Early 80's Curtis Mathis

[zenith2134]

My experience with NEC sets and monitors has been mainly positive, but to make such bold statements as C-M did, while using a NEC chassis, seems ridiculous.

Seen a few NEC tv's re-badged as Sylvania or Emerson iirc, from the early to mid 80s, and a few video consoles with NEC tubes in them.

[RobtWB]

I have 2 mid to late 80's Curtis Mathes (NEC) console tv's in storage. I'll try and post pics later today or tomorrow. Don't understand why everyone pisses on CM and NEC. I have ran across multiple NEC sets that are ancient in terms of tv age, and are still working just fine. Certainly the 2 sets I have do.

The older of the sets I have did need a flyback replacemet, but WTF, an easy and cheap 30 minute fix. No big deal. I don't really know the history of this set as it came from an estate sale, but I suspect it has thousands of hours of use and still has a color picture as good as any standard crt set produced in the last 20 years or so. This set is a 2 tuner model, innovative for the mid 80's. The cabinet, while particle board and vinyl, and extremely heavy, is in as new condition.

The newer of the sets I have, I do know the history of. It was purchased new by a couple who used it until late 2008. The only reason they gave it up was that they moved into a retirement home and did some downsizing. They passed it on to their son in law, who used it for a few months, until some other family member gave him another CM console, in a blonde colored cabinet. He gave the set to me to do with what I please. It works perfectly with stunning color saturation, as good as any old ChromaColor or CCII. This set has never seen a servicemans screwdriver. The cabinet is also perfect.

The only 2 drawbacks I see to these sets is that they are generally ugly, but then again every Zenith, RCA, Maggie, Sony, Panasonic, Quasar, etc set from the same era is just as god damned ugly. And, they only have 54 channel tuners, so one is left to use a high quality VCR with a tuner, (a rare item these days) or a set top cable box or digital converter box.

As I was typing this I remembered I had another old CM set. I gave it to my brother years ago. It is still working, the tv part anyway. It was one of those early 80's vertical 19" consoles with a cheap am/fm/cassette and turntable beneath the tv. Had a badge on the mask from Colortyme if I remember correctly. I got the set form my ex in laws - again never seen a servicemans tool set. I don't think this was a NEC set though. I believe this tv was an RCA - as I used to have an early 80's 19" RCA tabletop set that had an identical control layout.

[julianburke]

I worked on many CM SS chassis and they were very easy to work on and fix. If anyone needs one, I have a tube type CM chassis that is an RCA clone. (CTC25?) It also has the stereo receiver with a tuning eye.

[sampson159]

wasn t there a mid 80s model that had a bar built in? i remember "sledgehammer" frank rented one of those from colortyme. it was about 5 feet tall. we had to move it to the basement rec room. i personally think he moved it so colortyme wouldn t repo it. he even narrowed the doorway so that it couldn t be taken back up. gotta love the guy!!!!