Found an exceptionally nice RCA XL100 console at an estate sale.
March 1975 manufacture date, Model GT 734L, CTC 58E2, early American/colonial style cabinet.
I usually pass on this vintage of tv's, but this one looked very nice. Most of the console sets I run across usually have a new bpc/spc set sitting on top of them, and the cabinets are usually scratched beyond belief.

It was plugged into a receptacle and had cable attached, so I powered it up and was rewarded with a nice picture. Spun the brightness to full then back to zero and and back to full again. Very nice response. This set must be a very low hour set.

Paid the sellar 10$ and went to move the set. Found a plastic bag still screwed to the back of the set with the original manual and other RCA literature. A bonus.

Brought the beast home and stuck a set of bunny ears on it. Works great with a set top antenna. Pulled the back off of the set and was stunned how clean the set was. Almost no dust, which is remarkable for a 34 year old set.
Could not find any signs that someone had ever been inside the set. Looks to be all original.
Had some time to kill so I spent an hour or so pulling the tuner assemblies and those ridiculous slider controls and gave them a good cleaning. Dug out a cable converter box and hooked it up. Works even better now.

I am stunned at the picture quality of this old set. Simply amazing picture for a 34 year old set.

I think I'll keep this one. This brings the console total to 10. But I think I am going to have to cull the herd. Have got 2 80's vintage XL 100's and 2 80's vintage Curtis Mathes consoles that are perfectly good, that are just taking up space. I'd donate them to the SA or GW but I don't think they would sell, and that they would just end up in a dumpster.

Nice find! That series of chassis (CTC48/58/68/78) was probably RCA's best. Would have been even better had they used real knob style controls instead of those cheap slider controls. I have a '76 CTC78 RCA that needs those controls replaced. Does yours have the tilt out control bin or the small door to the right of the tuner?

The vertical hold, contrast, color, tint sliders are hidden behind a small door under the tuners.
I broke the color knob off trying to adjust color, but it still works ok.
Damn things worked perfect out of the set when I cleaned them, but now they are sticky again. Guess I'll pull them out again and reclean them, though I don't think they will slide any easier. I wonder if RCA used some type of lubricant on them. Before cleaning there was sticky brown goo all over the asssembly. I suspect it was dried lubricant. I wonder if silicone spray would damage them???
Must have knocked the channel illuminator lamp loose reassembling the tuners, guess I need to fix that also.
Was going to post a picture, but have misplaced camera. I'll post when I find it again.

i love my xl100 of the same vintage,incidently,before we closed up shop,the rca won the triple crown contest by a margin of 75% over zenith and sylvania.these are great sets to have and i think are the best rca solid states and maybe as good as the chromacolor zeniths!

I was wondering how that contest came out!

I have a NOS slide control assy for a 70s RCA. I may have listed it on ebay, I can't recall offhand. It was for the secondary controls as I recall.

Are the XL-100 models RCA's high end line?
I got a 13" 1983 RCA XL-100, and my grandma has a late '70s era console XL-100, and both sets have the most immaculate picture quality, and a very high overall quality to them.
Or is that just because of the fact that RCA just generally makes (or used to make) high quality electronics?

It's because RCA used to make great electronics. The XL-100 was not their best set, the Colortraks were. That's not to say an XL-100 is subpar, because they weren't. IMO it just meant they didn't add the same features to them, like photocell brightness control, remote, OSD, MTS stereo depending on the set in question.

Around '72, RCA came out with the XL100 line. XL100 stands for XtendedLife 100% solid state. At that time, the XL100 designation was used for most RCA color sets using a solid state chassis of modular design. There was also the AccuColor name that was used on the better solid state and tube sets. Around '76, the ColorTrak's came out. These sets used a light sensor for automatic picture adjustment according to room lighting, a higher end CRT, and often a remote control. The early colortraks used a modular chassis but was totally different in design than the XL100. By the late '70's, the XL100 name was really nothing more than a name. Many of the XL100's from the late '70's on used the same chassis as the ColorTrak's, minus the light sensor. The XL100 and ColorTrak designations were finally dropped around 2001.

Up until around '98, my cousin had a '72 CTC46 XL100 console. It had a great picture; but, it finally got to the point where I was having to do something to it every time the wind changed direction and I talked him into junking it. That set had ten zillion hours on it and was truly worn out.

It's because RCA used to make great electronics. The XL-100 was not their best set, the Colortraks were. they didn't add the same features to them, like photocell brightness control, remote, OSD, MTS stereo depending on the set in question.

Back in the mid 80's I worked for RCA Labs (the Sarnoff Lab in Princeton) and I had a CTC 101 Colortrak with a comb filter. Very good picture in its day. But the CTC101 had that infamous integrated flyback problem. They skimped on the number of high voltage diodes inside the flyback, 6 high voltage windings with at first 6 diodes between windings, later they tried to get away with 3. No good...

I have one of the last XL-100s. It's a table model, chassis CTC185A7, from 1999. Very sharp, clear picture for a set that was new nine years ago. I've said this before--I'd put this set up against any Zenith Chromacolor II, or Zenith's Sentry 2 or System 3 any day; the picture is just that good, IMHO.

The XL-100 line may not have been RCA's top-line series, but then again these TVs don't need color correction schemes. Color TV has come a long way since the days of ColorTrak, Videomatic and TAC [Total Automatic Color] (Magnavox), Color Sentry (Zenith), VIR (GE), et al. The signals are much more stable than they were then, there are better methods today of controlling color stability (for want of a better phrase), and so forth, so there is no need for automatic control of tint, color, etc. at the set.

Just as well, I suppose, since many of the automatic color correction systems did not work all that well. GE's VIR, for example, worked with a special signal (embedded in the vertical blanking interval) that was sent along with the broadcast signal to correct tint-phasing errors. It was a flop and was discontinued after only a couple of years. (I had a great-uncle who owned a GE TV with VIR years ago; I doubt if he ever used the VIR function on his set--and it was the only GE television I've ever seen in my life with that system.)

Most people probably didn't know there was an auto-color feature on their TVs; if they did, they probably had no idea how to activate it, as quite a few viewers in those days (and even today) didn't/do not even bother with the color controls on their set(s). The so-called "auto-color" buttons on many TVs of 1970s vintage were worse. All this scheme did was to switch in preset color controls that were probably set at the factory, using a color bar pattern from a generator rather than a broadcast signal. The picture was often worse with the "auto-color" feature on than when it was off. Most viewers simply ignored this button and adjusted the color, tint, brightness and contrast to their own preferences. My RCA XL-100 has an "auto-color" function (accessible as a menu option), but I don't use it; don't need to. As I said, television technology has advanced so much these days there is no longer any need for automatic color correction at the set; I haven't had to reset the color controls on my set in months or years. My Zenith Sentry 2 is the same way. I've had that set almost 14 years, and never had to reset the color adjustments on it either. This is a huge improvement over my first color set in 1970, a beat-up 1964 Sears-Silvertone (RCA CTC-15 chassis) 21" roundie table model I got from a gentleman in my old neighborhood. That TV had a good picture when it worked, but, like all color sets of that era, the colors were anything but stable (by today's standards). I had a Sears 17" color set a few years later (a trash find) that wasn't much better. The picture was good when it worked, like my roundie, but it required occasional readjustment until the set warmed up.

Who knows how much better color TV will be when all TV stations transmit digital signals exclusively come June 12? Many cable operators (Time Warner, for example) are all digital already (TW converted to 100-percent digital last year) and do not pick up broadcast TV signals off the air anymore; rather, they have direct connections to the TV stations and get the video signal through fiber optic lines, bypassing the RF signal altogether. I can honestly say I have never seen such a clear, sharp picture on broadcast TV in my entire life, until now (I told one of TW's cable technicians just that when he was here to downgrade my service two weeks or so ago). Say what you will about cable, but to me, that excellent picture quality is well worth the monthly fee I pay the cable company (now $12.34 for bare-bones basic service, broadcast channels only).

BTW: Another poster mentioned problems he was having with Comcast cable. I had Comcast analog and later digital cable here until a couple of years ago (before Time Warner took over Comcast and Adelphia), and never had five minutes' worth of trouble with either system. The only reason I downgraded to TW's "lifeline basic" package was to save money, not because I was ever dissatisfied with the services. If I could afford it, I would still have Time-Warner digital cable, but at $55.67 a month it was getting to be too much.

Thought I would update everyone on this set and post a few pictures.

As I originally posted, I had pulled the tuner assembly and auxillary control unit and cleaned them. The set worked OK for what I had to work with re: the worn out slider pots on the aux. control unit. Still I wasn't satisfied. Bryan(bgadow) posted that he had a NOS aux. control available, so I purchased it, knowing full well it was not an exact replacement, BUT, I had and idea.

While waiting for the unit to arrive, I decided to open the covers again on the tuners. I was unimpressed with the cleaning that I had previously done to the tuners. So, I grabbed a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and a handful of QTIPS and went to work on the wafers and contacts. Simply amazing the amount of crud that was still on the wafers. However when I finished the wafers and contacts all looked new.

I decided while waiting that I might as well clean the cabinet as well. A gallon of warm water, a bit of pine cleaner, and a terry cloth towel brought the finish to near new.

My idea for the new aux. control unit was to simply replace the worn out sliders with the NOS sliders. So I simply unsoldered all of the pots and replaced the old with the NOS. They were an exact replacement. All manufacturer part numbers matched. When finished, I essentially had a NOS auxilliary control unit for vertical hold, contrast, color and tint. The only snag was that the "knobs" for the pots are egg shell brittle and can not be removed from the old pots without destroying them.

I set the controls to the midpoint and reassembled the set. A few minutes adjusting the fine tuning and the new pots, and look at the picture I was rewarded with. Very, very nice for a 34 year old tube. I was at first disappointed that I could not get brilliant white and deep black, and that it is very "touchy" to get the tint adjusted properly, but then I remembered exactly what it was that I was working with. I doubt that the set was much, if any better, when new.

I have to say that I am very pleased with the set, especially considering that I have just under 26$ total invested in the set.

Nice TV and repair job! That was one of RCA's best chassis and when working properly, will outperform many brand new CRT sets. I just finished my '76 XL100 today and the picture is very vivid & sharp, every bit as good (maybe better) than a Zenith and certainly better than most of the newer Thomson sets of equal screen size..

Of the two Thomson/90's RCA sets I regularly see, one has a very erratic OSD and menu operation to the point where it's almost unusable, and the other is a CTC-203 from 2000 or so (?) that has a blurry out of focus raster for the first minute of operation. Tube is going already.


Very nice repair job. I can think of few sets that warrant a tedious repair job like changing all the controls but this one is. great picture. And the NOS parts are a home-run as well.

Hey, Robert-I wasn't sure if that was you that bought it or not! Really great to see how it turned out.

Got a ton of RCA parts that age; if they were mine I'd probably give 'em away but they belong to my friend who is retiring.

Nice TV! It really has a clean look to it.

[EDIT] It definately looks newer than 1975 to me though. If I had to guess, I would have said early to mid 1980s. It's just got an '80s look to it.

Yep it does have an '80's look to it.
I have an '84 XL100, essentially the same cabinet, just really dark pine finish, electronic tuner, and charcoal colored crt.

They sure didn't change cabinets all that much throughout the years.
Damn shame they didn't make them longer in the Danish modern style. When I was growing up we had an RCA b/w console in the Danish modern style. Absolutely gorgeous. Wish I had it now. I'd pay good money for another one.

I have to say I have a Zenith System 3 TV set from 1988 which still works fine and I may be wrong but I think the Color Sentry automatic color on those sets included automatic color temperature adjustment and many other adjustments. It is really neat to have such a feature on the TV. TV manufacturers have abandoned automatic color and I think that is wrong. It was a nice thing to have on the TV. RCA's Colortrak automatic color was neat too.