Found this RCA in the trash last night and thought I would rescue it. This set is as clean as new and looks as if the back had never been removed! (note the plastic remnants from the manual packet at top right) All it took was a new tripler and a tuner clean to get it up and running.
As far as I am concerned this is when RCA was at the peak as far as reliability and picture quality. The 48 was a good chassis design and worked well with few repairs.

Here is a washed out screen shot, The crt is original to the set with a mid 1972 date code and it still reads 9+ on my tester.

You found my grandparents' TV set.

Boy did I watch alot of cartoons on that one.

Thanks for the memories!

Originally posted by captainmoody
Here is a washed out screen shot, The crt is original to the set with a mid 1972 date code and it still reads 9+ on my tester.

1972 eh? I guess it was that long ago.

The pic of the one we had was phenominal. Can you take a screenshot without the flash?

Thats a sharp looking set. Looks very "60s" with the danish mod. cabinet. Glad to hear you got it going!

We had one of them, only a year newer.
Id say that was the best solid state chassis
that RCA ever made. I also ran into a similar
type of chassis that was being used as a monitor
in a late 70s arcade game.

Here's a better screen shot for you Jason.

i still have regular customers from when i was a teen that still have these sets.
most have needed simple stuff like solder joints and a few bad lytics and trilplers.
the few i have changed crt's in had evidence of heavy usage.
every few years they have me clean the tuner and make adjustments.

great set Dwight!!!! I loved those styles of RCA's. Did you have a tripler laying around or did you have to order one?

wow Dwight, that was a good find!! What neighborhood had that one? If nobody wants it, I might have a good home for it.

Just realized... I thought that was spiderman in the first screen-shot. :p:

Guess it was the Olympics???

Originally posted by Carmine
Just realized... I thought that was spiderman in the first screen-shot. :p:

Guess it was the Olympics???


You're right, Carmine--the second screen shot is the Olympics in the background. Brokaw is anchoring Nightly News from Athens during the Games. You are correct as to the first washed-out shot as well--that one is in fact Spider-Man. Captainmoody can attest to that.

Originally posted by captainmoody
Found this RCA in the trash last night and thought I would rescue it. This set is as clean as new and looks as if the back had never been removed! (note the plastic remnants from the manual packet at top right) All it took was a new tripler and a tuner clean to get it up and running.
As far as I am concerned this is when RCA was at the peak as far as reliability and picture quality. The 48 was a good chassis design and worked well with few repairs.

Good looking set. I just saw the pics of the cabinet and the picture this set produces--it's great for a set with a 32-year-old CRT. As I've said before in this forum, it's great when these old sets can be brought back to life by simply replacing a tube or a component and giving the tuner (and all pots and switches, of course) a good going over with tuner cleaner. Back in the '70s when I collected them (and lived in a house with a large basement), I restored many an old TV to at least a semblance of its former self simply by doing just that (cleaning the tuner and controls/switches). It's amazing what a simple cleaning can do to improve performance of a television set, or anything electronic with pots or switches.

BTW: I think RCA (Thomson these days) finally got the bugs out of their current-production sets, to the point where this brand could well be on the way to becoming reliable again--if it isn't there already. The key was when they started mounting the RF tuner separately from the main PC board. The onboard tuners in earlier sets, including my nearly five-year-old CTC185A7, were trouble from the start, although mine still works well almost three years after I had the tuner repaired and the ground points resoldered. :) ;)

I have a pretty good stock of triplers for RCA and Zenith James, They're left over from when I had my shop. The one that this set uses is the ECG 500A. All I have left of that type are a few ERS 500A's (cheapies but work!) that I purchased in 1987.
Don't think I have changed a tripler since the mid 90's until now!

My grandparents had this set until about 1979. It broke and I remember it got sent off for repair. My parents bought a 1980 RCA with digital tuning. Horrible picture. My parents to the CTC48 and I got their 76 RCA console which sucked compared to the ctc48. In 1987, the ctc48 went kaput (probably was something simple). So it got moved to the back porch until we finally junqued it. I begged my parents to keep it because I was going to electronics school next year and I'll fix it myself. No luck. It went bye bye.

Then unfortunately they bought a 27" Sanyo. The age of the Japanese box had come to our house. It was a nice TV, and it's still playing in my dad's bedroom but it just wasn't the same.

Here is my CTC-48, 1973 model. I rewired the power circuit so the switch shuts off all power rather than having the Instant-on feature. Only thing I don't like is the slide controls, some of the levers have snapped off of them, plus they seem to be more susceptible to intermittents. RCA apparently made the tube type CTC-39 simultaneously in this exact cabinet style, although I have not seen any examples of it

I know how you feel Jason, My dad sold off for cheap our RCA CTC 27 portable set just after I repaired some solder connections on it. He was tired of the frequent repairs it needed I guess. He must have thought he should get rid of it before it wouldn't work at all!
I was so mad that he sold that set because it finally made it to my room a few weeks before and I got it going good, Besides with less use as I told him it would hardly need any repairs.
Turns out that he was also afraid I would fall asleep with it on and it would burn down the house, So one day when I came home from school and went in my room I found it was gone and a Sony KV-1210 was in its place! He thought I would be so happy to have his and my mom's old bedroom set! After all as he said, That one has no tubes and has never needed work...Bah!
Yuck! I thanked them for their kind action but started looking for another CTC 27 that week! It took something like 15 years but I found the EXACT model set with stand for 10.00 at an estate sale.
And that one is staying put!

Originally posted by captainmoody
I know how you feel Jason, My dad sold off for cheap our RCA CTC 27 portable set just after I repaired some solder connections on it. He was tired of the frequent repairs it needed I guess. He must have thought he should get rid of it before it wouldn't work at all!
I was so mad that he sold that set because it finally made it to my room a few weeks before and I got it going good, Besides with less use as I told him it would hardly need any repairs.
Turns out that he was also afraid I would fall asleep with it on and it would burn down the house, So one day when I came home from school and went in my room I found it was gone and a Sony KV-1210 was in its place! He thought I would be so happy to have his and my mom's old bedroom set! After all as he said, That one has no tubes and has never needed work...Bah!
Yuck! I thanked them for their kind action but started looking for another CTC 27 that week! It took something like 15 years but I found the EXACT model set with stand for 10.00 at an estate sale.
And that one is staying put!


Thats like having your parents select the stereo for your room when they don't know anything about them.

Originally posted by glen65
Thats like having your parents select the stereo for your room when they don't know anything about them.

Oh yeah. I know the stereo thing too. I inherited a 1968 Philco console stereo. It had a VM turntable and two way speakers. Pretty good, had a little thump to it. The phono broke and the console disappeared and a small tabletop unit was in it's place.:confused:

Originally posted by jasonlava
Oh yeah. I know the stereo thing too. I inherited a 1968 Philco console stereo. It had a VM turntable and two way speakers. Pretty good, had a little thump to it. The phono broke and the console disappeared and a small tabletop unit was in it's place.:confused:

Yep that's pretty much what usually happens.
Mom will usually give the line.
" But this one fits so much nicer in your room than that other one did"
After excessive use of the main console unit down stairs
dad finally wised up and gave me an upgrade.

Originally posted by captainmoody
Here is a washed out screen shot, The crt is original to the set with a mid 1972 date code and it still reads 9+ on my tester.

What are those two little push buttons under the channel knobs?

I'm trying to remember. I think one's AFC and what's the other one?

the other one is probably "Accucolor". Rca's early automatic color control system. Mush like Zenith's Chromacolor & Color Sentry.

The buttons are aft and acm. We had an accucolor we bought new in '73 when were were living in Tucson. that must have been the CTC 39 chassis in it that Chad was talking about.

ACM is "Accumatic" used on the solid state sets and some of the tube sets, to set to a pre-set of color, brightness, and contrast, and provide some correction of tint.

Some of the CTC-39's have A/T which is accu-tint, usually a rotary switch in the middle of the control panel, it provides some kind of change in the chroma section to make tint setting less critical...it seems to change the picture to a redder tone.

The Accucolor system was only used on the tube type sets although I am not sure its exact m.o., I don't personally own any sets that are labeled as having it.

Originally posted by Chad Hauris
ACM is "Accumatic" used on the solid state sets and some of the tube sets, to set to a pre-set of color, brightness, and contrast, and provide some correction of tint.

Some of the CTC-39's have A/T which is accu-tint, usually a rotary switch in the middle of the control panel, it provides some kind of change in the chroma section to make tint setting less critical...it seems to change the picture to a redder tone.

The Accucolor system was only used on the tube type sets although I am not sure its exact m.o., I don't personally own any sets that are labeled as having it.

THAT's right!

I remember the AFT button being in and the ACM was always out. If you pushed ACM it was a preset, kinda like today's TVs with different modes (movies, news, sports) I don't use that either. I use a DVD that has test patterns.

On several of my RCA sets that have the ACM function (and other sets such as motorola with Insta-color, Hitachi APS etc.) I usually use the preset function and set up the service color, tint, etc. controls, as the front panel controls for the functions often have intermittants and the pre-set controls seem to function better.

It is a weird coincidence that the sets with the pre-set functions often have the most problems with the front panel controls, even after they have been cleaned.

Originally posted by Chad Hauris
On several of my RCA sets that have the ACM function (and other sets such as motorola with Insta-color, Hitachi APS etc.) I usually use the preset function and set up the service color, tint, etc. controls, as the front panel controls for the functions often have intermittants and the pre-set controls seem to function better.

It is a weird coincidence that the sets with the pre-set functions often have the most problems with the front panel controls, even after they have been cleaned.

Yeah, I remember the sliders in the tilt-out panel. One of them was broken but you could get it with a toothpick. Yes, they were finicky at the end of the set's life.

I wish I could find one around here in Louisana.

I hated how the preset color setting was always wayyyyyyyyy to high. It doesn't seem to matter what brand, they always produced a cartoon like picture when the auto color was turned on. At least most provided some way to readjust the color level.

I had to clean and lube those sliders also on my set, They were so bad the color level wouldn't work right except at the high end and the vertical would go nuts when you tap the control.
The sharpness knob was broken off too but I had that in stock and replaced it.
I now have the tv set up as an every day user in my basement.

Originally posted by captainmoody
I had to clean and lube those sliders also on my set, They were so bad the color level wouldn't work right except at the high end and the vertical would go nuts when you tap the control.
The sharpness knob was broken off too but I had that in stock and replaced it.
I now have the tv set up as an every day user in my basement.

Awesome!

So I'm not the only one that remembers these TVs. If I had one it would definitely get overhauled and become a bedroom set.

I bet a great mod would be installing better stereo speakers to replace the dual mono speakers and a small amplifier behind it and it can become a neat vintage TV for DVD watching with good sound built in.

I hated how the preset color setting was always wayyyyyyyyy to high. It doesn't seem to matter what brand, they always produced a cartoon like picture when the auto color was turned on. At least most provided some way to readjust the color level.

The auto color control of my RCA CTC185A7 TV works fine. In six and a half years I haven't had to adjust the OSD color controls once. I set the auto-color to ON when I installed the set; haven't turned it off since.

Which reminds me. Does the auto-color setting in the CTC185 chassis (and Advanced Color View processing in later RCA CRT sets) simply switch in preset controls, or is it a true automatic color correction system such as was RCA's former ColorTrak? (The advertising literature for the CTC185, aka F19261, states that the set is designed with an auto-color system which maintains color fidelity and correct flesh tones from scene to scene and channel to channel, which mine does very well.)

I personally don't think the CTC185's auto-color switches in presets. If it did, I'm sure the picture would be either too bright or too dark with the feature activated, being correct only a small percentage of the time. I believe these preset controls are factory set using color-bar test patterns, which are not the same as broadcast station and/or network programming. I also believe that most people with TVs that have these preset color controls (the button is often labeled ACM, ATG, AccuColor, etc.) are better off not even using the preset button at all. These presets might produce acceptable pictures with strong signals from a cable or DBS system, but I doubt it. Motorola, in the '70s IIRC, once had a line of color TVs it referred to as "GT-Matic" which were supposed to be so stable the set owner adjusted the color controls once, then locked the control door with a key. The color picture would be nearly correct from then on (or so the GT-Matic advertising would have one believe). Never having seen or owned a set like that, I cannot comment on how good or bad the GT-Matic system was. It may not have been all that good, however, as Motorola discontinued the sets using it after two or three model years. I would simply turn off any auto-color functions in an older set and forget the darn button even exists. (Zenith, for example, only had Color Sentry on its TVs for about three years, starting some time in the mid-'70s, IIRC.) The auto-color features in today's color sets (including the Advanced Color View features of the newest RCA CRT TVs) are much better than those preset buttons, as I think the automatic color features in new sets are true color correction systems, with the control circuitry incorporated in the jungle IC.

I believe the day of set-and-forget color TV has finally arrived, at least as far as CRT sets go. I know my RCA is like that; turn it on, get the channel you want to watch, then forget the rest. Some day I hope HDTVs will be that automatic and fiddle-free as well, but at this stage of plasma and LCD television development, IMHO (after having read comments on and reviews of several makes of current HDTVs), the technology has a long way to go before it reaches that point.

GT-Matic was a Sylvania feature. It came after GTE bought Sylvania, and disappeared shortly after Philips bought them. Sylvania had introduced Perma-Tint on the later D14 chassis. Their manual describes it as a circuit to widen the X,Z demod angles. It used 2 transistors and was usually a small plug in board. As I read it this was supposed to help maintain correct flesh tones. By the time of the last GTE Sylvania chassis (E54 I think) GT-Matic was incorporated on the chroma processor IC. Since Philips combined Sylvania, Philco, and Magnavox, I would guess the technology evolved into the "Total Automatic Color" system.

Bill R.