Westinghouse color console on epay

[radiotvnut]

This item is not mine nor do I have any connection to it. I'm simply posting it here in case anyone is interested.

I just found this Westinghouse rectangular color console on epay. This set has potential. It's located in New Orleans, about 180 miles from here. I might bid on this one if I thought there was an economical way to get it over here. My Mother would kill me if I asked her to drive me that far to get "another console TV". This needs to be saved by someone. This is the first Westinghouse color set I've ever seen.

http://cgi.ebay.com/beautiful-50s-TV...QQcmdZViewItem

[Eric H]

Cool set but it's not 1950's. more like late 60's.

[radiotvnut]

I started to tell them it was from the late '60's; but, I figured I'd better keep my mouth shut!

Is anyone familiar with Westinghouse color TV's? Were these hand wired or were they built on a PC board?

[jpdylon]

The CRT on that has got to be burnt to a crisp with that instant on...

[radiotvnut]

Originally Posted by jpdylon

The CRT on that has got to be burnt to a crisp with that instant on...

I thought the same thing. If I did wind up with it, I've got a 23" Zenith CC tube that should work just fine in there.

[colorfixer]

Someone please take them out of their misery and set 'em straight...

[jpdylon]

nah.....it makes it go cheaper!

[bgadow]

I'm not certain, but I think the chassis is identical to a Magnavox. I'm not sure what the arrangement was between the two companies-some of the color crts used by Magnavox were built by Westinghouse. Anyway, not a common set; I would grab it in a heartbeat if were not a half a world away.

[kx250rider]

I have very little experience with Westinghouse 60s color sets, but I did have several 60s table model 19" color Westinghouses that I worked.. They were definitely Westinghouse-built, not clones. I don't have Sams anymore for the 60s, but I wonder if someone can pull it up and see a photo of the chassis?

Charles

[bgadow]

Somewhere I have a "color tv chassis identity guide" put out, I think, by Sams. It's from the late 60s. I noticed that the photos for Westinghouse and Magnavox were identical; I figured it must be a mistake, so I pulled several different Sams for both companies and, indeed, their console color chassis' were identical-hardly a difference at all. The easiest thing to spot right offhand is the hv cage; the top, as I recall, has a half-round shape. I have also read of a Curtis-Mathes connection, basically that when Westinghouse got out of the TV business C-M took over manufacture of that chassis and also sold them to Magnavox.

[Eric H]

One neat thing about it is it still uses a "COLOR" badge on the front.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by jpdylon

The CRT on that has got to be burnt to a crisp with that instant on...

Also, that CRT looks to me like it has the worst case of cataracts on earth; that or else someone knocked the neck off, and the phosphors blew off the center of the screen from the sudden inrush of air when the tube lost its vacuum. That would be my best guess as to why the set isn't working, and it is also possible (even likely) that the seller doesn't want to put any more money into a set as old as this one.

My aunt had a Westinghouse color console TV (23-25 inch rectangular CRT, IIRC) in the late sixties, with instant on. When she got the set she lived a very short distance from the TV transmitters serving Cleveland, so she could get all three Cleveland network affiliates without an antenna or simply with a length of wire on the antenna terminals. She moved to another Cleveland suburb, located 20+ miles from the stations, a year or so later and was still able to get every Cleveland station using rabbit ears (including the three UHF stations on the air at the time). That set had a very good picture as well, and my aunt/cousins used it quite a bit when they had it, but then the TV must have developed some serious problem (I forget after all these years what it was) after about five years (IIRC), so she (gasp!) trashed it and got a new, smaller portable, one of those black plastic cubes such as are commonplace these days. The Westinghouse console probably (most likely) wound up in a landfill, unless some electronics bug picked it up and restored it before the trash people hauled it away. The latter was very common in the sixties and seventies; I built up quite a collection of old sets, from Admiral to Zenith (except Magnavox) from picking them up in the neighbors' trash.

Speaking of Magnavox (the real Magnavox Company of Fort Wayne, Indiana, decades before Philips-Magnavox), I saw only one Magnavox TV, a large-screen color console, in my neighborhood when I was a kid; it was owned by a distant cousin of mine who lived at the north end of the street I grew up on. The only other Magnavox set I can remember seeing anywhere on the east side of Cleveland belonged to an elderly woman who went to our church; that set was a 12" consolette Maggie, IIRC, in a dark-wood cabinet and with the controls, including the tuner, mounted in a recessed spot on top of the cabinet with a sliding door that could hide them when not in use.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

This item is not mine nor do I have any connection to it. I'm simply posting it here in case anyone is interested.

I just found this Westinghouse rectangular color console on epay. This set has potential. It's located in New Orleans, about 180 miles from here. I might bid on this one if I thought there was an economical way to get it over here. My Mother would kill me if I asked her to drive me that far to get "another console TV". This needs to be saved by someone. This is the first Westinghouse color set I've ever seen.

http://cgi.ebay.com/beautiful-50s-TV...QQcmdZViewItem

The seller mentions that they will ship the TV anywhere in the continental United States, but the shipping charges would be high, even for a shipment from New Orleans to where you are in Mississippi.

The damage to the CRT, cataracts like I've never seen in all my years of electronics experimenting and perhaps the neck having been snapped off, seems incredible; almost as if someone deliberately knocked the neck off the tube, or the TV having been forcibly slammed against a wall.

The large spot in the center of the screen leads me to believe that the phosphors may have blown off in that area when or if the tube lost vacuum; this may well be just the beginning of this TV's problems. Being located in New Orleans, the set may have sustained flood damage from Hurricane Katrina almost three years ago as well, although the cabinet looks as if it's in very good shape. It's difficult to tell why the seller says the set isn't working, although I would guess the damaged CRT is a large part of it.

I honestly do not know, however, whether this TV is worth repairing; as I said in another post, however, it is entirely possible that the set's owner feels he/she does not want to put any more money into it, or cannot afford to do so. As well, many people today are getting away from large console televisions, stereos and the like (replacing them with smaller portables, table models, or flat panels), especially if they are moving to a smaller home or an apartment.

The large consoles such as the Westinghouse under discussion here were, however, very popular in the '50s through about the '70s; I would hazard a guess that this Westinghouse console is from perhaps the mid-to-late sixties because it has a UHF tuner. As such, this TV is over four decades old (if it was manufactured in 1965) and may not (to the original owner, anyhow) be worth repairing. If someone here on AK could get this set, it would be wonderful. Would save the TV from a certain death in a landfill.

[andy]

...

[AUdubon5425]

I'm near New Orleans and thought about going to check it out, but the seller has now relisted the cabinet only with no chassis.

I can say this from experience - if that set had been in the flood it would not be in one piece. The floodwaters rusted nails, desolved glue and destroyed anything with particle board or veneer. The only furniture I saw that made it was 80+ years old and SOLID wood. Plus, anything electronic was ruined by the saltwater very quickly. Two weeks after I found my neighbor's Trans-Oceanic and the thing was already rusting and the controls were frozen.