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Very nice-looking set, Nick. Is that a hinged panel giving access to the underside of the chassis on the side? I have seen a similar feature on a Hoffman Colorcaster 4021A from 1955. That appears to be an original design as opposed to a CTC-4 or 21-CT-55 duplicate.
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Chris Quote from another forum: "(Antique TV collecting) always seemed to me to be a fringe hobby that only weirdos did." |
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I was surprised to see they used that el-cheapo Sarkes-Tarzian tuner. The same PITA tuner that Warwick used in the Silvertones in the mid-50's. |
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I am surprised as well to find out Gilfillan made TVs. I see Gilfillan radios every now and then on eBay or CL, but this is the first of their televisions (color, yet!) I have ever seen. Since this set is a prototype, however, I'm not surprised. It may have been manufactured in very limited numbers, so this one is probably one of a very few such sets in existence in the United States. It may have been made very shortly after RCA's NTSC color television system was commissioned here, so I would not expect to have found very many of these TVs anywhere.
How could this Gilfillan TV be an original design, when RCA had a corner on color TV production in this country? It would have had to use inventions of RCA, as no one else was making color TVs at the time (early 1950s). The chassis would almost have to be an early RCA one, such as CTC2 or CTC4. The CRT should be easy to find, if the original is dead (no emission? Open filaments?). I cannot imagine the 21AXP22 being so rare, even today, however, as to be unobtainable. Worse comes to worst, you could always get one from a junker set, not necessarily RCA; I'm sure other TV manufacturers used round CRTs in their early sets as well until the mid-1960s, when rectangular tubes became popular. BTW: I had no idea, until I read dieseljeep's post, that Sarkes-Tarzian television tuners were cheap ones. I was under the impression for years that S-T was one of the better makes of tuners. What made them "cheap"? Flimsy designs with cheap plastic parts, underrated components that failed after only a very short time, or . . . ? I can see such tuners being used in cheap 1970s-'90s pre-DTV portables, but good grief, not in high-end sets. After all, I am sure Zenith and other well-known TV manufacturers would not have been caught dead using cheap tuners (or other cheap parts) in their TVs in the '50s.
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Jeff, WB8NHV Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002 Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten. Last edited by Jeffhs; 07-30-2015 at 12:26 PM. |
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Evolution... |
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First things first, I have to deal with this:
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Evolution... |
Audiokarma |
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[QUOTE=miniman82;3139645]It's got next to no emission, even at 8 volts. I just got 3 electron gun assemblies in the mail though and I'm heading to the ETF next week tube in hand...
Regarding my opinion of the tuners: the S/T tuners always seemed to be used in the lower end TV's of most of the big manufacturers. The tuners of that era of the Gilfillin color set, the tube sockets would crumble and the tube couldn't be reinserted. The later S/T tuners had the coil sticks, where the plastic retainer would crumble and the sticks would fall loose and the customer would try to turn the selector and break up the individual strips. Most of the time, the tuner was damaged beyond repair. The problem was generally related to the excessive use of tuner spray. |
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[QUOTE=dieseljeep;3139673]
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As to the S-T stick retainers breaking, it was early Delrin, coupled with the orientation of the tuner - tubes not completely vertical (GE) or a cover over the tuner area (Maggie consoles and entertainment units) that blocked the heat from escaping, baking/browning the Delrin plastic. GE owned up to it with a Service note in the 1970 TV service guide. They showed how to order the turret with newer (bluish) Delrin retainer and replacement instructions. Pull the tuner, dismount it from the cluster, remove sticks that ain't broken, pull F/tuning shafts and wishbone/gearing, slide off the UHF switch, pull the spring, slide out the turret, compare to the new, and reinstall, reversing the steps. At 16 years old, I thought I'd do one myself, got into trouble with the spring, and had to get bailed out by Dad. Oh, if I had only had the instructions...
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Brian USN RET (Avionics / Cal) CET- Consumer Repair and Avionics ('88) "Capacitor Cosmetologist since '79" When fuses go to work, they quit! |
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Nice to hear! I hope you are able to put your time off, and your knowledge from RACS, to good use.
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Chris Quote from another forum: "(Antique TV collecting) always seemed to me to be a fringe hobby that only weirdos did." |
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It's somewhat of an original design, I'll explain with a bit of a history lesson. After the CT-100 came out, an almost instantaneous size war erupted between the manufactures of color sets. The only exception was the brief segue into higher technology in the 15" realm with the 15HP22, which printed its phosphor dots directly onto the curved faceplate vice having a flat dot plate as the 15GP22 did. This innovation was quickly put to use by CBS to create the 19VP22 19" CRT, and we were off to the races. This would have been circa mid 1954 or so. Later that year 19" sets started showing up in the market place (it was CBS and later Motorola and Hoffman making the sets), and it became evident to RCA that something had to be done since 15" sets were now obsolete and no one was buying them. So they embarked on a development program leading to the issuance of a document called LB-962, which was their report on a developmental 21" set in September of 1954. A link to my scanned copy which was included in the Gilfillan documentation is below (warning it's more than 20mb in size): http://miniman82.4t.com/images/Gilfillan/LB-962.pdf From the documentation, it's apparent to me that there are stark similarities to the CTC-4 chassis. So why did the CTC-2B show up instead of the one shown in LB-962? I can only assume that RCA knew they had to come up with something fast, because they were being beaten at their own game by other manufactures. Being that the chassis shown in LB-962 was in its developmental stages at that time, I suspect what happened was this (from an earlier email to Steve McVoy): 27 July, 2015: "My assumption right now is that the reason the 21-CT-55 came before this one was that RCA had piles of Merrill chassis laying around from the CT-100 run, so instead of retooling the entire production line to suit the prototype outlined here they opted to modify the CTC-2 to support a 21" CRT. We have to remember that the 'size war' was in full swing at that period in color TV, and there had to be considerable pressure on RCA to get something to market which could compete with the 19" sets that had come out earlier that year from CBS and others. So I'm assuming they took left over Merrill chassis, slapped in the horizontal section from this prototype (the flyback looks identical to the one in the 21-CT-55), and sent it out the door." It's the only explanation I can think of that makes sense. Interestingly this LB-962 document still calls the CRT by its developmental designation C-73685, and since the 21-CT-55 came out a few months later and used a 21AXP22, that places the emergence of the 21AXP22 CRT somewhere between Late September and early December of 1954. The date code on the CRT in the Gilfillan is 52nd week of 1954 and it's a 21AXP22 not a developmental tube, so it's in the right ballpark. Anyhow, back to the topic at hand. Gilfillan must have applied to get on board with the RCA developmental 21" program at some point, because their circuit is very similar to the one outlined in LB-962. Not identical, but very close. RCA was known to work with other people in developmental programs (see the history of the NTSC color signal, the panels were made up of manufactures across the entire TV spectrum, pun completely intended), so it makes sense. They got a copy of LB-962, changed a few things so as not to get caught up in patent infringement disputes as is still the custom in industry today, and made the set you see here. Documentation states only 6 were ever built, I'm unaware of any others turning up.
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Holy crap talk about rare!
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Audiokarma |
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There were 6 space shuttles built, and I've seen three, so rare indeed.
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Brian USN RET (Avionics / Cal) CET- Consumer Repair and Avionics ('88) "Capacitor Cosmetologist since '79" When fuses go to work, they quit! |
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Well...sice TWO of them exploded...you will never see them again..I saw at least one on the pad my self --I THINK it was atlantis--May 1999 IIRC.
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I do know of another one in existence. In speaking with the owner of that set he believes all six were in different cabinets as well which would make each one "one of a kind".
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John |
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