCA tubes. I have seen a Zenith rebuilt round tube that with a Sylvania EIA #. Going along with what Julian mentioned with that Admiral tube in a Zenith box, I've been sorting through thousands of tubes over the last couple years and often have come across a tube which looked to all the world like a NOS tube but was the wrong brand. Was it really a pull in that box, or just labeled wrong? Most were RCA boxes with "red ink" tubes for various brands: Zenith, GE, Magnavox, Admiral.

Anyway, I think it is a 100% safe bet that Zenith wouldn't let a set leave the factory with an RCA label showing on the crt.

I'm sure the original CRT that came with the set was a Zenith or an RCA with a Zenith label. When the original CRT went tits up, the RCA was just an available replacement or was less expensive.

Mstaton, I have the same chassis, faceplate and screen size set in a console cabinet, mine had an RCA branded 22JP22 in it too, but it had an obvious RCA cateract on it.

You may or may not have read of the botched cateracting I did on that tube that resulted in the bulb being comperomised beyond hope for rebuilding.

It is possible that the origonal Zenith tubes were a defective run, and that they instructed service men to switch to RCA while they tried to find what went wrong.