I found another one: Astor Royal 25.

[dr.ido]

Old sets seem to be coming out of the woodwork in this area this year.

This Astor Royal 25 was found outside the same house that I found the Devon Fringe that I posted an earlier thread about. It wasn't there when I picked the first set up. I'm guessing the house was recently sold and the new people are clearly out stuff left behind by the previous owners. I left the a late 70s AWA color set (probably made by Mitsubishi) behind.

It's a later/cheaper set than the Devon. The cabinet is mainly plastic coated steel with an unfinished fibreboard base, where the Devon has veneered chipboard and a few pieces of real timber. It would have originally had a set of short screw in legs.



This set has the series 11 hybrid chassis and a 1969 datecode. It definitely looks like an evolution of the series 5A chassis in the Devon. The HV cage, audio amp and delfection section look identical. Transistors have replaced the rest of the tubes though. There are no paper caps on this chassis.

At first glance I though it might drop straight into the Devon, but there are a lot of small changes that aren't immediately obvious.

This one will probably end up being a parts donor.

[jpdylon]

wow, a hybrid B&W set. Very cool looking. I would try to resurrect it before deeming a parts unit, but that's entirely up to you. I think hybrid sets are far more rare than even roundies.

[bgadow]

That one has a real "American" look to it. Around here we'd probably keep it!

[dr.ido]

Hyrbid B&W sets were quite common around here in the late 60s and early 70s. This is the first time I've seen this particular chassis, but as a kid I kept finding the same hybrid chassis in everything from 17" portables to 25" consoles from Philips, Healing and Pye.

This sets fate hasn't been decided yet. I may get it up and running after all. My only concern is that I really don't have the space to keep more than one of these (I live in a 40 square meter 1 bedroom flat) and I've yet to find anyone locally who has any interest in these sets even after all the hard work is done.

If I had more space I would have picked up some of other stuff I saw while out making my rounds. The late 70s color sets I saw aren't nearly as interesting as your all tube color sets, or the early PAL sets from Europe with hyrbid chassis and delta CRTs, but I doubt anyone is bothering to save them.