Ugliest Vintage TV found
 

OK--I think I've found THE ugliest vintage TV.

Not only is it strange, it's disproportionate, the screen looks all wrong at the bottom of such a large TV, you'd need to sit on the floor to enjoy a head-on view, and..hey it's just all wrong!

I've bought and sold ugly sets in the past...but I'm sure this is about the worse set I've seen....boy I wish I was close enough to buy it!


http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=270216636829

Says it's a 19" color set. Looks like earlier B&W cabinet styles to me. :scratch2:

That's a mid 50's General Electric 21 inch B&W, one of the stranger cabinets ever made. At the shop I worked for we used the cabinet of one for a desk. That looks like a nice one but alas too far away and no room...

At least it has storm shutters to cover up the mess when not in use. :D

But I regard with suspicion any set that has the knobs above the tube like that, as it usually bodes a vertical chassis design, where the chassis surrounds the tube neck. Others may differ on this, but my findings were that corner-cutting in design technique (Muntzing) was the hallmark of that genre of chassis. Not always the case (Zenith had some portables with vertical chassis that were good sets), but most vertical-chassis sets I'd encountered I was tempted to alter and improve such as IF stage design, power supply design and the like....

As for the "head down" viewing of such a low screen bear in mind the advantage of reduced glare from windows and lamps in the room with a low-set screen. Also remember that many console sets of earlier vintage actually had the tube aiming slightly downward for that reason.

I don't think its color, either, but Good Gawd Amighty, they sure went to a LOT of trouble to make it that Fugly !!

Hey....the cabinet looks nice!

:puke:

The seller apparently doesn't know beans from apple butter about early television. Maybe some of you have seen that early-style-rectangular format as a polychrome CRT, but I myself have not been so "lucky" as to do so. By the time the color set evolved from the early "roundie" most b&w sets went to the more modern rectangular tube, with the color sets following suit a bit later.... I welcome different opinions on this.... :scratch2:

I dunno; I like the looks. I can see it in the home of an older couple, kids gown up. Furnishings from decades of purchases as they grew together towards a little comfortable life of him coming home from work, she in the kitchen preparing dinner. He changes to his evening clothes, sits in his Lazy Boy and reads the evening edition of the paper to catch up on the news that happened after the morning edition was published. He can smell the cooking. It is 6 o'clock and he turns on the news. The times are good. Dinah Shore is singing the praises of the new Chevrolet.

Dinner is over. Dishes done, he retires to the chair with a good cigar and maybe a little libation and she sits next to him with her knitting, a paid of little booties for their forthcoming 1st grandchild. On the tele, they watch as Jack Benny and Rochester prove Jack is not your average fool.

I dont normally buy sets without a round crt, however this is in my town so I will make an exception for this INCREDIBLY UGLY SET!

Wish me luck!

See you at the ETF convention for the premier of my new movie "The Craft of Picture Tube Rebuilding...A Pilgrimage to HawkEye Picture Tube Mfg."

Bob G.

NO!!!!! I think this one is actually even UGLIER!!!!!

http://sanantonio.craigslist.org/ele/596527613.html

Bof G.

Kinda reminds me of the early Setchell-Carlson gear.... :scratch2:

Gad, those are two UGLY TVs! Must be fraternal twins.

Here is what is possibly the ugliest color TV made (assuming the GE in this thread is actually a B&W set). The Westinghouse 15" set. And like the GE, looks better with the doors closed!

Damn. Those be some fugly-ass tee-vee sets!

Eh, I've seen uglier, though admittedly, not by much...

Picture a TV where the original cabinet was gone, and in its place was a roughly built cabinet made from unfinished plywood and wooden milk crates.

Imagine having to be careful around it so as not to get splinters...

Well, I can't say much. We had a late 50's color Admiral in a shiny black metal cabinet with gold peg legs and gold accents. :puke:

I HAD to bid on it.... I want to own the ugliest TV in the world!

After reviewing the listing, I think I figured it out... here is what the ad says "You are bidding on a 19" GE color TV built into a beautiful cabinet."

I think the original guts are gone, and in place is a 19" color TV.

Matt K.

New insides...?
 

Hey Matt,

You could ask the guy if the internal parts appear original--I suspect they are.

This TV does not appear to have had the CRT replaced with a more modern tube--the old picture tubes have a specific curve, which the new sets do not have...and this really looks like the original CRT is in place.

It might have been replaced in the late 50s or 1960s, but even then, B&W and Color CRTs would not be easily interchangeable, in the same mask.


Of course, if you win, you'll know soon enough!

Harry

"Working", and "color"??

Somebody's full of "black beauties"...

Nice! It seems to be a furniture for office!
Perhaps there is a 21 inches square color tube from 1957 (displayed in ETF site).

Is a "black beauty":tresbon: a capacitor?:scratch2:

Yep, Gianni, it is...An' they sure ain't "Beautiful"...Means you've got a lot of work w/a Soldering Iron to do...replacing all of 'em. A guy told me of a sure-fire way to tell if an old capacitor was bad...Take it out of the radio, TV, whatever in question. Hold it at yr head's level over a trash can. Drop it. If it goes "Bangety-Bang-Bang", "Clankety-Clank-Clank", or something similar when it hits the trash can, it is bad, & needed replacing...

When i will tell you what i do with old capacitors...:D

Hmm current bid is over 50.00.... that's too much for me :) I'm cheap.

I have a question. What do you do with all of these old sets after the digital switchover happens next year? They are basically nonfunctional decorations right? What a shame.............

Not at all, they will still work fine with DVD, Cable, Satellite, or off the air with a converter box.
There might be some issues with the 16:9 format depending on whether the box will allow you to stretch the picture to fit the screen.

They just forgot to turn it over before they took the picture. :D

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/att...1&d=1205167546

It would be tempting to modify the cabinet like that, rotate the yoke...sure as shootin' it's b/w. If it were color it would be one-of-a-kind and worth a fortune. I think the reason it comes across as so unattractive is that we are all so used to looking at the standard "knobs on bottom" style and this is just "wrong". If you grew up with this set in your house you would feel the opposite...maybe. This is a practical design, at least.

For some reason I never come across any GE stuff from this era. Tons of later stuff, though.

There are already stand-alone digital TV tuners in the stores that have channel 3 outputs that will connect to any U.S. TV set and work, just like older cable boxes or VCRs. They cost $50 to $60 each, and you can get two free coupons for $40 off each box. Go to www.dtv2009.gov or call 888-388-2009 to apply for your coupons. You can get the coupons and boxes even if your other TVs are on cable or satellite TV.

Be sure to give this information to all of your friends and family, as well.

In an answer to the question earlier in this thread referring to the chassis location as possibly being wrapped around the CRT....

In my youth, we had a GE set like this. Ours was in a more economy cabinet without doors.

The chassis was installed on a shelf above the CRT. The HV cage looked like a round can installed on the chassis.

Our set had a pair of 8" speakers... one on each side.

How do I know all of this? When we replaced the set in the early 1960's, after years of yearly repairs, it was given to me to tinker with... They didnt really think I could fix it, but I did, and got another year or so out of it before I did take it apart. I remember it having a lone 6AH4GT tube that looked really funky looking thru the back of the set at the glowing chassis.

I remember that the usual repairs on this set were always the same: 1B3GT HV rectifier, and a 6BQ6GT horizontal output. I still have a couple of the dead replacement Tung Sol tubes from this set, too.

I new they were giving the coupons for tuners away. I guess I wrongly assumed that the tuners would be using a more modern connection (s-video or rca plug, f-connector.........) I thought older TV's just had the two terminal 75ohm???? dealy. which now that I think of it there are adapters for that. NEVERMIND!!!!!!!:scratch2:

The pair of screw terminals on older TVs is actually for a 300-ohm line,
not for 75-ohm. Adapters with 75-ohm input and 300-ohm output have
been around since the early days of cable TV. Some fancier ones had
a toggle switch and an extra pair of 300-ohm terminals to allow switching
between cable and antenna.

GE called it a "lowboy" and I was given one identical to the blonde--the one sans bookshelf--when I was 10 or 11. It was then about 20 years old and worked like new. In fact, the indian-giver neighbors took it back "temporarily" for their son who was just getting settled in a new home. I never saw it again--and I still miss it! I do not see these as ugly at all...though the shelves are a little silly.

To the contrary, the shelves were just ahead of their time, GE must have forseen the DVD and made shelves to hold them. :D

What about the Stromberg Carlson console from ?1950? It looked like it was a Frank Lloyd Wright afterthought; parts of it jutted out over top the rest like
some modernistic sculpture in plywood. An exercize in high school woodworking
that got a D--.
Now THAT was an ugly TV set. (reaching for my Nomex under wear... ;^)

I like it , the cabinet seems low to the floor though .
it might get hard to watch after a while .

An' then we have the aggresively ugly Kuba Komet...Beautifully constructed, incredible woodworking, but Lord-A-Mercy....(grin)

Actually I think i remember those things now that you mention it. When I was a wee lad our atari and antenna were hooked uo through one of those slide switch deals. cool.

Makes a great stand for your new TV tho! :banana:

The set listed on Craigslist is almost like the one we had when I was a kid. Ours didnt have the legs under it, but it did have the same knobs, etc.

Those were the days...

I have been looking for the upright mahogany version of that blonde set for years. Anyone know where one can be found? Thanks all!