Sears Silvertone, Warwick Electronics?

[drh4683]

This is kind of a spin off of what was being discussed in the estate sales 2010 thread.

The USA made sears silvertone TV's were made by Warwick Electronics (sears model numbers start 528.xxxxx). I've known of Warwick, but I never actually decided to look into who the company was until now. I have looked all over the internet trying to figure out who warwick electronics was, but all I can find are a couple pages about a 1967 lawsuit against sears over house fire caused by a silvertone TV.

There seems to be ZERO information on the internet about warwick and who they were as a company. They must have been gone for years. Does anyone have any information available? Were they based in Chicago?

I always put Silvertone and Airline in the same category, they were both well made TV's that showed similar design characteristics, even though Airline was a Wells Gardner made TV (which there is plenty of info about as they are still in business in suburban Chicago).

So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?

[truetone36]

I know that their last sets were made in 1977, and that they were bought out by Sanyo in 1978. One of their plants is located about 40 miles from me. I have no idea where the company was based.

[radiotvnut]

This website does show that warwick made TV's until '77.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/postw...facturers.html

I also read somewhere (can't remember where) that Sanyo bought them out and that in Warwick's last days, Sears canned them as a supplier because of quality control issues. The only other non-Sears product that I've seen that was warwick built were the Library of Congress talking book record players for the blind from the '60's. I've seen plenty of Sears radios, TVs, and stereos that were Warwick built. In fact, I have an early '60's silvertone portable transistor radio that was built by warwick and it's a good performer.

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by drh4683

So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?

I'd been told as a kid that Sears/Warwick and Whirlpool were all in bed together. Sears owned a small percentage, with Whirlpool owning the rest.

This reference shows that Warwick Electronics Inc was a Whirlpool holding:

http://www.nber.org/antidump/FDIList.txt

and here:

"Further attempts to diversify yielded mixed results. The company's purchase of Heil-Quaker Corporation in 1964 enlarged Whirlpool's scope beyond consumer appliances to central heating and cooling equipment. But this subsidiary was sold to Inter-City Gas Corporation of Canada in 1986 as Whirlpool refocused its attention on home appliances. Its 1966 entry into the consumer electronics market with the acquisition of Warwick Electronics ended in failure ten years later, at which time the business was sold to Sanyo Electric Company."
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/compa...y-History.html

Sanyo definitely bought into the company at some point:
"The Japanese television cartel: a study based on Matsushita v. Zenith" Chapter 1 Intro has a reference to this. Google book search:http://books.google.com/books?id=1il...d=0CBwQ6AEwBQ#

Sanyo started SMC (Sanyo Manufacturing Company) in the US in 1976 to acquire TV plants and manufacture sets in the US, skirting US anti-dumping laws. They also purchased the FISHER name at this point. http://www.iccfed.gd.gov.cn/2003/eng...oration/19.htm

Funny how Warwick never trademarked anything - they seemed to engineer products strictly for sale/branding by Sears.

528 Warwick, 564 Sanyo, 5nDime Kmart.......



Airline in the mid-to-late 70's was Admiral made. Monkey Wards also had some Japanese-made and (80's) GE-made Airline sets.

Cheers,

[Findm-Keepm]

Doug,

Your Chromix control on that Sears/Warwick set is probably based on this Warwick patent:

http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3825673.pdf

Bottom of column 1 under Color Gamut Compressor describes the Chromix citcuitry. Notice how they are talking tint control up until they start to talk about the present invention - can't call it a tint control - already part of the RCA patent!

Now I expect that some of the 15GP22 expert folks here could explain all the technical aspects of the phase relationships and all - I'm lost.

Cheers,

[jeyurkon]

There's a reference to Warwick being in Chicago and purchased by Sears, here http://www.earlytelevision.org/color_tv_cooper.html

John

[AUdubon5425]

I have a Silvertone portable radio built in '55 by Warwick, so they go back at least that far.

[drh4683]

It does appear that Warwick was infact a Chicago company. Looking at those patent details indicates "Warwick Electronics Inc, Chicago, IL" and the inventors lived in Schaumburg and Palatine, both of which are northwest suburbs. So we can conclude that engineering was alteast in chicago.

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas? Im curious if there were chicago plants as well. I think I have a 1976 chicago yellow pages phone book somewhere on one of my numerous book shelves. Perhaps they might be listed with an address in there.

[drh4683]

It does appear that Warwick was infact a Chicago company. Looking at those patent details indicates "Warwick Electronics Inc, Chicago, IL" and the inventors lived in Schaumburg and Palatine, both of which are northwest suburbs. So we can conclude that engineering was alteast in chicago.

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas? Im curious if there were chicago plants as well. I think I have a 1976 chicago yellow pages phone book somewhere on one of my numerous overloaded book shelves. Perhaps they might be listed with an address in there, which is the tail end of Warwick if they were gone by '77.

John Furrey who was one of the designers on the color gamut compressor for warwick appears to still be around at age 69. He is listed as having a home in Schaumburg and then Indianapolis. I'd be willing to bet once warwick folded, he went to work for RCA. Just a though...

[bgadow]

I have an Airline AA5 table radio from the 50s; I need to pull it back down off the shelf. When I bought it there was something on it, maybe an EIA#, that traced it to be built by Warwick. This might have been before the relationship with Sears. I had heard several places of a financial interest in Warwick by Sears; S,R&Co was big enough that they could have kept them busy all by themselves, I guess. Somebody, in an old thread somewhere, said Warwick had trouble with their solid state designs, maybe HV issues? There are a couple retired Sears techs over on ARF and this kinda thing has been discussed before. Someone mentioned a third Warwick plant but I'm not sure where it was.

[Zenith26kc20]

When the Warwick/Sears were popular, they had mostly flyback and vertical problems. One of the more "interesting" problems was Sams Photofact had one of the vertical output transistors mislabeled. If I remember right, the sets were complmentary Symmetry output in the vertical. Sams had them quasi-symmetry. The transistors were grayish (both npn and pnp) at the time. I bet many a tech cursed the set when it was Sams fault.
There was also a scan power supply diode that had to come from Sears or it would burn the generic diode out in a few minutes.
I had one for many years and actually sold it one Superbowl Sunday. Once you got used to them they weren't bad to work on.
They were a far cry better than the Sony's with the phase locked loop power and high voltage sets (dual gate switches). One missed part and you rebuild them again.

[truetone36]

Originally Posted by drh4683

So warwick had a manufacturing plant in Arkansas?

Yep, they had a large plant in Forrest City, AR on what is now known as Sanyo Rd.

[Findm-Keepm]

Doug, thanks to Bryan G, I have the service manual for that Sears - 'tis on microfiche though. If you need it, it's yours.

BTW, the Sears training literature for Warwick sets never calls them "Warwick," but "Source 528" sets.

Zenith26kc20 is right on about the Sears Warwick Ultra I and Ultra II sets as drawn out by Sams - error city in the Vertical and color circuits. The Vertical output transistor polarity gaffe was also made in a Sams for an early Solid State Teledyne/Packard Bell set.

Cheers,

[old_tv_nut]

Warwick definitely had a plant in the Chicago area for final assembly. Don't know what they did in Arkansas, but it may have been their cabinet plant - several manufacturers built cabinets in the South. I knew a then-young engineer who came to Zenith when the Chicago Warwick plant closed.

Regarding that Chromix patent, it looks like one of many alternate ways to essentially decrease the Q-axis (green/magenta) gain of the color vectors, so flesh tones were forced toward normal hue. All these circuits tend to result in the "tan cowboy on the brown horse riding into the orange sunset." These circuits made greens weak and have a tendency to turn either bluish or brownish. They also weakened magenta and pulled purple colors towards blue or cyan. RCA was the only set with a really different automatic tint. It pulled only the hues near flesh, and left alone pure greens and all colors sufficiently different from flesh tone. The circuit was invented at Motorola, but Motorola never used it. I don't know if RCA actually paid for it - I rather imagine that they got use of it in a mutual patent licensing trade.

[truetone36]

Warwick was associated with the Thomas Organ Co. at some point as well.