Scored a rare, huge, and HEAVY DuMont.....
 

Told you that Buffalo NY was DuMont country!

Good God almighty, this thing weighs more than a lawn tractor.

I'm now the proud owner of a Dumont Sherwood RA-101! The guy I bought it from rescued it from a huge garbage pile, and we loaded it in my van from the 6th floor of a theater company in downtown Buffalo. He assumed it was used as a stage prop, but there's no way someone would buy a monster like this for just that.

It's got to weigh at least 300 lb. At the very least. and FORTY FOUR tubes.

Unfortunately, it's too big for my house and will be up for sale soon. Picture tube seems to have decent emission.

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/dumont_...d_ra_101a.html

From the radiomuseum website: "Several Westminster sets are known to have survived; it is unknown whether any of the other versions can still be found today. "

I assume that I have something rare and great in hand :D. I have NEVER seen such a well built monster outside of ETF.

These are the pics from the Craigslist listing. I'll take some better ones when I can recruit a few neighbors to help me lift it out of the van and on to furniture dollies. Complete with both backs, and is in what I'd call pretty darn nice shape!

Great Job Tim, This is worthy of Museum Preservation.

but I have to ask...

How clueless could someone be to put something like this on a trash pile?????

Aaaaugh!

Moving out of a 2nd floor unit is more and more attractive every day... :tears:

Can you find something smaller next time so that I could at least entertain the idea of acquiring it?


If you can get some serious photos of that I'd totally run it through a large-format printer and make a poster out of it, since I can't physically have it, I could at least admire it. Beautiful doesn't even begin to describe it...

This is the story.....

A couple musicians in their 20s were retained by the theater to clean out over 50 years worth of props.....everything from the usual costumes to an exact reproduction of an electric chair used in Sing Sing prison. Everything was tossed in one gigantic warehouse room on the first floor of the back of this immense theater, which the owner of the building wanted cleaned out to rent.

When I got up to the organized room on the 6th floor, there was TONS of antique and vintage furniture, kitchen stuff, etc. He said that this was only one of 2 TVs there, the other I saw, which was a late 50s RCA Sportable in semi-rough shape. Most of it they were still going through, and I had limited time (and funds, after buying this thing), so I didn't opt for the grand tour.

I don't know how the kids were being paid or whatever, but the owner just wanted all this stuff gone. And here it is :)

Very Nice find I would be very intersted in that TV. Are you going to list on
Ebay? I would hire a shipping company. What a find!
Mike

Not sure yet. Much as I'd love to keep it, I know that it needs to go to a better place.

This might be a set worthy of someone restuffing the wax caps, and while my restoration skills are decent, this is a set that I realize is probably way beyond my abilities.

did they use Stromberg Carlson record players in Dumont's?

What CRT does it use?

15AP4. Showed so-so emissions when I checked it right there, but I think it'll wake up :)

That is beautiful. I hope it goes to a good home. I would so love to have that though. I wonder how much shipping to Arizona would be for that.

Just checked in the back. This is the RA-101-A chassis. I looked quickly, but I saw what looked like a pair of Westinghouse WL-807 tubes on the chassis. Big honkers with ceramic bases.

"Versions with the -A suffix use a dangerous 60 Hz 4.4 kV transformer and a dual 2X2 voltage doubler to supply 12 kV DC to the CRT anode."

Yup, not plugging it in :)

I also have what appear to be the engineering blueprints of the schematic of the set. Each foldout diagram is a couple feet in length, at least.

That's a great find!
So which version is it? A or B?

It's an "A". We posted at the same time...see above :)

tv phono am fm sw vhf air - vhf hi - vhf marine , geez this thing almost covers everything

Shot some pics while I was on lunch. The coffee cup in the blueprint diagrams is to illustrate size.

This is a rare find indeed.

More....

That thing is a MONSTER! It's actually a prewar set, which was halted before production and held over for the '46 model year. I had one which was rescued from the home of Lon Cheney Jr. when they were bulldozing it about 20 years ago. The DuMont was so heavy, that the developer's cleanout crew just left in the house to get bulldozed. Luckily, someone on the demolition crew recognized it, and it was saved. I got it working nicely, but loaned/gave it to a collector friend due to space problems. WATCH OUT: That set has a direct HV power supply, which will deliver a fatal amount of current, AND it has big enough oil-filled caps to pose a fatal shock hazard as well...

Charles

And....more! Bear in mind that it hasn't been cleaned up, and as you can see, it's still in the van :)

I have no intentions on working on this set, nor powering it up. This set scares me :D

What a fantastic find! That is a rare, rare bird right there. Awesome set that should be restored to its original glory and end up in a museum!! :D

Wow, incredible! I bet that thing caused the 1965 blackout.

Definitely worthy of restoring. I thought only bakelite sets attracted white paint splatters, but I guess this one did too. Lucky it wasn't used as a prop because somebody might have taken the chassis out and dumped them to lighten it.

Great save Tim. There are relatively vert few of us who don't view these as "old junk". My Sherwood came from NY State as well about 4 years ago and is also an "A". There was one for sale in NJ several years ago but the guy wanted way too much money for it, don't know it's fate. My set also had the large schematics with it so I guess they were provided with the units. I see yours was upgraded at some point with a Garrard multi-speed changer as the original was a Webster-Chicago model 56 that only played 78's. My PS chassis has 203960 engraved in it.

Did you ever manage to get yours working?

I like to fall in love with the radio!:smsex:
So many knobs, so many push buttons!:o

TV-collector :stupid:

Fantastic! I think I wrote the text on Radiomuseum about it not being known if any RA-101's other than a few Westminsters have survived. I'll have to update the text now that I know a few Sherwood's have also survived. Is anyone aware of any other RA-101's out there other than Westminsters and these particular Sherwood's? I believe there are 3 or 4 Westminsters (one of which is mine).

These sets are so rare, unique, and technically elaborate that they deserve a level of notoriety higher than they seem to get.

The motorized tuning with wrap-around dial is quite something to behold!

I've got my Westminster up and running with a 19DP4 in place of the original 20BP4. The Sherwood used a 15AP4, as you have pointed out.

Given all the bands and that CBL push button how much ya wana bet it's 'cable ready' too.

Glad that is far away from me else I'd have a harder time resisting making an offer.

I think the CBL button is simply for a Canadian AM station. The buttons on that particular chassis would only be for BC or SW.

This one does indeed have the 60 Hz HV supply. I had not seen a pic of that yet.

Another thing that's interesting to note is that Buffalo didn't get television until mid-1948. Since the stations on the pushbuttons indicate that this set is native to the area, it must have been purchased long before there was anything to watch, and from out of the area (presumably).

I JUST SO HAPPEN to possess that deflection chassis and perhaps the signal chassis too !! With line-powwred doubled HV and all--from a BIG power tranny--JUST for HV. The ONLY line-powered HV set I have ever had--so far.

I got it at the ETF some years back. it was part of some "built-in" deal, all mounted in a steel rack. I am AMAZED that when my garage was robbed--that it did not get stolen. Probably it was too HEAVY for the idiots to steal--but i has a LOT of metal in it , as you know. The audio amp, which I had seperated to sell--DID indeed get stolen--but that is all.

I got it, feeling that somewhere--sometime--someone would need parts from it.

Not NEAR as dangerous as a Microwave oven. Surely you have worked on those before. they have at LEAST 100 TIMES the current rate that this does !!

I was wondering if you still had that :) I snapped a photo of it when I was out your way to pick up some sets.

https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5504/...c7a3250a_z.jpg

Except for missing the middle chassis (audio amp, P-p 6L6's) still is intact.

one or more tubes on the deflection chassis HAVE gotten broken over the years..but that is aabout IT.

:thmbsp: Nice Score !!!

Funny , the first thing I noticed after seeing those two awesome 807's in there was the small tube (a 6SN7 perhaps) next to them appears gassy ..

PS , the 807 is one of my all time favorite tubes , I once built an audio amp using 8 of them ! ( 4 per channel in a 2+2 push pull configuration )

rca2000,

Looks like what you have is part of an RA-101 Custom, which would also be incredibly rare. Maybe the only survivor. You don't have the CRT for it?

The audio chassis has PP-PP 6V6's (4 tubes), not a pair of 6L6's, unless yours was different than mine.

And out of the clear blue, looks like sale is pending on this set!

I have not been able to make time to restore it. I recently retired so now I will have the time get to this and other sets that have been waiting.

Regarding the brute force HV supply, the engineers (or the lawyers :) )put a toggle switch on the chassis to turn it off during service.

I noticed in one of the photos that your set has a date written in pencil on the chassis. Mine does as well, 12/13/47.

Tim, In your initial post, you just answered your own question:

For you youngsters who grew up in the cable TV age, in the early antenna TV era, the height matters and long feed wires sucked up the signal before it got to the TV, so you wanted the TV near the highest possible antenna! With almost no TV stations on the air DXing was not only possible, it was fun!

Back when your set was new, most interference came from pre-1930's light bulbs still in service and from any thing with motors that used brushes. When I was young, you could count the Fords driving by, just by watching the flickering thin black streaks on Howdy Doody, but at the same time from our hill 80 miles north of Memphis, we often could pickup Mexico City during the summer like it was a local channel!

I'll wager a plug nickel that the owner of this TV was whoever, in 1947, had an office on the top floor of that theater, most probably the manager of this theater or the building owner. This 1947 TV cost more than a new Chevrolet at the time, so he was well heeled!

Hmmm. I wonder which could pull in the weakest signal, this Du Mont or the same age RCA 630TS.

It'll be close, but my vote is for four video IF RCA on 300Ω twin-line over the five video IF Du Mont on 72/75Ω coax, but the coax will reduce a lot of the stray noise that plagued us back then. Now, if one had modern coax, it should beat the 1947 vintage stuff. It looks like your set owner used twin lead with a primitive matching transformer.

You wrote: "I also have what appear to be the engineering blueprints of the schematic of the set. Each foldout diagram is a couple feet in length, at least."

Are these actually blue prints (dark cyan, and not prone to fading, unless in the immediate presence of sulphur where they turn brown, as in contact with rubber bands) or Mimeographed (Dark blue-purple when new and fade to pink over the years)? If these differ from the copies on ETF, it might be nice to take good photographs of them.

I was surprised to find that the original uncrating instructions that came with my RA105 was Mimeographed instead of printed and it is now has almost completely faded out.

First, congratulations for saving the set, but am sorry that you had to sell it.

It will be a real fun toy for your potential buyer! With a pristine RA-105 Colony (newest tube is one 1956 5U4) sitting in my living room waiting for restoration, I'm completely out of the market for big antique TVs in the foreseeable future. I'm not allowed to touch it until I get my to do list done.

James.

That looks like a Garrard in the 101A. Stromberg did not manufacture record changers.
Looks like a multi-speed, maybe a retro-fit?
Super good chassis. I've looked at the schematic for both the 101 and 101A many times and had to control the drool LOL.
Kevin

Are the three large transformers for each of the possible chassis'...tv, radio, phono? The wattage sticker shows four wattage listings. Two for radio only. Or did I miss another transformer? What a great catch. Is it going to one of us?

IIRC, the amp chassis had it's own power tranny. not sure if the signal chassis has a power supply or not--or if it is fed from the amp or perhaps the deflection chassis.


And some of the iron on the deflection chassis are chokes I think. That "can thing" connected to the pates of the 807 tubes if the "horiz.out tranny" IIRC--behind it between those big oil caps is the HV power transformer and the rect. tubes next to it.

Up front is what I THINK is the main power transformer--maybe. I think the other iro9n are chokes....again, maybe. I have never really sat down and taken a real close look are my setup. ( I nearly got my HAND crushed by the top chassis, after getting to my old garage and getting a cursory look at it--the chassis was loose and almost crushed my hand..but THANKFULLY, missed by about a SECOND !!) the And do--I never got the CRT or any such hardware---no one seemed to have any idea of it's whereabouts. Likely LONG ago landfill fodder. That is where I feared that would be--had i not gotten it. It intrigued me with that line HV power supply.