Finally found a CTC40
 

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Wow,

Does that bring back memories, growing up we had a CTC 40 in a different cabinent style, ours was in constant use from when my grandfather purchased it in 1970 until 1989 and occasional use till 95 when the CRT was totally toast.. I will never forget the looks of the back of that chassis.

You scored a great set!

Matt

the twa ambassador lounge at port columbus had the same back in the early 90s.i worked as a serviceman for fountain beverage company.when they called,i was the only tech who would do an airport call.same cabinet!it was working as late as 1998,my last call there.

Hello nice find rca had some of the best color sets around I use to have 2 of the same sets ctc40 same exact cabinet style as yours I sold both of mine to some one from the convention in 2005...Timothy

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It does seem odd that with that much space on the side they would use those 2 puny speakers.

Looks like it will be a great candidate for restoration. Did RCA ever make a "Black matrix" Delta gun sub for the 25XP22?

Matt

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If you replace the speakers, be aware that the speaker magnets may cause purity issues.

I havent seen a CTC-40 in many years. Rebuilt several tuners in the ones I did see...

I noticed that the tube bought in 1986 is a "long life" one, not a "lifetime" tube, and it has a 90-day warranty. I wonder if that is about when RS changed their tube warranty.

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Wow! Looks nice, congratulations. The condition looks good too.

In 1986 I replaced all the tubes in a 1961 Hallicrafters SX-110 & got 'em all at Radio Shack in Bellflower, CA. This was around September of that year. All the tubes were Lifetime Gold tubes with the gold lettering on them. So they must've had two separate lines of tubes during the 1980s. I can remember going to the local Fay's Drug Store in Syracuse, NY in the late 1970s when they still had a tube tester kiosk near the entrance. The lower compartment was stocked with the most common Sylvania & GE tubes that people would typically need. I bought some tubes right then & there for our 1962 Magnavox TV(24" B&W, French Provincial cabinet), as with Radio Shack you had to order the tubes & they would call you when they arrived at the store for pickup.

I don't know when radio shack stopped selling tubes; but, I got some from them in the early '90's. By then, no tubes were stocked. They all had to be ordered and the ones I got came in a blue "long life" carton with the type number written in ink on the end of the box.

I had the same experience... between 1992-1995. They would send them to me in the mail... in the blue boxes. It certainly wasn't cheap buying tubes from Radio Shack!

It didn't take long for me to realize that there were much cheaper tube sources out there. When I was getting them, I was a 12-13 year old kid and all I knew was that the RS catalog still advertised that tubes were available. Their prices were probably high because they really didn't want to be in the tube business and if they made the prices high enough, people would take their business elsewhere. Then, they could discontinue the sale of tubes because there wasn't enough interest.

I graduated Syracuse University in 1978, but I didn't step off campus much at all. No Fay's or other chains within walking distance. There was the occasional hamfest though.

I didn't have a TV set in my dorm room, I was more a radio listener then. And only 4 TV channels in Syracuse then.

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Wow... that looks sooo nice! It really cleaned up well, and now looks like new!

That set looks great!

indeed that is a hansom set. I wonder what was wrong with consumers that traded in something that nice looking for fugly crap in the late 70's and then BPC's....

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Perhaps the sets didn't work, and the owner(s) did not want the old TV taking up room in the basement (or wherever they stored the old one when they bought new). When all TV went digital in June 2009, people had almost no choice but to get a flat screen, unless they wanted to use a converter box with the old set (as VK member Bryan, bgadow, did with his TVs, rather than getting cable). Many perfectly good old CRT TVs (in many cases, in very handsome wood cabinets) wound up on curbs after the DTV transition, true to the predictions made by many, or, rather, the scare tactics stating that all NTSC TVs would go black and be useless after the transition went into effect.

As much as we may dislike their looks, nowadays Chinese/Japanese/Pacific Rim built TVs are the rule. We may never again see large consoles as were so popular in the NTSC era, although a few such sets (many in the hands of vintage TV collectors or people who do not want to spend money for cable) are still being used with converter boxes and antennas or are on cable, with a cable box. Most people outside our hobby do not know the first thing about repairing old sets, so when the old TV develops a potentially serious problem that will cost a small fortune (!) to repair, the old set is usually trashed and replaced with a flat screen. That's just the way it is these days.

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Congratulations!