Order of RCA TV's 1946 - 1950
 

Hi All;
Does anyone know the order of the RCA TV's produced and the approximate length of time they were produced.. To show a progression of change and technology ??
THANK YOU Marty

Here is a good list of RCA's 1946-49 sets:

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1946-49-RCA.htm

They seem to have skipped the 8T242, that's the one with the pull out doors if I recall correctly?

Hi All;
Eric, I don't think they did a 8T242, at least it is never mentioned in the Sam's and Rider's.. And the one with the sliding doors is the 8T244, the one I have.. I haven't looked at the list, will when I get thru with this posting..
THANK YOU Marty

Another strange progression. First they came out with the 7" 621TS. Then the 10" 630TS. Next, the 10" 721TS. It seems that they came out with a 30 tube set before re-designing the 21 tube chassis.
Second to the CTC15, the 630 is probably the most cloned set out there.
They made them for years, with a lot of slight improvements. :scratch2:

Hi All;
Do you know who some of the clone improved 630 manufactures are ?? I would like to get some of the Rider's and / or Sams for them as well.. for comparison sake..
THANK YOU Marty

Hi All;
I have put the list on paper, more than one would think, of models between 1946 and 1949.. THANK YOU, Steve.. Next is to identify the KSC chassis numbers and Riders and Sams for them.. And see what is improved and what remained mostly the same.. I have no idea of why there is no 8T242, my best guess, is that it was for a model that had been proposed and later discarted, yet before the release of these to the public, maybe the bean counters thought that three models was enough.. As the TV business was still in its infancy.. The bean counters had no idea of what they had latched onto..
THANK YOU Marty

I'm confused by some of those RCA numbers, albeit I haven't really researched nor looked at any databases. Originally, the first digit was the year; second two digits = number of tubes, and letter suffix = type of unit: i.e. "621TS" = 1946, 21 tubes, Television. 630TS= same but 30 tubes, etc. By 1948-9 the first digit was still the year model, but I'm unclear on the rest of the letters & numbers.

Charles

It has always been the belief that the 621TS came out before the 630TS, but if you look at original liturature and such you'll see that they were actually introduced at the same exact time. That is for sure. Other than that everything else remains a mystery with the 621TS. Why was it the only Vasso post-war designed in the old pre-war art-deco style? - Was it designed to be the '42 model update of the TT5?, ect.

Are we sure about that? The 8TS30 bears some resemblance to the Pre-War stuff, much more so than the 630 actually.

I always thought they got those two mixed up, cabinet release wise.

I wonder if any of Vassos' drawings ended up in the same dumpster as the indian head artwork?

I would call the 830TS "post-war art-deco" which is more angular and simplified than '30's art-deco
The 621Ts has the pre-war tabletop TV styling cues, but the 630TS and the 8TS30 definately have a more modern look if you put them side-by-side.
Compare these pre-war tabletops to them and you quickly see the difference:
http://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold...Andrea1F5a.jpg
http://www.tvhistory.tv/1939-TT5-HM171.JPG

Off the top of my head, I recall RCA went though two basic main generations of design from 1946 to 1950.

Generation 1 up to chassis kcs27 (1946 to 1948): Includes the 7" and 10" direct view and projection sets. What distinguishes these chassis' is the split sound take of from the tuner, 6AL5 DC restorer in all but the TS621 and TS721 sets and RCA Synchrolock horizontal AFC (except for the TS721 which has the blocking oscillator without the sine wave stabilization).

Generation 2 chassis kcs28 to kcs46 (1948 to 1950): Includes the 10" (10BP4), 12" (12LP4) and 16" (16AP4 and 16GP4) sets. What distinguishes these sets is all have 4 VIF stages, sound take of at 2nd VIF, DC coupled video amplifier and Synchroguide AFC.

This is from memory and needs to be confirmed. Also there are a few errors on the "tvhistory" RCA 1946 thru 1949 page Steve referred to: the 8TC270 (16") was omitted and the 9T270 thru 9TC275 are all 16" (16AP4) sets, not 10" and 12" as indicated.

Further to my personal broad definition of generation 1 vs generation 2 is the front end.

I believe all generation 1 receivers used the KRK2 tuner. This is the one with three 6J6 tubes.

Generation 2 I believe all used KRK5 tuners. These tuners used two 6AG5's and a 6J6 local oscillator.

The so called generation 3 (1950-1952 KCS47 thru KCS67?) used the KRK7 tuner(?). The third tuner had only two tubes: generally a 6CB6 and a 6J6 if I recall correctly.

To me the third generation was the first attempt at cheapening the design. It had a poor (unamplified) AGC and the sync circuits were cheapened.

These guidelines are my own having studied and repaired a number of these RCA sets over the last 40 years. I believe this was a facinating time for RCA consumer televisions leading up to and including early color television. I would be curious to hear from others regarding the earlier RCA black and white sets.