The lost years?

[Steve D.]

Most of us are familiar with the various color sets produced from 1954 to 1957. There were several major and some smaller manufactuers. RCA Victor producing, advertising and selling the lions share. But as sales lagged and companies dropped their color lines who other then RCA remained in those "lost years" of '58-'59 & even 1960? I think GE had some color models. Does anyone own one of these model year sets or have any ads for these color sets other then RCA?

[Rob]

I've got an early GE, VHF only but it is a 1962. Has original 21FBP22 CRT. Works.

[Rob]

Hoffman and Westinghouse (had a 22" rectangular in '57) made color sets in the era of which you speak and the Philco color set was in there too I believe.

[Steve D.]

Thanks Rob,
That '62 GE is a fantastic set. And my holy grail would be that '57 22" Westinghouse. But by 1961 I think some companies were tip toeing back into color. '58-'59-'60 non RCA sets seemed to be generally absent.

Emerson supplied color sets in 1960 with the DuMont name, but they used an RCA chassis.

[Steve D.]

Thanks Bill,
A lot of TV's historical names wrapped up in that set. I guess most manufacturers were playing it safe and thrifty using the RCA chassis in those years.

Steve,

Prior to Emerson's purchase of DuMont's TV receiver division in 1958, DuMont Labs also marketed color receivers under their name using an RCA chassis. Picture below is from Steve McVoy's web site.

Philco tried to manufacture their own chassis in the '50s but had problems with it and stopped production after only a few sets were made. Then they switched to an RCA chassis.

If memory serves, 1961 is the year Zenith manufactured their first color sets, followed by Motorola's re-entry in '63 after a 7 year absence. Both Motorola & Zenith always designed and built their own chassis.

[Charlie]

Today, I was looking for a schematic on an AM radio, and stumbled across a Sams for this television. It's a Truetone color set from the late 50's (sams 382-3 Dec. 1957). I do not recall seeing one like this on any of the various TV sites. I thought it was kinda interesting because of the brand. It isn't one of the typical major brands of color television that we are used to seeing.

This set uses a 27 tube verticle "donut" chassis surrounding the neck of the 21AXP22. It uses selenium rectifiers for B+. Audio goes out two 6 x 9 speakers. It does not appear that an optional UHF tuner could be installed.

One thing in the schematic I found to be odd... the power transformer suppies all of the tubes their heaters except for one... the 6AN8 AGC tube has it's own 6.3 volt transformer. I couldn't find any other tubes other than that one using that transformer. I might have missed something, but that's the way it looks.

[Steve D.]

Charlie,
Thanks for the posting.
Interesting set. Kind of looks like the '57 Admiral color sets with the knobs in the upper front corners. I may be wrong here but were Truetone tv's sold through the Firestone tire stores?

[Charlie]

I believe Truetone was sold by Western Auto Hardware.

[Steve D.]

Good call on Western Auto. Do I get points for thinking auto supply store? Now if you can come up with who provided that doughnut shaped chassis. Certainly not RCA.

[Jeffhs]

Crosley used the wraparound vertical style chassis in some of its TVs in the '50s. When I was growing up we had a Crosley Super V 21" blonde b&w console with that type of chassis, selenium LV rectifiers (no transformers--series filaments), but only one speaker below the CRT. Eight inches round, IIRC.

It's interesting that the Truetone color set mentioned here has a transformer powering only one tube, with the rest powered from the main transformer and getting B+ from the selenium LV supply. Very unusual design, but I guess there were a lot of TVs set up with unconventional power supplies in the '50s.

Truetone was indeed marketed through Western Auto, as several of you have said here. My aunt and uncle had a 21" Truetone blonde b&w console in the '50s through the late '60s, IIRC, which had the Western Auto logo directly above the CRT. (The set was Truetone's "Imperial" model with the picture controls surrounding the volume control, which along with the channel selector was mounted at the top of the set; the channel selector was at the top right of the CRT, with the volume and picture controls at the top left corner.) In fact, they had several appliances which were marketed under WA's "Wizard" brand as well.

[Chad Hauris]

The tube that has its own filament supply probably has a DC bias voltage (like around +150 volts) applied to it. This is done when the cathode is at a high DC voltage, so that the cathode-to-filament voltage difference doesn't exceed the tube specs. A seperate filament supply is needed as the regular supply usually has one side grounded and putting high DC voltage on it would cause a short.

Look at the photofact and see what the cathode voltages are on that tube; you will probably find that they are high. Also you can probably find the bias voltage connection for that particular fil. winding.

[bgadow]

For the record, I have a DuMont bw console from around that time with the "donut" chassis. Other thoughts: some Truetones were made by Wells Gardner through the years. I would bet there were other brands with this same set.