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  #16  
Old 09-06-2011, 01:35 AM
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Wasn't Magnavox making an all solid state B&W set in the early 60's?

I think the last car radios with tubes were around 1964. Particulars escape me at the moment.
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  #17  
Old 09-06-2011, 10:52 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by AUdubon5425 View Post
I think the last car radios with tubes were around 1964. Particulars escape me at the moment.
We owned both Ford and GM 1964 model vehicles, and they had both switched to solid state AM car radios by then. My brother had a '62 Chevy Corvair, and I worked on the radio once and seem to recall it had four vacuum tubes, but an audio output transistor.
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  #18  
Old 09-06-2011, 11:13 AM
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I've seen a few of those types of radios. They used low B+ tubes and transistors in the audio driver and output stages. I think they first appeared in the late '50's.
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  #19  
Old 09-06-2011, 04:37 PM
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This is maybe a little outside of this discussion, OTOH, maybe not. In 1984, during the Reagan era military build-up, an order was cut for several Naval vessels to be equipped as the last contracts specified. The design dated from the Sixties, & these boats had R-390As as std equipment. So, a company was set up- Fowler Industries, & they turned out brand-new 1960s spec-R-390As in 1985. I think 10 were built, at a reported cost of (Gulp !) $30K apiece. They could have easily gotten R-390As on the hobbyist/surplus market, for maybe 1% of the price of that, but the contract specified "New", & that was that. Naturally, when the inevitable draw-down came, all those radios were surplused out, & I think several of them have found their way into eager new owners' hands...Serial #1 was in the infamous St Julien's Creek surplus "Pile" of R-390As that sat outside for over a year before they got sold off, basically as scrap....
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  #20  
Old 09-06-2011, 07:41 PM
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For 1974, the RCA CTC39 was sold. We suspected RCA was using up old stock parts and it makes sense though. They would get rid of a lot of tubes that way.
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  #21  
Old 09-08-2011, 09:46 PM
peverett peverett is offline
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The poster that indicated that GE made tube type Portacolor sets until 1977 is correct. I have a couple.
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  #22  
Old 09-08-2011, 09:51 PM
peverett peverett is offline
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I also have both GE and Sylvania solid state B&W TVs from around 1965. The GE uses high voltage diodes(3 in series) for the HV rectifier, so is truly solid state. Not sure about the Sylvania.

I just replaced the horizontal output transistor on the Sylvania. I was afraid that the flyback had went, but once the shorted transistor was replaced, it seems to work fine.

I also have some small later 1960s Philco/Ford B&W sets that are solid state except for the HV rectifier.
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  #23  
Old 09-10-2011, 04:16 PM
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I just picked up an RCA portable from 1974, a series strung set. Amazingly it works well as I found it!

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  #24  
Old 09-10-2011, 05:50 PM
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TV or radio?
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  #25  
Old 09-10-2011, 06:40 PM
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Never even seen a tube radio as late as '74. The newest one I had was this little white plastic RCA AM clock radio from '68, actually I had two of them for a while.

Sort of off topic, but did Zenith ever make a table radio that was all transistor, but still used the old fashioned steel chassis... sort of the radio equivalent of the 25EC58 tv.
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  #26  
Old 09-10-2011, 06:55 PM
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Yes, Zenith made an all transistor AC-only table radio. I think the first one was from '66 ("N") line. I have a '67 ("X" line) AM/FM white plastic clock radio with an all metal chassis and plug-in transistors. In '68, PC boards were used. The first ones had a PC board attached to a metal chassis. By the early '70's, production had shifted to foreign countries and the insides looked no different than any other brand.

The early Zenith solid state console stereo's were on a metal chassis. The better ones retained the metal chassis through the mid '70's.
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  #27  
Old 09-22-2011, 08:37 AM
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i have owned several dated 79 and seen at least one 80
Quote:
Originally Posted by peverett View Post
The poster that indicated that GE made tube type Portacolor sets until 1977 is correct. I have a couple.
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  #28  
Old 09-22-2011, 05:59 PM
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Newest tube set I ever had was a 12" b/w GE with the SF chassis in a puke-green plastic cabinet from 1974.
I think that was avocado...

I like puke-green better.

I had a 12" B/W GE in 1971. It didnt work very long, and the handle that made it portable broke off while my cousin was borrowing it. Had a fairly good picture, and was the same puke-green and white.
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  #29  
Old 09-23-2011, 11:33 AM
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Technically, tube type 'radios' are still being produced---in the form of component stereo tuners...Magnum Dynalab makes hi-end (pricey!) tuners such as MD-109, MD-107 and others with triodes and dual triodes in the output circuitry.
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  #30  
Old 09-23-2011, 12:19 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by holmesuser01 View Post
I think that was avocado...

I like puke-green better.

I had a 12" B/W GE in 1971. It didnt work very long, and the handle that made it portable broke off while my cousin was borrowing it. Had a fairly good picture, and was the same puke-green and white.
I bought a "Kenco", house brand of the former '70s retailer Kennedy and Cohen (rebadged Broadmoor) 12" b&w tube-powered TV new in 1975. The set lasted all of three years, then something burned up (never did find out what was smoking on the chassis; could have been the yoke or 1001 other things) and I trashed it. The longest-lived b&w portable I've ever owned, however, was a Zenith J121Y 12" solid-state set. I bought it new in 1978; it was still working as well as ever 22 years later (except for the UHF detent mechanism breaking, jamming the tuner on one channel--as bad luck would have it, a blank channel in my area). I had just moved into my small apartment and had no room for three TVs (I brought 1 color set with me from my former residence and bought a then-new RCA 19"), so I put the little Zenith portable out back behind the building. A day or so later, I looked back there and the set was gone, probably picked up by someone else. If that's the case, I hope the person got some good use out of it. The CRT in that set was as strong as ever when I put it out, so it would have been a darn shame if in fact it had gone straight to a landfill. For all I know, my little portable may still be working as well as always for its new owner to this day; after all, it was a Zenith, made in the late seventies before the company left Chicago. This was one of the first SS TVs I ever saw with almost everything on one PC board, although my Broadmoor tube portable was built like that as well. I don't like those one-board tube designs because the boards get brittle over time, especially around high-power tubes such as horizontal outputs that get extremely hot in normal operation. I have told the story here many times of my 1964 RCA CTC-12 clone Silvertone color roundie, in which the video output tube socket broke out of the socket; that is what soured me on PC boards. To this day I don't trust them; thank goodness today's TVs are designed not to run as hot as the earlier tube sets did.

I have yet to hear of any kind of circuit board problem in modern flat-panel TVs being caused by overheated transistors, ICs or other components, although I have read here in VK accounts of sets that have suffered major damage from being dropped; flat panels are especially vulnerable to such damage, which is almost always irreparable when the screen shatters. I see sets on eBay daily that are being sold as parts sets because of broken or cracked screens. I like the improved picture quality afforded by digital TV and FPs; however, given how fragile the latter are, I sometimes wish CRT sets were still being made. Those old sets were practically indestructible, unless they were dropped or thrown down a flight of stairs. My former stepmother (now deceased), in a fit of anger, threw a Silvertone b&w portable down the stairs of her house; the CRT did not implode. The set, miraculously, still worked quite well for six months after that. As well, my RCA CTC185 survived a fall off its stand a couple years ago; the only damage was a slight bend in the CRT shadow mask, which I was able to remedy with just a couple of sweeps across the screen with an old speaker magnet. Again, however, with today's FPs, one fall off the stand and the set is usually instant junk, the moment the set hits the floor.
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