There's a TV from my youth that I'm halfheartedly looking for, and it just occurred to me that someone here may know what model number to look for or a picture of the set in question.

So...back when I was a youngster, my mother had this red plastic cased Sylvania black and white TV set. It had a black plastic front bezel which included the tuning and volume knobs. These were located on the right side of the set, like most TVs with knob-style tuners. The speaker was below, with a black bar grille. She bought the TV new in the 1970s.

As I remember, the volume knob was silver with an inset red sticker. It had 300 ohm twinlead connections on the rear cabinet, near the tuner. There were also built in collapsible and swiveling "rabbit ear" antennas. It was a solid state set with a 19" picture tube.

My mother ended up donating the TV to charity, and I've never seen another one like it.

There's a TV from my youth that I'm halfheartedly looking for, and it just occurred to me that someone here may know what model number to look for or a picture of the set in question.

So...back when I was a youngster, my mother had this red plastic cased Sylvania black and white TV set. It had a black plastic front bezel which included the tuning and volume knobs. These were located on the right side of the set, like most TVs with knob-style tuners. The speaker was below, with a black bar grille. She bought the TV new in the 1970s.

As I remember, the volume knob was silver with an inset red sticker. It had 300 ohm twinlead connections on the rear cabinet, near the tuner. There were also built in collapsible and swiveling "rabbit ear" antennas. It was a solid state set with a 19" picture tube.

My mother ended up donating the TV to charity, and I've never seen another one like it.

I could never understand why anyone except vintage TV collectors would want TVs that don't work on today's DTV standards. Your mother's TV may be at whatever charity she donated it to for years, with no takers, because of that. What use to most folks is an old TV that gets nothing but snow? :scratch2: Most people outside of our hobby don't realize that vintage/antique televisions do not work with today's digital standards and do not know enough about old sets to realize that one should never simply plug in and turn on an antique/vintage TV without replacing at least the power supply filter capacitors. I sometimes wonder how many people have done just that and wound up destroying or severely damaging what might have been an excellent TV, just because they did not know that replacing capacitors, again especially PS filters (which in 50+-year-old televisions are almost always defective or close to it), is a must when restoring old sets. :scratch2:

Hmmm...my browser barfed without warning, so I guess I get to do this all over again. :grumpy:

I don't understand your response to my posting.

I could never understand why anyone except vintage TV collectors would want TVs that don't work on today's DTV standards.
I suppose that's true enough, but it's far from unusual knowledge how to obtain or use a DTV converter box. I'm certainly quite capable of doing that, and I have a few of the boxes sitting around idle. Since watching network TV from any source isn't something I really bother with any longer, I could also hook up a VCR or DVD player to an RF modulator with ease.

Your mother's TV may be at whatever charity she donated it to for years, with no takers, because of that.
If this was recent history, and if I thought it had been donated to an area charity, I'd go right straight to the organization in question and buy it back, if it was still available. I'm talking about an event that transpired in the mid-90s...maybe 1993 or 1994.

As it is, my mother gave the TV to a church group. This group took all of their donations to poor people located in the more remote areas of the Appalachian Mountains. I'm confident that the TV went along with everything else.

Given the presence of low power analog translator stations in that part of the world and the availability of DTV converters, it wouldn't surprise me to hear that the TV was still in use somewhere. I can never know, and I doubt very much that the set in question could possibly be found. (Stranger things have happened, though.)

I sometimes wonder how many people have done just that and wound up destroying or severely damaging what might have been an excellent TV [...]
While I'm sure this has happened, I'm enough of an optimist to believe that most reasonably inteligent people would hesitate to plug in any electrical device that had been stored for decades and often in poor conditions.

I'd have my doubts that the capacitors in any TV from the later 1970s are as bad as those seen in older TV sets, though they could certainly be weak and not performing to specification, especially with a disused set. No matter...I'm equipped to replace capacitors and power up an old set in a careful manner with a dim bulb tester or a small variable autotransformer.

I made this posting hoping that someone here might have some Sylvania TV "memorabilia"...old catalogs showing the TVs that were available for sale during a certain time frame, advertisments, or that sort of thing. Maybe I'll stumble across such things in my travels here. Maybe I should ask the thrift stores that I frequent if they ever see any black and white table TVs? Many here have no shortage of CRT TVs and still take donations of them.

In any case, here's an image of the set drawn as I remember it. (This is where I was when the browser crashed the first time, as I selected the image tags. Being smarter this time around, I've got a copy of this post now!)

http://www.walshcomptech.com/sylvania-tv.GIF

If anyone knows when Sylvania sold a TV that looked similar to the above, and what model it may be, I'd love to know!

uxwbill,

I don't see the sketch, but I am wondering if perhaps the set could have been smaller than 19"... most of the brightly colored B/W sets that I have seen were more on the order of 12"... a bright red 19" B/W Sylvania is likely quite an unusual set.

I totally understand why one would want a set remembered from childhood... I actually have my first TV, a small portable RCA B/W and we still have one analog VHF low power station left in town. :)

jr

I don't see the sketch
I just fixed the image. Evidently it got lost in the "browser burp" as well, though I never knew it as the browser had it cached. Forcing a complete reload of the page revealed the problem.

but I am wondering if perhaps the set could have been smaller than 19"... most of the brightly colored B/W sets that I have seen were more on the order of 12"... a bright red 19" B/W Sylvania is likely quite an unusual set.
I am certain that it was a 19" TV. The entire cabinet was red plastic, except for the plastic bezel around the CRT and controls. It was certainly distinctive.

My mother bought the TV when she was working for GTE's telephone directory division. She said that employees were allowed to choose from various TV models and purchase them at a slight discount.

I totally understand why one would want a set remembered from childhood... I actually have my first TV, a small portable RCA B/W and we still have one analog VHF low power station left in town. :)
It would be nice if there were any analog TV stations left here. Still having your "first" TV is always nice.

While the Sylvania TV is no longer here, I do have my dad's 19" Sony Trinitron. He bought it new in the late 1970s, and it still works perfectly to this day. The only failure has been that of the glue holding various trim pieces in place.

I also understand the "childhood TV" thing. I really wanna find the little 13" Trinitron with the woodgrain case and handle on top I remember as a kid. Saw one that reminded me of it on ebay as a "KV 12xx" or some similar model. This woulda been around 1978 or so.

So actually, I guess it woulda been a 12" by the Sony model number....unless there was an odd 13"~14" set. I know 100% it wasn't a 19. For some reason I really remember it's tactile feel of turning the channels...and the volume knob was a "pull on/push off". I was like 13 years old, and that one small Sony was our household set. For some reason it was in the DINING room. Even at 13 years old or so, I recognized this set as having a WAY sharp, colorful picture compared to friend's other TV sets.

UPDATE:

Did a quick "image search" on Google....and pretty sure what THIS guy found "kicked to the curb" (OMG..so SAD!!), is exactly the set I would CHERISH if I ever found one:
http://dumpsterdivetreasures.blogspot.com/2010/10/vintage-70s-sony-trinitron-tv-found.html

Jeffhs is Gislan! He is the donkey trader who attempts causing all to be looked on as a lower caste for loving old televisons sets! :nono: this is what he storymouths again and again, until becomes truth in many and old TV are set for destroy. I condemn Jeffhs for destroying! A lover of serpents, trader in whores! An old TV shall shame you in public square before women!

I set ways for loving old TVs of long ago!:tears:

This guy is so fresh! Will you be my boyfriend sanjarali?

Put sanjarali on your ignore list and report him to a moderator. I did both. The guy is only trying to make trouble.

Would somebody please tell me what the hell gislan is???

Why? He is seriously a breath of fresh air from the non stop repetitive run-on nonsense.
Seeing a post by sanjarail inspired me to login for the first time is 3 or so months.

ugggh..... BAKA!

Feldercarb! And to think I live in the same town as Sanjaya...

Did a quick "image search" on Google....and pretty sure what THIS guy found "kicked to the curb" (OMG..so SAD!!), is exactly the set I would CHERISH if I ever found one:
http://dumpsterdivetreasures.blogspot.com/2010/10/vintage-70s-sony-trinitron-tv-found.html
Wow. That's a great looking little TV set. I really like the design. And it just amazes me what people throw away. That's a topic for another day. I might well be able to go on for pages and pages about it.

Jeffhs is Gislan! [...] An old TV shall shame you in public square before women!
Uh...I'm not sure I get where this is going either. While I disagree with and don't totally understand Jeffhs's post, I've got no hard feelings. Everyone's got a right to their opinion, and I explained where I was coming from.

This guy is so fresh! Will you be my boyfriend sanjarali?
Shouldn't you be on a dating site? :D :smoke:

Unless maybe there's a place on VK for that... :scratch2:

Would somebody please tell me what the hell gislan is???
Sorry, I don't know the reference. Inferring from context clues...I'd say maybe some interpretation or form of a "devil" or other "dark" character.

I'm still hoping that someone could tell me about the TV I'm hoping to find. There has to be one out there somewhere...I'd just like to get a better idea of what I'm looking for...and get this thread back on track. :nono:

Could the set you're looking for possibly be this Panasonic?

It could have been sold under different brands also.

I also think Panasonic and Sylvania when thinking "bright and colorful" cabinet. Do see some real bright weird stuff from Sony, but these were more JDM and MUCH smaller "micro" sets.

Pretty sure I've never seen a TV over 12" though that was a colored cabinet. Were they to appeal to college dorms? or was this just a generally 60's-70's thing. (Do remember I grew up in Hong Kong....so I'm not REALLY all that familiar with 60s-70s here...but from what I saw on....ummmm....TV ).

Could the set you're looking for possibly be this Panasonic?

It could have been sold under different brands also.
No, I'm sure it's not that set. The set wasn't quite that rounded, had different tuning dials and a speaker grille made up of bars.

I also think Panasonic and Sylvania when thinking "bright and colorful" cabinet. Do see some real bright weird stuff from Sony, but these were more JDM and MUCH smaller "micro" sets.

Pretty sure I've never seen a TV over 12" though that was a colored cabinet. Were they to appeal to college dorms? or was this just a generally 60's-70's thing. (Do remember I grew up in Hong Kong....so I'm not REALLY all that familiar with 60s-70s here...but from what I saw on....ummmm....TV ).

Red and orange (as well as mixtures of these colors) were very popular colors for TV cabinets and other things in the 1960s and '70s. I grew up in that time frame and saw many such colored cabinets, etc. Also popular during that era was a color scheme called "tie-dye", which was a combination of red, yellow and at least one other color that escapes me at the moment. Tie-dyed shirts in particular were extremely popular in the late 1960s and '70s as well.

Tie-die TV set would have likely been VERY annoying, but certainly collectable :-P

I do see orange and red sets come up on ebay pretty often. ALL from mostly the 70's, but DAMN!! Those things start to command some REAL high prices. They tend to rally RIGHT at the end of an auction......or they ALREADY have a high "buy it now" because it's being sold at a premium, intended as a movie prop.

For the most part, I would like SEEING them, but space really prevents me from collecting 9" sets. I do have the one Quasar "hard luck" set I rescued...and LOVE the homely little thing, but I can't have like ten of these around. I'm already closing in on the big fifty as far as sets sitting around between the front room and the bedroom where the "collection" part is. Almost ALL "micros" of course except for a couple briefcases.

I do want ONE small tube set though...sort of a "masterpiece" for the front room. Sometimes I imagine having the room for a Predicta (the smaller one)...or maybe the "pedestal" Predicta. I have only seen ONE before, and it was a dead one in a barber shop (and it's GONE now...sad). I could have sworn I saw a RED predicta on ebay even!

Keep refreshing this thread from time to time, eventually one will turn up. I do believe you, that the set was orange and a Sylvania. I do have a 19" Magnavox which is white, if I remember right. (been in storage, just wait, I'll look at it next time and it will be some other color!) One way to narrow it down would be to leaf through Sams Photofacts from that era; another would be factory sales/service literature. I don't recall having much of the latter for 70s Sylvania stuff. Hmmm...I do have some Philco books from when they were part of GTE, and those would have been pretty much identical, probably the same cabinets? Have to take a look.