I know these aircraft carriers have limited appeal (I like them), but I still hate to see this happen to them. It "may" have gotten 50-100$ it it had the orig TV, as is its just pure junk

http://knoxville.craigslist.org/atq/1555260903.html


To bad someone thought it was a good idea to take an RCA and replace it with a junk set.

No statement that the stereo works or is just "there" either

As common as this practice is, I still hate to see it. Over the years, I've found several nice combos that either had a new TV in them or a hole where a TV used to be.

I see nothing wrong with transplanting a modern TV into an older 3-way console.

Many times this is done if the owner of the set likes the looks of the cabinet, and doesn't want to give it up. I had two great-uncles who did the same thing with their old 3-way entertainment centers when the TVs went belly-up; both sets looked and worked great after the retrofit jobs. In both cases, one would have been hard-put to tell if the TV was a retrofit, as the replacement sets fit the opening once occupied by the original color chassis almost perfectly. Both sets had a wood frame around the TV opening, to compensate for the differences in width, height, etc. between the original chassis and its modern replacement.

The seller of the TV console mentioned here does mention that "everything works", so the stereo components must be working at least passably.

BTW, when I saw the title of this thread, "Another ruined console", I was half expecting to see a TV with a badly defaced cabinet (scratches, dings, chipped or missing veneer...) and perhaps a mess where the control panel was mounted, as I saw some time ago with the photos of an older Magnavox 3-way set here on VK. As it was at the time, that one was a safety and health hazard, with all those diabetic testing supplies (needles, strips....) strewn around the master control panel, and the cabinet itself being infested with bugs, spiders, having bits of rotted wood inside--sheeesh! Never saw such a mess inside a TV set in my life. I forget who had (or may still have) this TV (I'm sure it's someone here in this forum), but I'm wondering whether they ever got the bugs out (literally) and got the set working again.

It's hard to get too worked up about a set like that.
I gutted a similar Packard Bell (solid state) back in the early 80's for the same purpose.
It was a hideous thing with fake plastic wood and red velvet speaker grilles. :yuck: I guess back then it looked good to me.

Seeing that happen to a set that is of the same vintage as what I grew up with as a child bothers me. But not to more modern sets. For me that means 1960 and on.

I think if you're 20 years younger then seeing it happen to a 1980 set might bother you.

But that perspective is a result of why I'm interested in vintage TV.

John

When I gutted the Packard Bell it was probably less than 10 years old, just an old set then, nothing special.

We probably junked a lot more interesting stuff than that at the shop I worked for but again, it was just old back then, not classic. :no:

well I got my eye on another air craft carrier, so I hope its decent, I will post when I find out.

When I gutted the Packard Bell it was probably less than 10 years old, just an old set then, nothing special.

We probably junked a lot more interesting stuff than that at the shop I worked for but again, it was just old back then, not classic. :no:

If all of these sets had been saved (not 95% or more junked), would we be bothering to collect them today? :scratch2:

jr

Guess the gutting saved the cabinet for a few more years.. Yeah I dont like seeing that either.. But whatcha goona do.

Well heck, that thing was never going to be worth a restoration anyway - damn few of them are - just a common old and ugly RCA - it looks as though they at least attempted to make some sort of "mask" to frame in the bpc set. No reason to get upset over this one - now had they attempted this hack with a Merrill or some other set of real value, that would be upsetting.

Well heck, that thing was never going to be worth a restoration anyway - damn few of them are - just a common old and ugly RCA - it looks as though they at least attempted to make some sort of "mask" to frame in the bpc set. No reason to get upset over this one - now had they attempted this hack with a Merrill or some other set of real value, that would be upsetting.


Seems to me that there are a great deal of people who find these "common" sets to be quite uncommon and I happen to be one of them. If this is what I think it to be, this is not the typical 70's plastic cabinetry. While it is not the best example of RCA's cabinetry, I seriously doubt that the plastic "wood" is employed in this example. RCA put a lot of work into the quality of their high end cabinets, especially to the end of the 60's and prior.

Granted, while this is no Merrill, these are not all THAT common and are, especially now having seen this, becoming less common every day.

That looks like it was a CTC-17 like the one I have coming from CA. The tuner/stereo, from what I can tell, is the same time and would have had a lot of juice in it. The tv, based on the stereo employed may well have been a remote set as well and these buggars were very pricey at around $1200 or so at the time. In today's dollars, that's about $8000 bucks.

That is such a shame that it has been gutted. But I guess it just makes the one coming from CA that much cooler. imho

Guys keep in mind the deed may have been done over 20 years ago when the combo was just another piece of junk with a dead TV. The store I worked for did this all the time during the late 70's. As sad as it to to see it at least it was not done yesterday.

I have a 67 or 68 Zenith console, don't remember the year or the chassis # off hand. A gorgeous maple cabinet, real wood, no particle board, plastic etc., in the Colonial or Early American furniture style.

Unfortunately the tv is worn out junk - most all tubes test near dead, tuner wafers worn out, chassis extremely dirty, "moldy" cataracts on the the kinescope etc. The list goes on ad nauseum. The only part of this set worth saving is the cabinet.

QUESTION: Should I remove the chassis, kinescope (CRT), mask, you know, the guts of the tv, and carefully miter and stain 4 pieces of birch/maple to match the cabinet, place them as a "mask" or frame in the newly created opening and carefully slide in from the back, one of those modern marvel 26" class LCD sets from WallyWorld. The most it could possibly cost is a meager $300.00 or so. Then I could have the best of both worlds - an authentic Zenith hand made cabinet and a Thompson/Audiovox/RCA lcd high definition multi-tuner television.

What's wrong with you folks? There is a nice big combo Zenith here in Knoxville, Tn. that is far prettier than this one for the taking and not one person has stepped up to get it! I don't get it and you are worrying over that one as shown above???

Not really worring about it, just commenting that IMHO it would have been better if it had been left original, and fixed, rather than sticking a a modern set in it. If I was closer to TN I would be all over a nice one as you described, in fact I just picked on up yesterday her in FL.

Do you have a link to the nice one in TN that you mention? always like to see.

julianburke What's wrong with you folks? There is a nice big combo Zenith here in Knoxville, Tn. that is far prettier than this one for the taking and not one person has stepped up to get it! I don't get it and you are worrying over that one as shown above???

I can't speak for the other folks, but I can speak for myself.

I sincerely hope someone can save that Zenith. Now I wasn't aware of it until you mentioned it here and with luck, with your mention of it, someone may catch it and save it.

The first part of this issue is that folks like myself, who are lamenting the bastardization of the combo console or any real vintage television set for that matter, feel saddened that another piece of our past has gone down in flames. While yes, the cabinet lives on, it does so mocking those who built it and the rich history of the company that produced it. It is forced to laugh in the face of those who took pride in the products they produced (something that is virtually absent today) by being corrupted from a quality piece of furniture to the realm of being nothing more than the likes of those particle board nightmares that we buy at wally world, broken down, in a box that aren't worth the 40 bucks we paid for it.

Fools like those who had the craiglist ad about the G-2000 guts being sold from the cabinet, even though they know the rarity and significance of the G-2000, just love the cabient and have no care for the tv inside or the company who produced it and the significance of both. Whether folks like it or not, whether good or bad, if it wasn't for companies like RCA and Zenith and the people who simply refused to give up, we might have ended up like a European country with gettng into things late, poor infrastructure and some, not even having color until the late 70's. How many quality, vintage French made tv's have YOU seen? I sure haven't even heard about such a beast.

And what about this Zenith. Would it be more appropriate, that if someone gutted it, that we just say oh well, too bad, big deal. It was an ugly cabinet anyway? I sincerely hope that does not happen to that set and it gets a home and restored.

The other part of it is that today, a tv or stereo is just another piece of junk to be tossed. The names of RCA, Zenith, Magnavox, Motorola and so many more are little more than just a stamp on a piece of plastic garbage that is designed to end up in the landfill in a few short years. Most people don't even recall the times when a tv, stereo or even a washer or refrigerator were designed to be kept and repaired which in turn created jobs and many sub industries. You know, it may well be that in some respects, we were a "greener" country and mindset in the era of the 20's through the 60's as the intention of most things produced were designed to be repaired and were things of value that were kept. Can you really see these 600 watt plasma bohemoths being around in 10 years much less than 20 or more? On a bad day, most of the vintage televisions didn't pull more than 350 watts. The only modern style of television that I have any respect for is the DLP which at least, when the bulb dies, you can change that and poof, new tv (assuming of course that the power supply isn't garbage or the color wheel motor doesn't fry) but even then, you can still replace the color wheel relatively inexpensively, but you get the idea.

When another set gets trashed, whether a junk tv is put in its place or turned into a bookshelf or fishtank, it is just one more reminder that folks don't care about the past and have decided to look to the future by forgetting the past and create a societal mindsets as the ones we are currently enduring.

I lament this old RCA just as I lament seeing a 60's Chevelle painted flouresent(sp) green and lowered to within an inch of the road and gutted to accept a box full of subs so it can thump down the road.

So yes, I will continue to lament any vintage/antique stereo, tv, etc that has been destroyed from its original design.

It makes me sad to see this happen. I got very disappointed the other day when I saw an Alliance antenna rotor that had been thrown down (with the antenna) from a roof/chimney mount to the ground. I picked it up and tried to repair it (have done many). The motor shaft was bent from the fall as were the bearing mounts. Until my girlfriend saw a fully working tube color at my "camp" she always thought I was nuts for working on them.
"How come the color is so real"?
"Can you bring one home"?
Looks like the 25MC38 has a place at home now!
Keep rescuing the oldies!

If you think that's bad, there's console TVs being destroyed in rock band videos. "Sucidal Tendencies" is one of these. Some screen shots off youtube:
http://www.videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=166054&stc=1&d=1263858349 http://www.videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=166055&stc=1&d=1263858349

I'd love to be able to save more of these sets but the truth is there are more of them than there are of us.

I'm already filled to the rafters with more stuff than I can handle, I wish I could afford a giant aircraft hanger to store more in but I can't so I have to pick and choose what I get.

I've been trying to get rid of a nice 66 Motorola that I bought from the SA just to keep it out of the dumpster, but no takers.

Well that's not entirely true, Electrohome wanted it and I'd like to get it to him it but packing it up to ship to Canada is more than I can handle right now.

I've been trying to get rid of a nice 66 Motorola that I bought from the SA just to keep it out of the dumpster, but no takers.

Sorry to be OT but Uship is the way to go, cheap and easy. I hope someone can save it, I would have it shipped to my house if I had some extra cash right now. I've been looking for a nice Moto color set.


I like Suicidal Tendencies but that video sucks. That was a nice '66 Zenith with the Hi-Fi chassis. :tears:

LOL - I watched that video a million times back in the 80s. Anyone see the Monster House episode where they fixed up Mike Muir's house ?

What's wrong with you folks? There is a nice big combo Zenith here in Knoxville, Tn. that is far prettier than this one for the taking and not one person has stepped up to get it! I don't get it and you are worrying over that one as shown above???

I would come get it in a heartbeat, but I work full time and go to school full time. I don't know when I would have time to make a special trip to Knoxville in the truck. It is only about 5 hours one way, but I can't drive it both ways in one day. I wouldn'nt be able to walk when I got home. Old age is a bummer.

If you think that's bad, there's console TVs being destroyed in rock band videos. "Sucidal Tendencies" is one of these. Some screen shots off youtube:
http://www.videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=166054&stc=1&d=1263858349 http://www.videokarma.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=166055&stc=1&d=1263858349

To be fair, that video looks like it was shot back in the 80's that set would have been considered worthless.

If something like that was made nowadays I'd be angry.

Ahhhh my eyes.....my eyes!!!!!

Recently there was a late 70's CCII combo locally I had to pass up because I simply have nowhere to put it.