Found a 1968 Motorola color console

[peverett]

I am presently working on a 23 inch Curtis Mathes B&W console from 1964. This set has the same chassis in it as a 19" B&W portable set. The portable set is pictured on the front of the Sams folder. The use of the same parts or chassis for many sets was done by all companies for many years to save money.

[Whirled One]

Originally Posted by Adam

I've come to the conclusion that early ss b/w consoles are actually amongst the rarest of sets. I've never found one myself. Those late 70s and early 80s Zenith console cabinets with all the plastic are cheap, but I like what I see of that chassis. As a rule I like to avoid solid state, but if I ever find one of those closer to me, it might be an exception.

Yeah, I gotta agree; I've never actually seen a B&W console made any later than the late 60's or perhaps 1970. You might think that particular set looks cheap and "low end", but I'd tend suspect that's really about as "high-end" as Zenith got in their B&W lineup for 1975...
I know Zenith offered 22" B&W consoles up until 1979 or '80, but I'd think sales of B&W consoles had to have been pretty miniscule starting in the early 70's.

[peverett]

One more comment about the Curtis Mathes. It has a nice actual wood cabinet, no masonite. I think that the cabinets were Curtis Mathes's selling point. The quality of the TV inside was not as important.

That said, the portable cousin to my console had a plastic cabinet and I have some later table model color Curtis Mathes table top tvs with metal cabinets.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by peverett

One more comment about the Curtis Mathes. It has a nice actual wood cabinet, no masonite. I think that the cabinets were Curtis Mathes's selling point. The quality of the TV inside was not as important.

CM's televisions may have had real wood cabinets from the word go, but cheap wooden TV cabinets with plastic accents used by other manufacturers are not new. I read a while back that Zenith was using cheap wood cabinets with "photo finish" faux wood grain (photographs of real wood printed on heavy paper) glued on to house even their best table radios in the 1930s. Zenith TVs of 1950s through early-mid-1970s vintage, however, mostly had real wood cabinets; the use of wood-grain plastic accent pieces didn't catch on until the late '70s. Even Zenith's last console TVs in the early 1990s used the "photo finish" technique (not to mention those darned fake plastic accents) to create a fake wood grain look, but by then Zenith's reputation was sliding downhill fast. Did the use of fake wood grain matter to the buyers of the new sets? I don't think so. The wood grain looked so authentic on the new sets that it was difficult if not impossible (to the untrained eye) to tell the difference between the fake stuff and real wood.

[peverett]

As you say, the use of cheap cabinets, even masonite cabinets(used by at least RCA and Motorola for some sets) probably did not matter much to consumers. However, cheap cabinets(especially masonite) makes life difficult (as if it mattered to either the consumer or the manufacturer!!) for us restorers.

Also, could someone have told RCA and Zenith (and a few others) to use plastic that would last at least 100 years on their yokes, not the crap that is falling apart now. This is another pain sometimes encountered in trying to restore an old set.

[Einar72]

Curtis-Mathes was an early turncoat. They used to use cloned RCA chassis', but on their way down they turned to cheap imported innards. One came in to the shop I worked in back in 1981, the PCB material was as brittle as those first-generation RCA boards, which crumbled like crackers in your hands. They were soon to be irrelevant, thanks in part to their surrender to foreign suppliers.

Panasonic, aka Matsushita, took over operations at Motorola's Illinois plant, hence the planned transition using the Quasar name. Motorola saw the (globalist) writing on the wall, and thought they had a deal worked out for their now ex-employees. Boy, did the employees get hosed! Had PBS' presentation on the transition been shown post 9/11, it would have maybe influenced some of the younger members' who have no concept of what a humiliating end our vital electronics industry is coming to. Mr. Matsushita was a skilled adversary to the nation that reduced his to ruins. He had his real revenge in getting the American people to abandon their own best interests and give him their cash! I saw his awe-inspiring funeral photo, and at the time, I predicted it would be grander than the next American president's. It was.

I sit in utter disbelief as I read post after post on this and other forums, watching otherwise thoughtful, intelligent, patriotic people worshiping the products instrumental in our country's demise, like Zippy the pinhead worshiping at his altar to the inventor of Spaghetti-O's.

What really got my goat was the banner ad for Communist Chinese PC Boards right here. How much do we need to donate to remove that insult to the unemployed electronic workers of America? Please, a dollar figure, please!

[rcaman]

i have worked on several of those panasonic chassis. they were in some ge sets in the eightys just before thomson took over the ge tv,s. most had a bad flyback in them along with a bad or weak picture tube. i did not like those sets at all. steve

[Jeffhs]

I had a Silvertone roundie color TV (21") that I got from a neighbor in my old neighborhood in 1970. Got it working fairly well--well, I got it working after a fashion, but the convergence was never right, the color sync went bad within a year or so, and to top it all off I was seeing hum bars in the picture around early 1973. However, as far as the PCBs in this set were concerned, yes, I have to agree; they were very brittle, crumbling at the drop of a hat. The video output tube socket broke right out of the video PCB in this TV, with a sickening crunch, when I was trying to replace the tube. No doubt the board itself (not to mention every other PCB in the set) was every bit as brittle as you say, as well. Wouldn't have surprised me one bit if the video board or any other on the metal chassis (yes, the set did have a metal chassis, not one large PCB like in the cheap portables--what few small analog sets there are anymore--we see nowadays) would have crumbled to pieces just by breathing on it wrong.

I can only hope today's sets, even with their one-PCB construction, have boards that last more than a few years before breaking. I think the modern ones are built to last somewhat longer, as they are made differently than the first-generation ones were; with better (more heat-resistant) materials, for one thing, not to mention much less overall heat in the entire set because of the solid-state circuitry (the only vacuum tube in any modern standard CRT television these days is the CRT itself; even projection HDTVs have at most three CRTs). The 1st-generation boards were phenolic, which didn't stand up to high heat very well; this is why a lot of early PCB sets had cracks around the horizontal-output tube socket and flyback. I think the video-output board in my Silvertone roundie must have been made of this material, and that a lot of those sets had the same problems with broken tube sockets, etc. after a few years.

[Chad Hauris]

The tube type sets build up a huge amount of heat inside the cabinet...that combined with the heat conducting down the tube pins to the circuit board seems to lead to a lot more problems in tube sets with circuit boards.
Even though they don't have to deal with as much heat todays circuit boards seem to often be pretty cheap and cannot often stand up to much desoldering/resoldering.

Some of the early circuit boards from the 50's such as Motorola Pla-Cir seem to be of very high quality and can deal better with the heat. These boards seemed to use a more robust system of etching the circuits on the board. GE circuit boards in tube radios and TV's seem to be among the worst.

One common problem with modern sets seems to be the soldering system they use does not heat some component leads as well leading to more failures from solder micro-cracks.

[peverett]

The Curtis Mathes set that I am presently working on (from 1964) had Japanese made oil-filled capacitors in it. I am not sure if the entire chassis was from Japan.

The later model Curtis Mathes table top color sets that I have (about 1970) are fully made in Japan. Curtis Mathis was one of the first to send work out of the US.

[drh4683]

I have the Motorola up and working! Took the bezel off to clean it and cleaned and polished the cabinet. It looks very nice now. The set had a good 1/8"-3/16" blanket of dust inside the cabinet. Had to pull the chassis to clean it. As you can see, there is hardly any clearance to get a vacuum in there with a brush. Hard to get at the tubes too. Having the chassis pulled made it all easier. In fact, I think im the first to have pulled the chassis. All of the original wire straps were still neatly in position (which they were all returned during reassembly). It’s a very nice looking flyback, original. Has a soft silicone like tire that is not deteriorating. Had some bad tubes in the color circuit. Also had a weak CRT. Raised the heater voltage for about 10 minutes and that helped very much. The cathodes came back quite well, even at cold start up, the color temperature is excellent and bright.
This chassis uses a hand full of the 6BL8 tubes which l had plenty of. Has a color program indicator (that orange neon bulb on the lower left of the control escutcheon).
Focus pot opened up. It’s a 10 meg carbon pot. Didn’t have anything like it, but found a 4.7 meg resistor to ground to bring focus in excellent. Also had bad corona arcing due to a pinhole in the HV lead. It was sizzling pretty good to ground at the point where the lead exits the flyback cage. Replaced that with nos belden HV lead.
I hear all the stories about how everyone hated Motorola sets and how terrible the picture is. Im the first to say (with this particular set atleast) that the picture is pretty darn nice! I can't complain at all. The set is very congested inside. Motorola tried to copy zenith with the removable service plate on the bottom, point to point construction with the solder cones and the dynamic convergence board behind the removable speaker. Quality of build is not close to a zenith. Factory soldering is much more sloppy and wire dress is not very neat. Perhaps the engineers at zenith and motorola went out to lunch together and shared ideas, the plants were only a few miles apart It’s definitely a keeper though for its rarity and working so nice.

[wcarroll]

I like this set... Good job on getting it working!

A color program indicating lamp? Too cool....