Opinions on RCA's CTC-38 chassis

[radiotvnut]

I do think a lot of older people liked the softer picture because it was easier on the eyes. I'll agree that the Zenith's were easier to fix and they also had the best picture. A lot of those were still going well into the '80's and early '90's.

[Robert Grant]

Yes, I certainly remember the CTC-38. I still have the Photofact for it (a nice even set 1000).
As a very small child, if my mon lost track of me in a department store, she knew right where to find me - where the color TVs were!
On 6 December, 1969, my parents gave us all money to see a movie at the nearby Vogue theatre. The real treat was when we got back - the old B&W Zenith was replaced by a CTC-38! (GL759WK, I think) it also had something I had never known about called UHF (and WKBD-50 changed afterschool hours for us kids drastically).
Yes, I can never remember the picture of the CTC-38 being sharp, and, it was idled for service quite often from about the third year on. After the power transformer was replaced, the 25XP22 gave out another year later (good thing Dad bought that service contract!).
It seemed from then on, things got even worse. I learned how to fix TVs, and it became up to me to keep that lemon running. It seemed that every connection on all of the PC boards failed to the point where I just had to give up.
We watched the first Space Shuttle landing on a 24" Emerson B&W that was ten years older than the RCA!

I've been thing about looking for a CTC-16 or earlier, but, are these as bad off as the CTC-38 was?

Rob

[Chad Hauris]

I have seen cases of burned wiring due to heat in CTC-16 and CTC-15's but the problems don't seem as bad on the circuit boards as the CTC-38's. Maybe because the 15's/16's had a larger chassis layout and 3 or 4 circuit boards as opposed to the 2 on the CTC-38, so the heat was not so concentrated. The CTC-15/16 are also an all tube chassis as opposed to the transistorized IF stages on the CTC-38.

There are some rectangular sets such as CTC-17, 30 etc. which use the "deluxe" chassis like on the CTC-16. These just add in the pincushion components for the rectangular tubes. The CTC-31, 38, & 39, were a smaller, cheaper chassis.