Spotted in the wildz Curtis Mathes color roundie

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Notimetolooz

My folks had a Curtis-Mathes (or is it Mathis) of about this vintage. I seem to recall the cabinet was better built than the chassis. The chassis was just a copy of a RCA.

You are correct as to the spelling; it is "Curtis Mathes." These were excellent TVs and combination systems; I knew a family years ago in my home town who had one. Theirs was, IIRC, a three-way console (TV, AM-FM-stereo FM tuner, and phonograph) and had, again IIRC, a round CRT.

The TV chassis in these combos may have been RCA clones, but were good sets nonetheless. RCA, after all, was a pioneer in electronic television, so they did not skimp or cut corners anywhere. My first color TV, in fact, was a Sears Silvertone table model, with an RCA CTC-12 (IIRC) chassis and a round CRT. The set lasted me about three years, then, when I tried to replace a tube, one of the video circuit boards cracked and ruined the set for good, to my utter disappointment.

I found another Sears (RCA) TV, this one with a 17- or 19" CRT (again IIRC), a few years later; this set, thankfully, lasted me much longer than the larger round Silvertone set did. I got rid of that 17" Silvertone when I bought my first new color TV, a Zenith 13" portable. I bought another Zenith 13" portable, this one with one-knob electronic tuning, a few years later. When digital TV came along, I put the Zenith TVs in storage (eventually getting rid of both when I moved in 1999) and bought a 19" Insignia HDTV, replacing it a few years later with my current TV, a 32" Insignia flat screen.

BTW, many if not most color TVs made in the 1950s to about the 1970s did incorporate RCA chassis; these sets, however, had many different brand names on the cabinets, not just RCA. These TVs were marketed under almost every major brand you could imagine, except Zenith; for some reason, Zenith either would not or could not use RCA chassis in any television bearing the Zenith brand name--maybe it was a copyright issue.