Sears Silvertone, Warwick Electronics?

[Jeffhs]

In 1970 I had a 21" Sears Silvertone roundie color set, made in 1964. The chassis was an RCA CTC-12 clone, but I think the set was actually manufactured by Warwick Electronics.

[DANGELOSOLD]

Anyone neededing information feel free to CALL me. My father worked for the organization his entire life. I from and lived am in Chicago lived in Forrest City Arkansa and now about 15 minutes from The Thomas Organ Plant. He was the Directer OF Manufacturing and I spent alot of time in all the plants in Chicago, Arkansas and in Sepulveda. Still have a few friends that worked for my father. Randy Cell(818) 903-8133

[DANGELOSOLD]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

Warwick definitely had a plant in the Chicago area for final assembly. Don't know what they did in Arkansas, but it may have been their cabinet plant - several manufacturers built cabinets in the South. I knew a then-young engineer who came to Zenith when the Chicago Warwick plant closed.

Regarding that Chromix patent, it looks like one of many alternate ways to essentially decrease the Q-axis (green/magenta) gain of the color vectors, so flesh tones were forced toward normal hue. All these circuits tend to result in the "tan cowboy on the brown horse riding into the orange sunset." These circuits made greens weak and have a tendency to turn either bluish or brownish. They also weakened magenta and pulled purple colors towards blue or cyan. RCA was the only set with a really different automatic tint. It pulled only the hues near flesh, and left alone pure greens and all colors sufficiently different from flesh tone. The circuit was invented at Motorola, but Motorola never used it. I don't know if RCA actually paid for it - I rather imagine that they got use of it in a mutual patent licensing trade.

If you would like any info regarding Thomas Organ/ Warwick/Whirlpool CALL ME. My father worked for them as a Director of Manufactuing his entire life. I am from Chicago(WARWICK) Lived in Forrest City Arkansas (Warwick) Current about 15 minutes from Thomas Organ. It's a swap meet now. Spent alot of time in all the plants and still have friends that worked for my dad. Randy (818) 903-8133

[sampson159]

warwick also invented the wah wah pedal and several other music devices.this division was based in rhode island

DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.

[DERI]

Warwick Electronics, Zion, Illinois

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by egrand

DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.

According to the Riders coverage, it appears that Warwick started in the mid to later '30's.
They built a lot of private label products, before they built exclusively for Sears.
I worked on two Warwick solid state sets, one K-mart and one Coronado. The one that had the small SCR power supply, in the rear left-hand corner.
They were identical to the Sears set.

[DavGoodlin]

Originally Posted by Jeffhs

In 1970 I had a 21" Sears Silvertone roundie color set, made in 1964. The chassis was an RCA CTC-12 clone, but I think the set was actually manufactured by Warwick Electronics.

I had a Silvertone 21" color that was a CTC11 clone, with a 528 number as well.
The fly was bad, so I kept the 21FBP22 and installed it in an RCA I had.
I saw one in just like it in another thread. The cabinet was very nice.

[Memnoch4GB]

Originally Posted by egrand

DANGELOSOLD: That's really nice of you to offer that. Sears-Silvertone-Warwick is a company that there just isn't a whole lot of documentation about. Have you ever thought about writing a brief history, if you know it, and posting it here? I think a lot of us would like to hear it.

I think the old Warwick plant in Chicago is still there, or at least one of them. I think I saw that it was a shipping facility now.

Warwick wasn't actually in Chicago. It was in a town north of there, about 10 miles south of the Wisconsin state line, called Zion. My dad worked there as a supervisor from sometime in the 50's to the early 60's. The old plant is still there, being used for some local purposes. It was interesting to go there and look in the windows. It's much smaller than you'd expect for a factory of any kind. The jobs there went south when Warwick was acquired by Sanyo, to Forest City, AR. I don't know if there's still any production there, or if those are just more jobs sent out of this country.

[TechGuy]

My father was the Chief Mechanical Engineer for Warwick from 1965 through 1970. The location he worked at was in Sepulveda, California. Sepulveda is actually in the city of Los Angeles situated in the San Fernando Valley near the Van Nuys airport. There was no TV manufacturing in the Sepulveda facility that I remember, just engineering and administrative offices. Although I do believe that they manufactured Thomas Organs and Vox amplifiers there. I presumed that this was the headquarters as the CEO also worked at this office. I had my first job at 16 working in the engineering department designing and making printed circuit boards in the prototype group.

At that time Warwick also owned Thomas Organ and Vox Guitars and amplifiers. The Beatles used Vox and we got to see the Beatles at Dodgers stadium compliments of Vox and Wawick. Lawrence Welk used Thomas Organs on his TV show and showcased them.

Those days Sears was the 800 pound gorilla and their typical M.O. was to get smaller companies, like Warwick, to make products for them under the Sears brand name. Once Sears knew that a company couldn't survive without the sears business things changed dramatically. As my dad told the story they would send engineers to California to find ways to reduce the cost of the product. Eventually the margins became very thin and the quality of the product suffered. The company had no option but to comply or fear losing the Sears account and going out of business.

Eventually, after having Sears folks interfering with his engineering department too many times my father found employment elsewhere. I didn't follow Warwick after that but presumed that Sears stopped buying from them and they went out of business.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by TechGuy

My father was the Chief Mechanical Engineer for Warwick from 1965 through 1970. The location he worked at was in Sepulveda, California. Sepulveda is actually in the city of Los Angeles situated in the San Fernando Valley near the Van Nuys airport. There was no TV manufacturing in the Sepulveda facility that I remember, just engineering and administrative offices. Although I do believe that they manufactured Thomas Organs and Vox amplifiers there. I presumed that this was the headquarters as the CEO also worked at this office. I had my first job at 16 working in the engineering department designing and making printed circuit boards in the prototype group.

At that time Warwick also owned Thomas Organ and Vox Guitars and amplifiers. The Beatles used Vox and we got to see the Beatles at Dodgers stadium compliments of Vox and Wawick. Lawrence Welk used Thomas Organs on his TV show and showcased them.

Those days Sears was the 800 pound gorilla and their typical M.O. was to get smaller companies, like Warwick, to make products for them under the Sears brand name. Once Sears knew that a company couldn't survive without the sears business things changed dramatically. As my dad told the story they would send engineers to California to find ways to reduce the cost of the product. Eventually the margins became very thin and the quality of the product suffered. The company had no option but to comply or fear losing the Sears account and going out of business.

Eventually, after having Sears folks interfering with his engineering department too many times my father found employment elsewhere. I didn't follow Warwick after that but presumed that Sears stopped buying from them and they went out of business.

IIRC, the word got around, that the Sears buyers were bad news. They would lure in the smaller manufacturers, with a contract that seemed, too good to be true. Once that set up their lines and made the investment to produce the product, Sears would pull the rug out from under them and cut the per-unit price so bad, the firm couldn't make much of a profit.
That's why, the president of Sony Corp wouldn't private-label products.
If you get a chance, read the book, "Made In Japan", written by A. Morita, president of Sony Corp.
I might have the name wrong, been years since I read the book.

[Steve D.]

Warwick plant. Zion, Ill.


-Steve D.

[DaveWM]

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.4453...Cfv5eGoTCg!2e0

[DavGoodlin]

Warwick-built Sears TVs from the 60s confused some of us novices who would rescue and fix anything for anyybody in the late 70s.

So used to and familiar with RCA, we assumed Sears sets were made by RCA, excepting the Japan built stuff.
But they seemed to be a different animal. I was almost always able to repair them and it seemed like the terminal issues were few, unlike so many GE and RCA's.

Thanks for all the information. It looks like Zion, was almost in Wisconsin.

[1oldgoat]

Originally Posted by drh4683

This is kind of a spin off of what was being discussed in the estate sales 2010 thread.

The USA made sears silvertone TV's were made by Warwick Electronics (sears model numbers start 528.xxxxx). I've known of Warwick, but I never actually decided to look into who the company was until now. I have looked all over the internet trying to figure out who warwick electronics was, but all I can find are a couple pages about a 1967 lawsuit against sears over house fire caused by a silvertone TV.

There seems to be ZERO information on the internet about warwick and who they were as a company. They must have been gone for years. Does anyone have any information available? Were they based in Chicago?

I always put Silvertone and Airline in the same category, they were both well made TV's that showed similar design characteristics, even though Airline was a Wells Gardner made TV (which there is plenty of info about as they are still in business in suburban Chicago).

So who was Warwick Electronics? Anyone able to shed some light on this company?

I can answer your questions about Warwick having worked at the Zion Illinois TV plant as an repair man from 1960 until 1965. There were 2 plants in the Chicago area. The plant in Niles,Illinois made Silvertone radios and record changers. The plant in Zion made Silvertone TVs. We were told that Sears owned 90% of Warwick, I do not know who had the rest. Warwick employees were even given a 10% discount card good at Sears stores.They moved to Forest City, Ark. about 1967, mostly as a union busting ploy. Management could move to the new plant, but union members could not. I went through 2 strikes while I worked there.