Hey I have a small 12" b/w branded "XAM" here which is actually an 'S-3' made by GE. It has the same crt as the SF chassis (12CWP4) but is an all tube chassis unlike the SF, including a tube rectifier. Lots of compactrons.

I'm troubleshooting a no video problem, but was wondering if this chassis is highly regarded or even worth the time. Thanks

If it's a clean set with a good CRT and the chassis does not look to have been ran to death, I would probably give it a shot. Otherwise, I'd forget it. Even though I have a 15" Packard-Bell portable with a similar GE chassis, I'm still not a big fan of these GE sets. They seemed to be made about as cheap as a TV could be built for the time and most of the ones that I used to find had a roasted chassis along with a near dead CRT.

Thanks for your response, radiotvnut. The CRT is strong. I traced the issue to the heater supply of all things,,, the IF campactron and the vertical out compactron have filaments which constantly go on, off, on, off...Going to tear into the power supply section of the board next. There are a few toasty looking resistors in that area.

OT: This is the 1st of two 'XAM' sets I was recently given. The other is a metal cabinet 13" color SS set from 1976 which works really well after some resoldering and a greyscale adjustment. Blackstripe crt.

I got the sams on this thing if you need any info on it.

I would imagine that the S-3 chassis is a predecessor to the SE chassis, which also is an all-tube design (with compactrons). The successor to the SE was the ever-popular SF chassis, which, as you know, is a hybrid set.

[Note that in the Portacolor line, for example, the predecessor to the HE chassis was the H-4, and before that the H-3, etc.]

As far a performance goes, I don't think any of these S-series B&W sets were big winners, but, hey, maybe the earlier ones were better.