I found this set out at the curb a couple weeks ago, and I just had to save it. It lived in a friend's garage in the meantime while I made some space here - now it's in my already cluttered garage... It's in great condition, finish and cabinet look great, only some minor scratches on the top. As found, it had no back, although it does not appear to have been serviced too much. It looks like the Horiz. Output tube was replaced shortly before the set was retired, as it's still clean and the writing on it is still a bright white - not coated in dust and crud.

The chassis is a CTC28A, at first glance I thought it was another CTC38, but it's got some small differences. This set bears the "New Vista Color" logo, as well as the RCA Victor logo.

I got it home last night, and this morning was able to do a quick check of the power supply and fire it up. Lo and behold, it worked! Picture and everything. Took some adjusting to get the vertical locked, but other than that it seems to work well. The color isn't great, at first before I adjusted the Color and Tint controls it looked black and white. The color is still weak, with the controls cranked all the way up, but at least it's there. The tube produces a nice bright picture, with good contrast, and it looks like all the guns should be strong, since I can get a pretty good white. Probably a weak tube or cap in the color processing circuits, I need to hook up a VCR with a color bar tape and do some more testing.

But, the important thing is that it works! I was able to get a couple local stations with a pair of rabbit ears that were laying around in the garage. Haven't tested the UHF tuner yet. The tube seems to have some sort of mold or other crud growing around the very edges, in about a half an inch. It's going to need the normal cleaning of controls and replacing of some caps, and quite possibly that blasted RCA thermistor, but all in all, it's a nice set. Hopefully I'll have more time to work on it, but it seems that all I've been doing lately is shuffleing the junk around to make it take up less space...

Oh well - here's some rather lousy pictures I took this morning. Sorry for the odd angle, but there's enough stuff in the way that I can't get back too far... The flash from the camera washed out the picture on the screen, so I tried taking one without the flash. The picture came out much better, although you can't really see the television set in that one. The color also looks more vivid in that photo than in real life. When watching the set, scenes like this, with the weather and the bright background, look pretty good, with good color, but outdoor scenes, and scenes with more drab backgrounds look more like a badly colorized black and white film, with washed out or drab color. I'll have to play with it a little more to figure it all out, but it should fix up well.

-Ian

The CTC-28 is very similar to the ctc-16 chassis...this was the "deluxe" series and seems to have better performance than the cheaper ctc-31 and 38 chassis.

Usually the higher end sets such as this one and the all transistor ctc-40 have the channel indicator window offset slightly into the crt mask, while the cheaper models do not.

Looks like it has an RCA colorama replacement CRT...some people have had success using a heat gun to remove the bonding material that has gotten moldy and remove and reattach the safety glass.

get some new 6gh8's and have at it.
looks like the tube is good.