beautiful RCA near san diego

[jpdylon]

I would save this but I have no room at all for it after grabbing the CTC-11.

Someone do this.
http://sandiego.craigslist.org/clt/408276506.html

[Sandy G]

Why can't they EVER be over here ....<Sigh> ?!?

[Eric H]

And I'm going to SD this Friday to drop off a set!
But NO WAY am I bringing this monster back
I would love to but I don't have room.

[Tubejunke]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

Why can't they EVER be over here ....<Sigh> ?!?

I second that! Seems like round screen sets are a really rare item in my area. Especially sets in pristeen condition like those that pop up out west or up north. Locals tell me that they remember seeing the first sets around 1952 or so. I guess that explains the shorthage of round crt sets as their time had already passed by 1952 for the most part.

I hope this RCA finds a loving home. It looks great. I LOVE mine that is very similar. Just wish I could get louder sound out of the thing. Sound seems to be an issue with the old RCA's from what I gather

[Dan Starnes]

I have wondered why I never run into any late 40's or very early 50's tv sets here,,, and then I got to thinking. There were no TV stations here until 1953. Could be a prime reason why highly populated areas seem to have early sets while we here in the midwest find stuff from the mid 50's up?
Dan

[Captain Video]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

I second that! Seems like round screen sets are a really rare item in my area. Especially sets in pristeen condition like those that pop up out west or up north. Locals tell me that they remember seeing the first sets around 1952 or so. I guess that explains the shorthage of round crt sets as their time had already passed by 1952 for the most part.

I hope this RCA finds a loving home. It looks great. I LOVE mine that is very similar. Just wish I could get louder sound out of the thing. Sound seems to be an issue with the old RCA's from what I gather

Here in Brazil those roundies are the "Holy Grail" for TV collectors, since experimental broadcasts began in August of 1950 and the official start of television was on September of that same year, really on the end of the production of roundies. Although I have a July of 1951 magazine ad of an RCA roundie, I also have a November of 1950 magazine ad of a Philco set with rectangular CRT. But other day I made a very strange finding: a newspaper dated August,1, 1955 with an ad for RCA sets - the sets were with rectangular CRTs, but the text of the ad actually said that the TVs HAD rectangular screens - wow, that was odd, why a television set advertisement in 1955 would still need to tell people that the television was no longer using a roundie CRT? My only theory is that maybe there was a surplus of roundie CRTs in the United States and the manufacturers were still selling those "obsolete" TVs to Third World markets like Brazil a few years after 1951.
I do find some support on this theory because even the rectangular screen sets shown in the ad looks very obsolete for the standards of 1955 - I have seen a lot of American ads of RCA TVs of the period of 1954/55 , and those TVs in this Brazilian ad looks like RCA sets from the 1951/52 period. Could those be just leftover sets made in 1952, or RCA of America actually manufactured older models for sale outside the US market? There was for a period in the 50's an RCA factory here in Brazil, but I am not sure if they manufactured something other than small table model radios. I have the 1955 newspaper ad in my computer, but it is too big, if I can make it smaller I will post it here.

[Captain Video]

The ad is below. As you can see, the sets really looks like RCA televisions from 1951 and 1952. Also interesting to note is that the people who made this ad had no problem on "borrowing" the little boy used on Zenith TV ad's of the period.

This ad is not directly from RCA, it is an ad for "Lojas Polo Ártico" an appliance store in Rio de Janeiro which, for the very best of my knowledge, no longer exists.

[Bill Cahill]

Originally Posted by Tubejunke

I second that! Seems like round screen sets are a really rare item in my area. Especially sets in pristeen condition like those that pop up out west or up north. Locals tell me that they remember seeing the first sets around 1952 or so. I guess that explains the shorthage of round crt sets as their time had already passed by 1952 for the most part.

I hope this RCA finds a loving home. It looks great. I LOVE mine that is very similar. Just wish I could get louder sound out of the thing. Sound seems to be an issue with the old RCA's from what I gather

Did you try adjusting your sound IF, and audio det. Transformers? I know this series of set well, and along with a fine picture, they had an amazingly good sound system with plenty of volume, and really fine fidelity. Or, perhaps your voice coil on speaker is frozen?
Bill Cahill

[Tubejunke]

Hi Bill, I did notice that turning the L38 sound discriminator trans increases the volume level.This is the can that sits catty corner right beside where the antenna plugs into the chassis connector. Perhaps I should max it out and my trouble will be gone. To the expert (you) I may sound stupid but I am just being honest about my skills and knowledge. With that said I will add that I usually avoid turning adustments that I know require an oscilloscope for proper realignment. Reason? I don't know how to use one. I guess at this point it would be a wonderful thing to learn. My current skills leave me at the mercy of hoping for good results from factory settings that hopefully nobody has fooled with. I have an old tube type scope with no leads. I always figure old test equipment likely needs as much restoration as the devices I am trying to fix.

So can I safely adjust this L38 for max volume without causing harm to some other component or the trans its self?