estate sale finds for 2004
 

This will be my new tv finds thread from estate sales/resale finds. 2004 got a good start with the first estate sale of the year. I dont get a chance to go every saterday, as I periodically work saterdays. However, I found two very nice sets. First, I found a 1977 Zenith 19" chromacolor II chassis 19JC48. Nice cabinet, its like a woodgrain textured plastic, but all black. Had no pic, simple replacement of the vertical output fuse put it back in perfect working order. It even had the original stand with it. Got it for $5 because it was busted. Nice and clean, couldnt pass it up.
Upstairs in the bedroom was a very nice 1967 zenith 20X1C38 in mint condition. Its a colonial cabinet, but what the heck, I dont have anything like this. They need to be saved too. It was actually playing! I couldnt believe it! It was still hooked up to the outdoor antenna cable. Cost me $30. Brought it home, and did a check up on all the tubes, almost all of them had defects, but not serious enought to mess up the set. After HV adjustment and color touchup, the picture is razor sharp. very pleasing to watch, like the chorma II.

picture of the chomaII, works really nice. Had to do a touchup on the static convergence.

The 67 zenith
 

Its got a replacement chormacolor CRT that went it 1-7-77. So it took 10 years to kill the original. Seems like CRTs would only get about 10 years of strong use. The tv was well cared for, but used a bit. All tubes were changed over the years. Typical annoying green halo.

inside
 

The 20X1C38 is probably the best chassis they ever built. Perhaps its good luck, but of the 3 sets with the 20X1C38 chassis, they all worked near perfect when I found them. Looks like the tech that installed the new crt did a nice job of it, all the wires are tied back together with the factory tie wire etc. This tv was in a good clean enviroment all these years, rust free chassis.

picture looks as good as new. The color really shows nice on this one. Looks like I need to adjust the blue dynamic for the right side.

Thought I would also share my first find of the year. Got this Zenith at a thrift store for free. A woman had it in the back of a pick up and was going to donate it. I asked her if I could have it ans she said yes. Her son helped me load it on to my truck. With it not working they would have destroyed the set. Kind of glad I spotted it. Chassis is 25CC50 and it has a 25VAMP22 CRT. It is a tube and transister set. The CRT in the set tests good. Currently the HV is not working. I will have to troubleshoot that this week.

Nice sets posted above. You seem to find some good sets at estate sales. I have found a couple in the past. Not at the rate you are finding them. Good Job!

polaraman

Nice looking sets, guys! :)

Great find polaraman! Thats great you were able to pick it out before the thrift shop got ahold of it. It would have gone straight to the dumpster, even if it worked probably. Resale shops around here "cycle" through the tvs. Basically, it will be on the sales floor for a few weeks, if they dont sell, into the dumpster. Then the next bunch will take their place and so on. TVs are basically impossible to sell at resale shops, as most are non cable ready sets from the 80s with UHF and VHF dial tuners. nobody wants that. I try to go to all the local estate sales every other weekend. WHen I get home from work on fridays, I try to hit the ones I think might be worth it. Thats how I found these two, I went back saterday to pick them up at half price! Lets keep finding them! BTW, the 25CC50 is a 1972 set. It has an IC for the chroma demod. Mostly an all tube set yet, which is good. Let us know how it works out when you start taking it apart.

Very nice sets
 

Doug (drh4683),


I just saw the pics of your latest Zenith finds. They all look as if they are in excellent condition, and the pictures look great as well. :thmbsp: It's great when all one has to do is something simple like replacing a fuse or a tube, etc. to get a set working. I restored many an old set just in that fashion when I was collecting them about 30-some years ago. It has been stated, here in this forum, that the only reason old sets were discarded in the '60s through the '80s was, generally, that the owners bought newer sets with larger pictures, more features, etc., not necessarily because the sets were not working. Those which were inoperable for any reason could often be brought back to life by a simple tube or fuse replacement; in some (an awful lot) of these cases the sets had nothing whatsoever wrong with them. Today, it is all too common to see late model Guide Plus RCAs and those troublesome Goldenith or "GZ" (my terms for today's cross between Gold Star and Zenith) TVs coming off GS's assembly lines in Korea (and RCAs coming from Thomson's own overseas plants) on treelawns and curbs the minute something--anything--goes wrong with them after the warranty expires. The glory days and years of once proud U. S. home-entertainment equipment manufacturers such as the original RCA, Zenith and all the other formerly great names in television and radio (Philco, Admiral, Packard Bell, et al.) are now only memories.

BTW: I'm curious. What station, network, etc. is channel 26 in the Chicago area? I ask this because the picture you took off the screen of one of your Zeniths (the one with the Colonial style cabinet) looks like it was from a public-service or educational cable channel; that and the fact that the person in the picture had a smock on that has "Cleveland Clinic" embroidered on it. I now live in a very small town in Lake County, Ohio about 30 miles from Cleveland, but I grew up in the suburbs, so am very familiar with the Cleveland Clinic. What was the connection between it and Chicago in that program?

Good luck with your "new" Zeniths, Doug. I do wonder, though; where on earth are you keeping all those sets?

polaraman,

I concur wholeheartedly with the comments on your latest find. Those older Zenith TVs are great; I've had a few of them in my time, and now collect small Zenith radios (I have one from '51 in my bedroom and a very nice walnut-cabinet AM/FM from '63 atop the refrigerator in my apartment, which both work--and well).

I did not realize, however, that the set you have was the first Zenith chassis to use an IC as the chroma demodulator. I don't know offhand what vintage that set is, but seeing that it has a UHF tuner it must have been made after April 30, 1964. However, as to the chroma IC, I think this was Zenith's answer to RCA's first use of an IC in its sets in the audio circuit, or perhaps it was the other way around, depending entirely on the vintage of your Zenith (RCA introduced the IC-based audio system in one of its small portables in 1966).

Correction to previous post
 

Doug (drh4683),

I goofed in my reply to your post; for this I apologize. I just took another look at the pic I mentioned in my last post, that had the doctor with a Cleveland Clinic Foundation smock. I saw the small window at the bottom right corner of the screen of your Zenith TV, and it showed "26" all right--but that was 26 degrees (the air temperature at the time in Chicago, no doubt, as there was a degree symbol following the number), not channel 26 as I had originally thought (and was all too quick to post). I guess I'll just have to be a little more careful from now on as to what I say when I respond to a post, making sure of the facts first.

Good luck, again, with your "new" Zenith TVs. I agree; those chassis, especially the 20X1C38, were, as you mentioned, the best the original Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago ever made. (I have relatives who have owned and still own older Zenith televisions, made when the company was still in Chicago; the sets are still going strong.)

No offense meant or intended, but today's "Goldenith/GZ" (my term for today's "Zeniths" made by Gold Star) sets cannot now and never will equal, let alone surpass, the quality of those earlier handwired sets. I'm sure I am not the first one to say this; it has been mentioned many times before in posts to threads on sci.electronics.repair and other electronic servicing message boards.

BTW: I have seen the "green halo" on Zenith CRTs mentioned here quite a bit; it's on one of your sets as well. What causes this?

BTW (2): What is the problem with the CRTs in today's Gold Star/Zenith (Goldenith/GZ) TVs? For that matter, are there any other problems with the chassis in these sets (poor construction, bad solder joints, etc.) that has given the new "Zenith" such a rotten reputation?

Thanks for reading.

Kind regards,

The green halo is caused by the aging of the material that bonds the safety glass to the CRT. It's similar to the cataract problem common to RCAs. It could be repaired by removing the safety glass and cleaning out all th ebonding material.

The recent Zenith CRTs that failed were made from 1993 to about 1995. From what I saw, they had a 100% failure rate within 2-3 years of normal use. At this time, Zenith was still a company, but LG partially owned the company. The chassis in these sets looked very similar to previous Zenith sets, but performed much worse. HV regulation and the overall look of the picture was much worse for some reason. I think Zenith became completely owned by LG in about 1999. Shortly after this LG closed the Zenith CRT plant. I think LG designs all the sets with the Zenith name now.

From about 1995-1999 the quality of Zenith's CRTs improved a little, but they still had a very short life.

I have to wonder if LG intentionally trashed Zenith so they could buy the name cheaply and not have trouble shutting down all the US engineering and manufacturing.

I personally think Zenith was still making reasonably good products right up to when the CRTs started failing in 1993 just after LG gained a large influence in the company.

Hey jeff, no problem. That channel you were seeing is channel 32 WFLD chicago. Luckily, we have tons of UHF channels here, so the sets get good use throughout the entire dial. I always felt the 20X1C38 to be one of the better chassis. Ive got alot of zenith sets, with different chassis types. Of the tube type chassis, this one uses the fewest filter caps, no 6BK4 shunt regulator (6HS5 pulse regulator). I have 3 sets with this chassis, they work well.

Estate sale finds on 1-23-04
 

Got this 1961 Magnavox B/W console today (432 traube, clarendon hills, IL) for FREE! It was still in the living room! Its hard to immagine the people that lived in that home actually had the same TV in the living room since 1961! It didnt work of course. The estate sale people were actually upset that I wanted to take it on the spot. They had alot of silverware junk on top of it, and the house was jammed with people!
Got it home, got the dust out of it, had an IF and vertical problem. CRT socket needed to be resoldered, needed a resistor in the vertical size circuit to get the picture to extend, and a coupling cap from the 2nd to 3rd IF was open. A bunch of tubes needed changing as well. The interesting part about this set, its a 27" screen! Its HUGE! Never seen a B/w set this big of screen before. Looks nice

picture looks good now. When It had the IF problem, the raster was blank and you would hear that cool blerping sound from the speaker. Dont know why, always liked that sound. CRT is pretty strong too.

back of the set looks cool. I could see the back from the picture window before I walked in!

"Blerping" sound - 1961 Maggie
 

Hi Doug (drh4683),

This is only a hunch, but that sound you were hearing from your '61 Magnavox TV's speaker may have been something oscillating somewhere--maybe one of the video IF stages or even the 4.5-MHz sound detector went into regeneration, but it's difficult to say from this distance.

However, your set's picture looks good now. It's great when you can get an old set like this working that well. I haven't seen any of the early '60s Magnavox sets, especially with large screens (except one white French Provincial remote set), on this forum lately until now; most sets with the Magnavox name on them are made by Phillips today, and are of much lower quality than the originals--in fact, from what I've seen and read, the newer Maggies are built so cheaply (offshore, like everything else these days) it isn't funny. No wonder these sets (as well as the Thomson-built RCAs and GS-built Zeniths) wind up in the trash so often these days when they go bad (especially after a CRT failure.)


One question, though. Why on earth would anyone keep a TV set from 1961 in their living room for 43 years if the set isn't working, and possibly hadn't been working for years or decades? :dunno: What did they use that Maggie for, anyway? You said there was a lot of "silverware junk" on top of it. I can only guess. . . .

BTW, the loose CRT base, not to mention the other circuit problems you found, doesn't surprise me in a set that old. It's a good thing you cemented it back on before it came off entirely, as when you lose the base on one of these tubes, you have a big job on your hands if you have to replace it. I once had a Philco Microgrid "390" 21-inch b&w console with the same problem, only the base came off in my hand one day while I was working on the chassis. I managed to solder the leads from the chassis to the wire stubs at the end of the CRT neck and get the set working for awhile, but eventually one lead broke off, shorted across a couple others, and of course it ruined the tube immediately. :( I don't know what it did to the rest of the set, but at that point it didn't matter anymore as I had to get rid of it anyway (I moved a few months later, so had to get rid of every one of my old TVs, including that Philco and a 23" Zenith b&w console, in a hurry). :(


Kind regards,

Found a space command 500 table set
 

Just picked this one out off the curb a few days ago. Its a 23DC14 all steel cabinet "chromacolor" set with space command 500. Couldnt believe it was a space command. Gotta fix it, but its going to take lots of work to bring it back.

1968 Magnavox remote set
 

Got this remote set from dwight, had to finish off the restoration. he put a new fly in it last year. Had to work on the remote chassis, convergence, convergence yoke got replaced, as the original was craked and broken. What is so unique about this set is that it has motorized continuous UHF tuning. An inductive pick up off the IF coil (the inductive pick up is directly proportional to signal strength) in which the continuous uhf tuner stops as soon as the signal strength reaches its peak point to its tuned circuit. Very cleaver, and works perfectly. Basically, a removable wire loop over an IF serves a a secondary winding like a transformer. When the signal is strong enough, a voltage is generated in the lead which conducts a transistor to cutoff shuting off the channel selector relay. Thus the channel stops. Its an entirely basic, all electronic method of channel selection for both VHF and UHF. This cleaver set up eliminates star wheels, mechanical adjustments etc. All motorized color and tint controls. However, the set for some unfortunate reason has a volume stepper like the zeniths. I was never too impressed with volume steppers as you have 3 selectable volume ranges, and those depend on how the volume control itself it set. I always wondered why zenith never advanced to electronic ultrasonics. I love zeniths space command sets, but they are not as practical as rca's and mag's electronic. RCA in perticular is best, as you have a motorized volume control as well as motorized color/hue.
Im impressed with how nice the picture looks after servicing. The picture is so clean and crisp and the colors are outstanding. As an interesting note, I have observed that the frech provincial sets are most likely to have a remote option, as those who purchased this style of set were a bit more wealthy and could easily afford it.

you can see inside the set is crammed with wires and chassis, all of which had to be removed in order to service the crt.

when I had the chassis out, it got cleaned up and all tubes were replaced as nessisary. In this photo, you see the remote controlled tuner assy. Notice all the motors. That TMA weights a ton for its size!

The control point
 

Here is the dial panel. All "motorized" tuner fuctions are performed by buttons along the top of the panel. UHF up, UHF down, VHF, and volume stepper.

I have found a couple of those type sets, just in the mahogany and pecan cabinets though. I had to re-tune another Mag. remote to operate the functions as the original was lost. One time I was thinking about adapting either the color or tint motor functions to adjust the volume, as I hardly ever have to change the tint/color, but never did it. I have found that these Mag. sets have some of the best pictures, beating out RCA...unfortunately 2 of mine have weak CRT's. That's the only bad part about a durable, well built set...people play it till the CRT gets so weak they can barely see the picture.

Zenith did make an ultrasonic remote control w/more than 3 volume steps, in 1979. It is electronic, battery powered, not the tone rods. There is also a manual volume pot on the set to set the maximum desired volume level. You can still hear the volume change by steps but there must be 10 or 15 steps from min. to max. volume so you have pretty good control.

I know zenith made a very advanced ultrasonic remote for a short time. It had digital tuning with on screen display. The remote had a full keypad, power, volume and mute.

Some more finds
 

Picked up this nice 1972 Motorola quasar. Needed some minor work to bring it back to good working order. Has instant on, so the crt got years of useless burning of the filaments, which of course weakened it pretty good.

INside the quasar
 

The inside is pretty nice. Its dated july 11 1972, all boards are dated 72. ONly a 4 tube set, for the deflection circuits.

1973 Sharp portable
 

This set actually appears to be a hitachi, before the name "sharp" was bought by matsushita (panasonic). Its a 7 tube set, and works great. Its actually a pretty well built set, solid VHF tuner.

1967 RCA victor ctc22, EJ507W
 

Picked up a ctc22 ej507 known as the "headliner". I have the other ctc22, the ej505, which is basically the same set with different color cabinet and knobs. Has an IF problem and horizontal width problems.

Hi Doug,
I used to have a Motorola/Quasar just like yours. I had it for years until the video board went bad in it. Since i couldnt locate another board and the crt was weak (yep, same problem) it went to the dumpster. I wish i had it back now because i stumble across the boards occasionally now along with the crt's. I had a Sharp like yours also. Was always a good player and it ended up at a relatives when their tv went finally gave up the ghost. As far as i know , they still have it and its still playing well. They use it in their bedroom hooked to a cable box so they have remote. Nice to see you found another CTC22..they are one of my favorite RCA portables.
Tony

Instant On problems and hazards
 

Doug (drh4683),

That is exactly why I never liked the "instant-on" feature of many early '70s TVs. As you noted, it takes hours off the lives of the tube filaments and weakens the CRT a lot, once the set has been constantly on for a few years. Another reason I didn't care for instant-on is that it could be a fire hazard, as the tube filaments in sets with this feature are on around the clock--whether or not the main power switch is on (in other words, the set is never completely off unless one physically unplugs it from the wall socket). Yet another reason I did not like instant-on is the fact that lightning strikes near the power line to which the set is connected would often damage (short) the instant-on diode, which is connected directly across the main switch. With the diode shorted, it is now impossible to turn the set off with the power switch. The only way to turn off the set in this case would be to pull the plug. I heard of a lot of people who just left their sets in that condition when the diode shorted, or else if they knew how to do it, they would take the back off and cut the diode out of the circuit. The TV worked just as well without the diode as with it.

Nice sets Doug! I love your "new estate sale finds" posts. I bet I know where that Quasar is going!

Jeff-the story about the diode finally explains a story a girl in school told the class about 20 years ago-that lightning struck their house tearing up the tv set, and then it would not shut off. I never could figure it out, for some reason.

Re: Found a space command 500 table set
 

Doug, I'm curious. Does that set work at all in its present condition? I ask this because of your comment to the effect that it will take "a lot of work" to get it going again. From your description, it sounds to me like the set has sustained some rather major damage, such as from a shorted CRT, a lightning strike, etc.

The set is beyond restoration unfortunatly. I picked it up an night, so I really didnt get to see what it looked like untill I brought the disaster into my basment. You be the judge...............
Is scrap.

As you can see the TV is basically rusting away thanks to it being kept outside for however many years. What a dissapointment, and a space command on top of it. The bottom grille peice was missing. When the TV was sitting outside, it sank into the mud, mud caked underneath the chassis. The set went to the junk pile. Only kept the sc chassis and the convergence board.

Wow :eek: looks a little like the Titanic!
The CRT was bad too?

Sorry to hear that. :(

I just looked at the pics of that set's chassis. You're right; the TV is junk, except for the two components you salvaged from it (the Space Command receiver and convergence board). I wouldn't have tried to plug in a set that rusted out, especially after it had been sitting out in snow, rain, you name it, for heaven only knows how long. Who knows what shorts may have been under the chassis or how many shorted/ruined components there might be? You might have had a year's worth of repairs to do on that set alone.

Hope you find another set like that one with SC. Because your neighborhood is the former home of Zenith in Chicago, another such set (or one like it) should appear at a curbside near you eventually.

BTW, I'm a bit surprised you didn't save the tubes from that chassis--or maybe you did (you didn't mention in your last post what you did with them). When I was collecting old TVs 30+ years ago, if I had a set I couldn't repair (which happened every now and again), I would pull the tubes and salvage every usable component I could find. By the time I moved and left my hometown in 1999 I had several boxes full of parts salvaged from old TVs and radios over the years. Unfortunately, I had to give them all up when I moved to my present residence, a small one-bedroom apartment. These places just aren't conducive to repair work, although one AK member mentioned having a collection of old TVs in his apartment late last year.

Again, I wish you good luck finding another SC500 TV.

Kind regards,

The worst one I've ever brought back was this 15" Zenith. It took a lot of time with a wire brush wheel. Amazingly, it did work as I found it after replacing a few cracked tubes.

It hasn't given me any trouble in almost 2 years of regular use.

Doug, did you try to power up the set...probably would've got a raster and sound! Those Zeniths are tough!

Jeff, could you have rented a storage locker to store your extra equipment in? I stored a player piano, school bus, etc. at one for a while till I could find myself a house where I live now.
When I lived in an apartment I had about 50 Tv's in there--even removed the doors on the bedroom and closet so I could get more in. Had to haul those consoles up the outside staircase by myself!