http://cgi.ebay.com/VINTAGE-MOTOROLA-H23TS-A914-C12-COLOR-TELEVISION-TV_W0QQitemZ6270113796QQcategoryZ3638QQrdZ1QQcmdZV iewItem

damn shame its in chicago. That set has a nice lookin cabinet, and would be well worth it if the chassis and CRT was good.

Somebody here was looking for one of those... Anybody remember who? I'll post this also in the TV classified. Looks like a nice one (a nice version of the worst color TV???)

Well, it was good enough for Dean Torrence of the 60s surfer band Jan & Dean. (I fixed one for him in the 80s)

Charles

I wonder if one of these could be made to make a decent picture with a different picture tube? All I have ever seen had shot CRT's, and I've heard quite a few rumors they were that way from day 1. As I recall these have a solder dipped point-to-point wired chassis like a Zenith. I think they have that bizarre one-tube color decoder like an Olympic. I wonder how that circuit would work if the component values were carefully selected and so on.

Did any of you guys ever try to squeeze accurate color out of one of these things?

John

I wish I could have been you then! I would have loved to meet Dean Torrence.
I love most people from the past and especially those who can accurately remember the '50's, '60's, and '70's.
Could you tell us the whole story of how you got the call. What his place was like. What was he like? Was he smoking weed? I seem to recall Jan was the one who crashed the Vette at deadman's curve? Why would he have had such a cheap old TV back then? Did you ask any good questions? Did you hang out and look at his photographs? What else was in his house?
Anything you could share would be great.
I would have tried to hang out with him!

I wish I could have been you then! I would have loved to meet Dean Torrence.
I love most people from the past and especially those who can accurately remember the '50's, '60's, and '70's.
Could you tell us the whole story of how you got the call. What his place was like. What was he like? Was he smoking weed? I seem to recall Jan was the one who crashed the Vette at deadman's curve? Why would he have had such a cheap old TV back then? Did you ask any good questions? Did you hang out and look at his photographs? What else was in his house?
Anything you could share would be great.
I would have tried to hang out with him!


This was in the early 80s... I was working part time after school for Harvey's TV in West LA. They get a lot of celebrity calls because they're located in that area. The TV was in the provincial cabinet with doors, and was HEAVY. So I was along on the pickup and delivery the first time. Evidently, Dean had unloaded the TV to his dad, at a house on one of the streets just west of Century City off Olympic Bl; maybe Benecia Ave. It was a typical 1930s 3 bedroom house, with 60s furniture. Nothing fancy, but $1,000,000 these days due to zipcode. I never met Dean, only the Dad. Dean had bought the set new, I think, and he paid for the repairs since it pooped out on Dad right away. Harvey's Xeroxed Dean's check and kept the copy, for a little collection of such. Dean was there and did hand out an autograph on a subsequent visit, but I wasn't along on that one. In the end, they gutted the cabinet and put a 23" Chromacolor II in there.... A wise decision after the Torrence doorbell began to overheat with all the Motorola repair visits :thumbsdn:

Charles

Charles,
That's a cool story. Thanks. I would have loved to see that house. I bet alot of stuff there including the Moto were purchased with Dean's original music money.
Was it a remote control set? Did it have a real good picture when u fixed it?
What kind of cars were at his house? As a teen did you think it was cool to be there or did you think he was a washed-up old man like most teens would think?
Thanks, John

Charles,
That's a cool story. Thanks. I would have loved to see that house. I bet alot of stuff there including the Moto were purchased with Dean's original music money.
Was it a remote control set? Did it have a real good picture when u fixed it?
What kind of cars were at his house? As a teen did you think it was cool to be there or did you think he was a washed-up old man like most teens would think?
Thanks, John

It was a nonremote set, as I recall. Also can't remember any cars in particular. I was a Beach Boys fan, so I knew who Jan & Dean were as a contemporary band to the Beach Boys, and I guess I was always a bit fascinated with celebrities at that age. But as a nerd, I was probably the MOST excited by fixing two sets for astronaut Buzz Aldrin :nerd: .

Then it was fun to hoist a big old metal Zenith over a row of Ferraris in the garage of Bond producer Cubby Broccoli... Or yell to at Motley Crue's Vince Neil for screwing up the convergence on bandmember Robbie Crane's Panasonic projection set in the early 90s. Or when I fixed a VCR from Ronald Reagan's post-presidency Century City office. Looking back on all that, it was fun at times to be a TV man. But I had enough I guess.

On the subject of celebrity housecalls, I have to say that the kindest and most non-stuck up of any that I met would be the late TV actor Don DeFore (Ozzie & Harriet, Hazel), and the other would be the late Martha Raye. Those two stand out as just plain nice people. And Conrad Bain (Mr. Drummond in Diff'rent Strokes) took it in good fun when I rang his doorbell and demanded to know why HE answered the door and not Mrs. Garrett :lmao:

Charles

That Motorola set still sports the original 23EGP22 CRT, as evidenced by the anode on the side of the tube. This would definitely indicate that it is the original, as the 23EG was SO bad that Motorola used to supply a kit to replace them with a 25AP22. The 23EGP22 was the first widely used rectangular CRT, found mostly in Admirals, Magnavoxes, Westinghouses, and Motorolas.

Unfortunately, not all sets had room in the cabinet for this slightly larger tube. Large consoles such as this one weren't a problem though, which is why I believe that this would be the original tube.

Considering the history of the 23EGP22, I'd bet it's no good. Even if the emission checks OK, those tubes displayed THE WORST color I've ever seen in my life.

I hope this info help those considering purchase of the set to make an informed decision before doing so.

Thank you for the input! I have heard similar things about those earlier Motorola color rectangular sets. A good friend of mine, Ed Callahan of St. Petersburg, Fla., sold them new and did not like them at all. He did like the solid state sets that followed.
In spite of the many reasons to not want it I would love to get it just to see if it is one of the only original 23EGP22's that would work properly. I love to get stuff that is just as it was when it was new and that set seems about as close to all original as you could ever find. I think it is well worth the trouble to collect it but I cannot get it because of my budget.


I find it very interesting that people bought those sets when it is very clear that they did not function well to begin with. Is that because of successful advertising combined with Motorola's reputation of being a high-level company? I have heard nothing but bad things about those sets.

The set wasn't bad at all, and in fact was carried over for several years after being a direct spinoff from the earlier roundies. I don't ever remember a bad Motorola chassis.

That lousy CRT is solely responsible for the poor reputation of that set. One of the reasons they sold was because they were rectangular, and had thinner cabinets than a roundie. When the CRTs were new, they looked "OK", but OK was about it. For reasons which I never knew, this tube was not rebuildable, and NO ONE supplied it as an all new replacement beyond 1966-67. If you asked the distributor for a 23EGP22, you got a 25AP22 and a mounting kit. Period.

That lousy CRT is solely responsible for the poor reputation of that set.


And the 23EGP22 didn't even make a nice KABOOM in the hopper of the garbage truck the way a roundie did :D

Charles

I think they have that bizarre one-tube color decoder like an Olympic. I wonder how that circuit would work if the component values were carefully selected and so on.

Did any of you guys ever try to squeeze accurate color out of one of these things?

John


You could NOT get really good color out of the one-tube "SODPIL" (Self-Oscillating Detecting Phase Injection Lock) as they called it, becuase there was insufficient G-Y gain due to its being taken off the cathode of that tube. When you turned the hue control, the greens could be made to go from olive to bluish-green, but a real strong green was impossible. Of course, it made green faces less likely too. Some chassis using the tube had a third color control ("tint") that adjusted the R-B balance to compensate for differences in the DC on the two plates. You could adjust this even on black and white programs to get a sepia or blue-tone image.