It's Raining TV's!
 

My friend Danny found this for me yesterday at an estate sale for $20. They wanted $150 for it but he talked some reason into the people. It's an early production CTC-25 model GH-704. Somebody either bleached or painted the cabinet, so I'll have to fix that.

If it is a factory blond by some chance then I'd keep it that way.

RCA only made this cabinet in Autumn Mahogany and Natural Walnut.

Were those equipped with an early tension band CRT? A quick Google search didn't turn up any CTC-25 sets with a cataract.

It looks blonde to me and hope it is and not painted. Cool looking style no matter the color.

Maker/advertisement/service literature is not the bible...It is often wrong, incomplete or a different revision than what is in front of you. The workmanship will tell you if it is factory.

This information is just how I heard it from Danny, and he knows his RCA's.

There's such a thing as a special order. If you want to spend the money, you can order it in pink with purple polka dots.
Some people had so much money, they didn't care how they spent it.
Maybe it could be ordered with an unfinished cabinet and the dealer sent it out to get it professionally finished.
Look at some of the movie stars and sports figures and how they furnish their homes. :sigh:

I know a guy that has a Hammond organ that was bought unfinished, and finished perfectly in a specific finish color. It was bought by the guy's (IIRC) Grandparents. They special ordered it unfinished because it HAD to match their furnishings, and Hammond refused to finish it the color they wanted....There are many Hammond collectors that tell him what he KNOWS is real and has the family history and lit to back up has to be a fake...

Good Score! I had (many years ago, when I was about 14 years old:) the "Dumas" French Provincial Model GH-724, that's pictured in the RCA Brochure you posted above! It was a good set, belonged to my best friend's Grandmother, I got it when she moved, and bought another set, because the original CRT was shot on her set, and a brightener had been installed. I used it about a year, until you could no longer see the screen! Kind'a hard to tell if yours was special ordered in that finish, but I don't think so, based on the scratches, it looks like they "painted-over" the original finish, to me anyway. Nice all day for $20.00, though!

Then there's the story that comedian Jack Benny ordered an RCA CT-100 w/a blonde finish cabinet to match his other furniture. The CT-100 was only available in Mahogany finish. Could never verify this story.

-Steve D.

My '55-'56 Hoffman Colorcaster has a pecan finish. The tiny bit of advertising literature for the set I've found shows only a Mahogany console and table model as being available.
You can't rely on advertising literature for much of anything....

I've noticed similar things for many brands. The advertising and sales brochures would often only have a mahogany finish listed, but the factory service literature and the Sams Photofact would list parts numbers for both dark brown and tan knobs, indicating the sets were available in more than one color. I wonder if it's because the early brochures are printed before the sets even hit the production line and many changes have been made throughout the sales year.

.

I was reading through an old thread the other day and someone said they have seen a blonde CT-100, so they do exist. I think they were special order only and had a slightly different model number. Now to dig up that old thread again...

It wouldn't surprise me if a blonde CT-100 is out there; I've moved a CT-100 with a 25 Hz power transformer and my back is still paying dearly for it... If RCA would pop a 25 Hz transformer in a CT-100 on custom order, I don't see why they wouldn't have finished one in blonde if you asked nicely... and paid handsomely.

Im glad ya found that :)

I hope she gives ya many good years of beautiful stuff!!

Finally found it again.
http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=251001

I think they went tension band in the mid 70's, even on the rebuilt CRT's.
I have an RCA CTC21, that was under contract with RCA Service Co. It has a rebuilt CRT branded RCA Service Co. It's a 25X that is a tension band CRT.
I haven't seen any 1967 model RCA's, that have the original CRT. :thumbsdn:

Bought some paint stripper today. Took the Dorrance completely apart, and slobbered the stuff all over the cabinet. It's outside now. I can already see the nasty paint peeling off.

+1 - We sold RCA, and Indy was eager to customize sets. Blondes are rarer finishes, but available with certain cabinet codes. Merchandiser data in the binders is what is mass produced. Factory orders ain't in there. Our RCA rep had to take the order, mail it in (no fax or internet back then..) and get a reply with a payment code and amount. We called in the credit card and then billed the customer. Most were finish orders. Each year had a new cabinet code and the suffixes determined what was available. PITA, but a bit of extra dough for us, as the customer never balked.

Hell, you could get plastic knobs in brushed, chrome, and golden finishes if you didn't like the stock. Pricey things, but available. I can remember a dentist here that had an RCA CTC38 entertainment unit and wanted the all-gold knobs. He ordered them at another RCA dealer for about 180 bucks - in 1970/71. You want it, they'll make it. We kept the entertainment unit in flys and 6JE6's until his youngest kid wanted a remote set. We never pulled the set - just the chassis, as we always had a jig setup for the '38 chassis.

ColorTrak consoles with Pecan, Mahogany(stained luaun) and Walnut were available, but for most models, only Pecan sets and their plastic sides available at mass retail.

Proscan/Dimensia are the only RCA lines that had no custom cabinet codes.

Progress.

it is going to look soooooo much better after that paint is gone!

That really looks like a factory custom paint job to me. Most consumers would not bother to remove the back to paint the back edges of the cabinet...Hell most would not bother to paint the back edges at all.

Given what I've seen I'd have tried to preserve it as is/was, but that ship has already sailed...At least it appears to have a nice mahogany finish underneath.:thmbsp:

I've said it once, and I'll say it again. THE PAINT IS NOT FACTORY! The paint job is incredibly sloppy, and you can even see the clear coat preserved under the paint. The DIY'er also put in some nasty green felt over the speakers, sloppily held in with staples.

More progress on the Dorrance. Did not meet my goal of getting it completely stripped this weekend. Next weekend it will be finished.

the top looks good.i would just clear this color,myself.back around 1970,a friend of mine bought a new magnavox color set.he had coffee and end tables that had fruitwood tops and the rest were white,couldnt order it this way,so he took it to a refinisher.it was made to match.i personally hate white furniture and even not a fan of my avanti.of course,because of the originality of it,i will leave it alone.cant wait to see your finished product!

Thanks. I'm looking forward to working on this thing again next weekend. I don't know what my dad has in mind, but he says he can make the finish look better than new.

You must have a LOT of patience to be able to strip and refinish a console TV cabinet because I know my mom and dad once bought from the church garage sale we had one year at the church I grew up in a mid 1950s Zenith B & W console TV Set that was in a solid Mahogany cabinet and doors that went over the screen area, anyways my parents had bought the TV to use as an extra TV around the house because at the time we only had one TV and they plugged the TV in and the picture tube exploded supposedly so they gutted the cabinet and my mom had the intention of refinishing the cabinet so that it could be used as an entertainment center but it sat in my dad's workshop for several years without any work being done to it until one day my dad decided to donate the cabinet to a neighbor of ours who also happened to go to church with us so he could use it for a woodworking project. Also I'm currently have a 1932 vintage cathedral radio that needs the cabinet refinished and I was only able to get through the first layer of laquor and that was it and i used the same citri-strip that you did and it didn't really work very well at taking the old finish off of the cabinet which really frustrated me because I spent about 3 hours working on that cabinet to only get through one layer of the cabinet's finish. So yeah like I said it seems you have way more patience for refinishing old TV and radio cabinets than I do or my parents do.

Moar pictures.

More progress on the Dorrance today. My dad got most of the paint off while I was at work.

I like it the way it is.

What do you mean? If you mean the way it looks now, I agree. That wood looks a lot better without that nasty stuff all over it.

That looks like the fine and familiar RCA cabinetry under all that. Good work!

Man your parents must be pretty generous if they are letting you have a small collection of vintage Console and Table Top model TVs in their house, my parents won't even let me have one unless its a small one that can be stored away out of sight because my parents think I might become a "hoarder" if I was to start collecting vintage TVs of all sizes functioning or not even if I was just to have them in a neat organized display, and part of the problem with my mom at least is that my grandparents (specifically my grandfather) were what she considered hoarders because my grandfather had a large stack of news papers in their living room of their old house, they had a "junk room" that was piled floor to ceiling literally with old stuff that they didn't use anymore, then to top it off my grandfather had quite literally a junk yard full of classic Mopar, GM, and Ford vehicles in yard with vehicles dating as far back as 1956, to as recent as 1987 and everything in between, he had several pulled and working or needing some slight work 440 V8 engines from old Mopar cars, he had an old Chrysler Imperial, several Chrysler New Yorkers, several Chrysler Newports, a few Dodge Darts from the 1960s and 1970s, a couple of Plymouth Furies, a Plymouth Volare Stationwagon, a Ford Ranchero, an old Buick Regal, and that's just to name a few of the 42 cars he had on his property, anyways my mom fears that I'm going to end up like my grandfather (which was her father) if I start collecting too many things, which that's just not the case but my mom doesn't really understand (and neither does my staff person that works with me from an organization that works with people with disabilities) because everytime I buy something vintage like an old record player or an old radio or an old fan my staff person (and even my mom if she finds out about them) will tell me to either sell the item or scrap it out or donate it or get rid of it somehow because they think I'm "hoarding" stuff, even though they aren't really giving me a chance to properly fix up the items and properly display them. Anyways Dave I envy you being able to freely collect old TVs and radios unrestricted like you can because it really annoys me that I can't have a proper collection of vintage electronics or vintage fans because everyone around me thinks that I can't do that without it becoming a "hoard" even though they don't give me a chance to make a proper collection and display it properly. In fact I have 3 small tabletop radios, one from 1948 and one from 1956 and one from 1963 which would be one radio representative from a different decade and I was saying that I wanted to keep those radios and display them as part of my collection just to demonstrate what the different styles of radios from the different decades of the mid 20th century which was the peak of American electronic manufacturing, but my staff person wants me to sell the radios on ebay and try to get money out of them even though I really don't want to. So anyways yeah that's my rant for the night. Good luck on your TVs and radios.

I'm sorry to hear that. The lack of appreciation for collecting vintage stuff in our society is repulsive in my opinion. Especially for vintage color TV's. If I had money coming out of my hair follicles, I'd get a 1968 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser and travel the country picking up TV's all the time. I'd call it the "New Vista Cruiser."

At some point you have to kick out the interlopers and run your own life....

One hell of a run-on sentence. Reading gave me a headache! Try using a period here and there.

:thmbsp:

The way I see it, we are preserving and sometimes improving something a future collector will probably be thrilled to have. The best re-assurance you can give to those with noses currently in your business, is to show you're not the only one and the items have value to SOMEBODY.

My hoard (about 100 TV's and radios collected 1975 - 1983) was forcibly reduced to 20 by my parents when I moved out and 1500 miles away for a job. I saw it as a minor setback though I lost some projects that needed only minor issues fixed. I moved back 2 years later to attend engineering school and continued but keeping only the most interesting and sell the rest. As I survived my first marriage and remained in my modest city row-house, I rediscovered the hobby and chose my next estate with this in mind, all this before Doug Harland and Videokarma reminded me I was not alone.

With a family to support, I must get up early or stay up late to work on TVs and radios before a 2 hour commute. Sometimes just moving and reassembling a stalled project set is all I will get done. The last thing you want if you die prematurely is a disorganized pile up, making things so inaccessible, another collector cannot see all you have when they visit.

My wife is not worried - because of half-dozen collector-friends within 200 miles who are glad to take about half the stuff and know where to sell the other half. I also have a living will that helps ensure nobody is unclear as to what happens with my two old Pontiacs as well. As a fellow collector has nobly stated, the last thing you want to leave behind is a sarcophagus of un organized junk. I keep notes and fact sheets with each unit. I think we all dream of opening a local consumer electronics museum.

I love collecting TV's but I'm ran out of space about 4 TV's ago. Plus, I have another on the way. I considered selling one of my 25DC56's, since I have two that are identical, but I doubt anybody is going to want to come all the way down here. I did make some more progress on the Dorrance today. I used some Minwax furniture refinisher and some 0000 steel wool, and it really helped get the paint stripper residue off.