Color adaptable Admiral goes in 14 hours
 

I think this would be a great set to preserve.
eBay:http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...MEWA%3AIT&rd=1

Nice lookin set. Too far from me though.

Pickup available
 

Butler is just a hoot and a holler up the road. Anyone wants to bid on it, I could pick it up for you and hold it until next year's Early Television Convention.

--Dave Sica

So what is meant by 'color adaptable' on this set?

The sync, video, and power connections required to operate a color wheel appeared on a socket at the rear of the chassis where you would plug in your color adaptor.

Nostalgia I guess...
 

Won the Admiral for a few bucks. Back in '51 a family member bought a Sears table model that had that magic 'color' word next to a socket on the rear panel. Couldn't pass on this one. Thanks for the heads up.

Pete

Good to know a responsible person got it.
 

That crt frame looks like the only one like it. I guess it works with the color wheel.
Does anybody have a factory made color wheel?

I don't altho I do have a Westinghouse table-top set with the same option. I have seen a CBS color wheel set in operation and the picture was FANTASTIC. So much better than one could imagine.

I was just gonna ask if anyone had ever seen a color wheel in operation.I would think it would be one of those gizmos that can be made to work in a lab, but not so well in the "real world".

A color wheel running on the CBS standard, such as this set was intended to adapt to, works very well, with "imperceptible" flicker--that is, most people's persistence of vision is such that the rate of 72 color fields per second making 24 complete color frames is too rapid to flicker. I can see the flicker in a CBS color picture. To my eyes, it's almost subliminal . . . but not quite. NTSC-to-field sequential color wheels from ca. 1956, like the Colortel, can work well and reliably, but they flicker like a motherf***er due to the low frame rate. Whereas an ordinary color receiver displays 30 complete color frames per second, with a color wheel displaying NTSC, the color signal has to be chopped up into 30 fields per second. 10 fps for any type of motion-picture is going to flicker like mad. If you don't mind that, then they work fine.

A short while ago
 

a man bought a beautiful handmade color wheel system and I think he spoke of using a 10" Tv with it. I wonder if he ever did it. There is a thread on it here somewhere.
Apparently there were never factory made color wheel systems sold to the public?

About 10 years ago, I witnessed a home-brew color-wheel adapter demo at my local antique radio club meet. I think it was built from plans in a magazine. It consisted of a chassis in an open-back box, a motor and a color wheel, with a plunger on a cable / motor brake as a coarse sync adjustment. It was set up with the motor and tri-gel-wheel perched on top of a small RCA B&W (think it was a 721TS). The operator tuned in a channel with rabbit ears, cranked up the motor and started pushing the plunger until it was roughly in sync. Then he'd adjust a few controls on the extra chassis - which kept him fiddling as the sync was sorta drifty, but in a way like a motion-picture framing adjustment. Ironically, I recignized the project had been built on a sawed-down-to-fit CTC-11 chassis.

It was actually an exciting experience, and the color gamut was really not too shabby, just somehow different. I don't remember who he was, or if the eldely gentleman is still alive.

I have an Admiral that looks very similiar but with a plain bakelite front where this one is colored. Mine has a metal crt but this one looks like glass. I had never noticed anything about color on the back, now I'll have to go double check. I don't think I would have missed something like that, though! It is a good performer.

I'm hoping to...
 

either reproduce or restore one of the kits originally designed for these 'color' ready '51 sets. Not the color wheel. Just the modification that was to allow b&w sets to receive CBS color broadcasts in b&w. Who knows. Ya gotta wonder if it was ever actually done back in '51 for other than engineering purposes.

I wonder if the builders knew they would never use the color wheel system but knew it would be a real cheap extra to sell the consumer at a high profit. If there was never a color wheel system available for the consumer I think that would support such a scenario.