A nightmare on EMERSON street

[Jeffhs]

A bell rang in my head when I saw the picture of that Emerson portable. I had a set almost exactly like that one about 35-40 years ago, although mine was in a brown metal cabinet with a brass-color trim strip near the side-mounted control and tuner cluster. The set worked very well for me for many years (it was my second set, don't remember where I got it), then was replaced by a 1959 Zenith portable, and the list goes on...

Those early Emersons were good sets in their day. The one you have probably dates to the early to mid 1950s. The only thing I didn't like about those sets was the metal cabinet--a shock hazard waiting to happen, if anything went wrong with the isolation networks or someone tried to turn the controls with an uninsulated pair of pliers. My 1959 Zenith that replaced the Emerson also had a metal cabinet, but the Zenith had a power transformer so was fully isolated from the line. I don't know to this day how the chassis in the Emerson was isolated, unless it was by simple means such as plastic knobs on the control shafts and rubber or nylon spacers between the chassis and the cabinet, any way that would satisfy the requirements of the National Electrical Code of the 1950s. One way or another there would have had to be some kind of barrier system to prevent the hot chassis from contacting the cabinet (this was one of those sets that would either be hot with the full line voltage or dead "cold", depending enirely upon which way the line cord plug was inserted in the socket; this was decades before polarized plugs, GFCIs and other protection schemes were required by the National Electrical Code on new AC/DC and transformerless TVs, radios and appliances).

I wouldn't give up on the Emerson set you have, if I were in your position. It seems as if the set made it to your house without much damage; if the only real problem is the loose yoke lead, you are lucky. I have read horror stories here on AK of TVs that have arrived via UPS or other carriers at their new owner's home, only to get there with a smashed CRT or worse; I read one particularly sad tale recently of a Zenith radio, model MJ1035 (like the one in my avatar), that arrived via UPS at its new owner's residence (after a journey of some 1,000+ miles) literally in pieces. You were extremely fortunate the CRT in your Emerson TV did not implode, if the set bounced around as much as it did in the USPS truck.