13" GE color TV from 1982
 

A friend gave me this 13" GE color set from 1982, and it uses the 13AC-F "griplett special" chassis. This is the upper scale version with a non-remove cable ready tuner and I recall these had a good picture. I think these were better than the 13BC chassis that replaced it, which was actually sort of a hybrid set that used a GE tuning assembly that was paired with a Matsushita mainboard.

Very cool looking old set, nice score.

Had one as a teenager, good set for the Nintendo of the day.

Our every encounter with them was a 'griplet nightmare' or Portacolor from hell:yikes: in trying to pin down the intermittencies.

Great sets once you labored over them with a hot iron for awhile. Not difficult to service; but time consuming. The main filter cap would sometimes also go bad causing jailbars or a sensitivity to mains sag. Other that that, I can attest to the fact that the electronic tuner was more reliable than an RCA of the time (CTC-117 era).

The CRTs never go bad. 13VAMP22*. I have a high hour example and the tube can still blind you without defocusing on high contrast scenes.

Just a benefit of GE making their own tubes....EIA 188. When Sylvania made their own, those were always superb as well.

Classy looking set!

I liked the idea that they always included the schematic under a removable cover on the back. Did GE foresee that the set would need a lot of service?

Foresee ? I am sure they were warned by the eng's. IIRC the AC series they also ran a wire through the griplets & tacked them down. We kept a list of commontraces ( W17A-W17B-W17C ) to hard wire on the bottom. The EC chassis was even worse. Griplets on 3 modules, the selector & tuner. UGH !
Funny thing is if it were not for the griplets the AA, AB, AC & EC were as a
reliable sets as you could find.
Well when sales dept gets in the way bad crap happens, remember those 18"
Sylvania AC cords ?

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

They sure did sell a pile of them. Most likely parents bought them for their kids thinking GE was a reliable brand.