Hallicrafters 1954 - (21K141M) 21" console, wood (mahogany), UHF-VHF

[mkoser]

So my wife and I were on our way home from dinner, and all of a sudden she yells, "DID YOU SEE THAT OLD TV."

I didn't, but made a U turn at any rate. I was imagining a early 90's console but was pleasantly surprised when I saw the set.

The owners set it to the curb with a $1 garbage collection tag attached.

I loaded it up in my car, and put the garbage tag in their mailbox.

It turned out to be a 1954 - (21K141M) 21" console, wood (mahogany), UHF-VHF.

The set looks very nice, with only a few blemishes.

I'll post pics tomorrow.

Anyone have any details on this set?

Thanks,
MK

[electroking]

Very interesting, I never thought Hallicrafters was into TVs long enough to make
such a big screen set. Can't wait to see the pictures.

Hope I don't dream too much of the funny noises this TV could have made being
destroyed by the garbage collecting team. Good night!

[mr_fixer]

i'm not sure which is luckier, finding a vintage tv in the trash or a wife that finds vintage tv's in the trash for you. either way i'm jealous, logan

[Tony V]

Neat find! It looks to be in pretty nice shape. Hopefuly it will be an easy fix.
-Tony

[mkoser]

Well, I tested it on both of my B&K testers and they both showed an open First Anode. With Zero Emission.

I tried restoring the emission and the tubed then showed no shorts, or open connections, and the emission came up to about 25....

So unless I find a tube someplace, I'll just have another conversation piece to stare at.

MK

[electroking]

What tube is it? Do a search on ebay using the keyword 21*p4, there is a guy
who has a good selection of CRTs. Regards.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by electroking

Very interesting, I never thought Hallicrafters was into TVs long enough to make
such a big screen set.

If you look in the Chuck Dachis Hallicrafters book, you'll see that they made quite a few 20" and 21" consoles and tabletops in the 1950s. They even made a color console with an RCA CTC-4 chassis.

Looks like 1956 was their last year producing TVs. Perhaps they lacked the dealer network and name to compete with the "bigs."

Their late 1940s sets seem much more common. I have two of them.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[electronjohn]

We had a couple of those big Hallis when I was a kid...big, blocky table models my Mom called "beer joint TVs"...since they looked like they belonged on a shelf up behind the bar. My uncle put himself through college with a TV shop in my grandparents basement...he always like working on the Hallicrafters sets due to a solid design and good quality components. You shouldn't have much trouble tracking down a good CRT for yours.

[Jeffhs]

All-channel televisions (with the UHF tuner factory installed) such as the Hallicrafters set under discussion here were popular in the '50s in areas with only UHF stations, such as Fort Wayne, Indiana, Fresno, California, Youngstown, Ohio, et al.

"Intermixing", i.e. putting UHF stations with VHF stations in hetetofore VHF-only cities, however, did not begin until some time in the early sixties; an example is Cleveland, Ohio, which got its first UHF station, NET (now PBS) WVIZ channel 25, in 1965. Prior to 25's startup, Cleveland had only three VHF channels, 3, 5 and 8. Channels 43, 61, and 55 eventually joined 25, bringing the number of channels in Cleveland to seven. An eighth channel, WOIO 19, went on the air in 1985 and eventually affiliated with CBS, after a stint as a FOX affiliate. The FOX affiliation went to channel 8, which had been a CBS affiliate over 40 years.

The early UHF stations often were on channels 69 and higher (this was decades before channels 70 through 83 were reassigned to land-mobile in 1970). An example is Lima, Ohio's WLIO-TV. This station is an NBC affiliate and began its operations, if memory serves me (I read the following on the station's web site some time ago) above channel 70. It now transmits over channel 35. At least one of Youngstown's original UHF stations began its operations as well on a channel very near the top of the band.

While these stations may have been on high UHF channels when they initially signed on, however, later on most of them (such as the Ohio station I just mentioned) had moved to lower channels by the late '50s and certainly by the '60s. One reason for this was the eventual reassignment to land-mobile of the thirteen channels above 70, although an experimental airborne-television project in the '60s used channels 72-76. This was the Midwest Plan for Airborne Television Instruction (MPATI) project. An entire educational TV station, including the transmitter and antenna, was put into an aircraft which circled a fixed pattern over Montpelier, Ohio and was supposed to cover Ohio, Indiana and, I believe, Michigan or Kentucky.

The experiment was a good idea on paper, but it didn't last long once UHF caught on with the public and more stations went on the air. I remember when NET affiliate WVIZ first went on the air in Cleveland. I lived in an eastern suburb of the city 33 miles from the stations at the time, and reception of this channel on our Silvertone all-channel portable TV, using an indoor antenna, was terrible. WVIZ was running only one megawatt ERP at the time, however, so this would have accounted for its woefully poor coverage of the east side of Cleveland and beyond unless a very good outdoor antenna was used. The geography of the area in which I grew up played into this as well; there is an area of Lake County, very near the border of the Cleveland suburb of Euclid, Ohio known as the "Euclid shelf", in which reception of certain Cleveland television and FM stations (including channel 25) on antennas is very poor. The elementary school I attended from 1961-'68, which was only a 15-minute walk from my home at the time, at first tried to receive the local NET affiliate on rabbit ears, with very poor results. That problem was corrected several years later, when an amplified signal-distribution system was installed. It was fed by two antennas, VHF and UHF, on the roof of the building; this cleared up the reception problems once and for all. The school was converted to a senior-citizens center in the early '80s and torn down just a year or so ago, so it never had cable (our area didn't get cable service until 1982, by which time the conversion of the school building had long since been completed).

[edison64]

If I am not mistaken, isnt that the same one that was on the "bay" last week??? sure looks like it, it was a pick up only. Any way, a nice set at a great price.

[nasadowsk]

21MP4 - metal.

I've got a close set to that, I wasn't too impressed by it though it does work. The HV box is weird - flyback gap changes to adjust width.

Be aware, it may be hot chassis, even thought it's got a filament transformer.

If anyone's in the NY metro and wants a 1/2 working one, lemme know -pick it up and it's yours

[John Folsom]

This guy has a 21MP4 for sale on a list he sent me. He is not computer savvy, so you will have to call him:

Bob Castiglione
518 332 1514

I bought one CRT from him and am awaiting its arrival. Other than that, I don't know anything about Bob.

Good luck.

[electroking]

Regarding the history of UHF, here in Montreal until 1975 we had four VHF
stations (2, 6, 10 and 12) and no UHF. In 1975 Tele-Quebec (the called
Radio-Quebec) began broadcasting on channel 17 (and simultaneously on
channel 15 in Quebec City). Since that day stations on channels 29, 35,
46 and 62 have been added. As I have mentioned before, TV sets sold
in Canada since June, 1970 have been required to receive UHF channels.
However, currently a lot of so-called TV sets have been selling with no RF
tuner at all...

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by electroking

currently a lot of so-called TV sets have been selling with no RF
tuner at all...

Those sets are designed to work with either an over-the-air set-top box (STB) or a digital cable box via direct signal input to the set. I don't know how Canada will handle the digital transition; however, the cable operator here (Time Warner), and possibly other cable providers across the US, now supply cable STBs without RF tuners to new subscribers as well, to be connected in the same manner. Note that the new dirt-cheap VHS/DVD players are set up for direct signal input only, with no RF tuner, though there are such players available with built-in digital tuners.

However, the new direct-input STBs and VHS/DVD players cannot be used with RF modulators, the reason being that all digital flat-panels expect digital signals at the inputs; therefore, they will not work with analog NTSC signals as are provided by standard modulators. I don't know, however, if there are modulators available (yet) that will provide NTSC output from ATSC/QAM input signals, for use with older televisions. The lack of such modulators is probably intentional and part of the FCC's plan to eventually phase out analog TV ("eventually" as in February 19 next year), including forcing consumers to purchase new FPs when the old analog sets finally go West.

Like it or not, the US is going digital as far as television is concerned, and the FCC is going to see to it that everyone, with no exceptions, is on that bandwagon eventually (as in having a flat-panel HD television)--even if that "eventually" is years or decades from now. (There are literally millions of analog TVs still in use in this country, so cable and OTA STBs are going to be around for awhile yet, but even their days are numbered.) The phase-out of analog broadcasting is just the beginning. It is almost impossible to buy new TVs these days with standard analog NTSC tuners; such sets may be available in limited supply, but they are required to have a clearly-worded notice, either in the instruction manual or by means of a sticker on the CRT safety glass, stating that these televisions absolutely will not work after February 19, 2009 unless a cable box or over-the-air converter is used ahead of the set's own RF tuner. I have seen a few of these analog TVs, mostly at dirt-cheap prices at Big Lots, but I think these are just overstock that the stores are trying to sell off ASAP to make room for new shipments of digital FPs.

[andy]

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