What was your first vintage tv? - Videokarma.org TV - Video

*zenithfan1* · #1 12-01-2011, 08:02 AM

This may or may not have been beaten to death. Since I couldn't find much on a search I figured I'd ask. That and the what was your first new tv thread made me think of it.

So, anyways, I found mine at a Salvation army on 8-7-1995. It was and still is a 1968 Panasonic B/W 12". the vertical strecthes now when it gets hot but I think there are just a few resistors or caps changing with heat, but she still works. I almost threw it out but I think I should fix it back up like it used to be...just because. After all, that thing is what started my "obsession" as people have told me.

***Kamakiri*** · #2 12-01-2011, 08:23 AM

I was into radios since I was 7 or so. First antique radio that I ever had was a white Motorola AA5 set that I bought for $1 at an auction. Had bad filter caps and the thing motorboated like crazy. My mom's best friend's husband was an old TV and radio guy, and my mom baked him a chocolate cake for him to fix it for me. I came home from school one day about a month after I got it, and it was sitting playing in the dining room in the corner on the floor. I gave her the world's biggest hug. It was October 1978. I still have the radio.

From there, I amassed about 20 sets in my small bedroom, of various types. My first vintage TV, though, was a gigantic console Motorola b/w on legs. It had to have about a 25" tube. Had a huge M on the big bullet shaped control dial. I would so love to find one of those, haven't seen one before or since. My guess is that it was late 50s. Bought it for $5 at the same auction a year later. Used it for years, but got tossed when something was popping really bad inside, and I was too fearful to work on the thing. What the heck, I was 9 or 10 when it finally died

.

The next TV didn't come into my life until 1983. I remember riding my Free Spirit chopper from a friend's house a couple miles away (Christmas present in 1978), and got caught in a rainstorm. It was trash night, and I stopped under a tree until the rain subsided. I sat there, and my heart skipped a beat because I saw this salmon and white box under the tree. Honest to God I thought it was a prehistoric microwave, and was really excited because we didn't have one.

Looked at the front, and thought, holy crap, it's a television! I picked up the set, and rode home with it on my handlebars.

I opened the back, and there was one tube missing, a 7AU7 as I recall. I didn't have one, nor did I ever end up coming across one, until 1991. It sat on a shelf in the garage until then, covered carefully.

I was at a yard sale in '91, and there was a box of tubes, and the 7AU7 jumped out at me, and the memory came back. I bought the tubes, came home, put it in the set, turned it on, and what do you know, it worked!

The picture tube was somewhat dim, but I watched it for about a year or so, until it ended up getting packed away again in the garage until I moved into my house here in 1996.....actually 15 years ago today. I still have the set, and still have my old chopper bike that brought it home back in 1983.....

Sandy G · #3 12-01-2011, 08:47 AM

My 1st "Vintage" set was a Sony KV-4100 I got offa Da Bay about 10 yrs ago...been downhill ever since...(grin)

*zenithfan1* · #4 12-01-2011, 08:58 AM

Nice one Sandy! And speaking of that hill, it's pretty steep huh?

Hey Tim, That radio story of yours is pretty darn cute!

Sandy G · #5 12-01-2011, 09:06 AM

[QUOTE=zenithfan1;3019941]Nice one Sandy! And speaking of that hill, it's pretty steep huh?

Boy-Hidee, ain't THAT th' Truth !! (grin)

jstout66 · #6 12-01-2011, 09:15 AM

Hummm.. I was always lucky since the Uncle had a TV repair sales shop, so I would have my choice of what was considered "junk" back then. However.. my first vintage set would have been a Zenith "porthole" console with doors that I got at a sale for $1.00 ( probably around 1979-1980)
I had it in my room, and I don't think the parents knew it worked (DIM picture tho), anyway.. whenever I would get grounded they would take my TV away. (the 79 Zenith) Sooooo... I would just watch TV on that late at night! I remember lot's of "Alfred Hitchcock".....

ctc17 · #7 12-01-2011, 09:59 AM

CTC17 combo. I was up in LA saw it on the curb had to make a u turn and pulled all the tubes out of it. I went back later that night with a pickup and got it. The cabinet is pretty bad, it even has cigarette burns and the owner cut the legs off. I use it as a workbench and watch it sometimes. It was in a very poor part of. Town and I think it wwas in use up till early 2000s

radiotvnut · #8 12-01-2011, 11:40 AM

I started off with radios and really didn't have much interest in keeping TV's until a few years ago; but, I was given an RCA T100 10" round CRT B&W set by the president of our former antique radio club back around '90-'91. I never fixed it and ended up giving it away. By today's standards, the early '60's RCA B&W that I mentioned in the other thread as being the first TV I ever fixed would be considered "vintage"; but, it was just an "old junk TV" in the early '90's.

Chad Hauris · #9 12-01-2011, 11:52 AM

Some of my first TV's were a GE 12" B/W portable which was solid state except for the rectifier tube and a 1970's RCA 12" B/w tube type portable. I got these probably when I was around 10 years old in the mid-late 80's. The RCA pretty much got taken apart to pieces as it started to smoke when I tried to adjust something by using a hairpin. I still do have its cabinet somewhere though.

In 7th or 8th grade a friend of mine gave me a Zenith 4-tube hybrid 19" color set. I never could figure out how to get the color to work and ended up regrettably tossing the set.

I got an RCA CTC-31 probably around the time I was a freshman in high school. It was the 22" metal cabinet model. I persuaded my parents to give me $15 to buy it at the flea market and I carried it back to the car myself at the flea market. I can't believe I carried that thing for that distance. It later had a flyback fire but luckily it did not spread to anything else. I still have the cabinet of it, too.

I wish I could go back in time to the 80's to find old radios and TV's. My allowance I think was around 50 cents a week in middle school but I still managed to buy a lot of radios, 78 RPM records and some TV's. There were tons of radios at the $5.00 level I wish I could have bought but at the time for me that was a pretty big sum of money.

ChrisW6ATV · #10 12-01-2011, 01:55 PM

Mine was a Crosley 9-407 that I bought in 1979. It is a 12-inch set with a DuMont chassis that has the continuous Mallory tuner. I did not yet know how to fix it, so I sold it about a year later.

YamahaFreak · #11 12-01-2011, 03:11 PM

My first TRULY vintage TV was a 1977 Panasonic 12" Quintrix color set that my grandmother gave to me when I was about 15. Gorgeous little set, with a very crisp, bright, colorful picture, even after all these years.

FWIW, my first tubed set was a 1963 GE 11" B/W set with a built-in AA5 AM radio. The set is full of Compactrons. I still have it, and the TV section still works superbly, though the radio side has a bad filter hum.

Komet · #12 12-01-2011, 04:39 PM

My first vintage TV was a Indesit Black Wonder 24'' tube b / w when I was 12. Good set,but at that time we had very little space to store our sets and my father took him to a shed that was sold suddendly by the owner, RIP my dearly Indesit

AUdubon5425 · #13 12-01-2011, 07:16 PM

Maybe the '73-'74 Philco_ford 9" I bought in 1998, but I certainly didn't look at it as a vintage collectible then - it was the only set in the thrift store that was small enough to sit on my dorm room's windowsill. Around 2004 my uncle gave me his Dad's '67 Zenith 12" B&W. The first one I ever bought was the '65 Magnavox 23" in 2008.

cbenham · #14 12-02-2011, 01:45 AM

The first TV I ever had was a Silvertone 14 inch rectangular tube B&W tabletop in a sad little walnut cabinet. I worked after school at a local Radio and TV shop in St. Petersburg, Fl. [Translation: The owner let me hang out there and I took out the trash, unboxed new sets for the showroom and replaced 50/30@150 filter caps in 5 tube Superhets for customers waiting in the front. $6.88 for snowbirds to listen to their baseball games again.]

The Silvertone set was under a service bench in the far corner of the shop. I asked about it one day and was told, "If you fix it you can have it." WOW!!! For a kid of 11 this was a golden opportunity and a huge incentive to learn to troubleshoot. With the SAMS folder I started measuring parts under the chassis. Everything seemed to be OK and no obvious shorts. I finally turned it on and watched the tubes light up. Sound but no picture. I followed the B+ around through the set until I found a big wirewound resistor with voltage on one end and nothing on the other. Replacing that got the set closer to running but the best was yet to come. There was a full picture! Full of random horizontal lines and noise and the sweet smell of ozone. Another tech came over and switched off the lights and pointed at all the blue arcing
on the outer edge of the flyback. A new Stancor A-8131 was $7.60 so I decided I would try to repair the flyback myself. I removed it and pealed off the yellow wax around the outer edge and saw the burned spots with a magnifying glass. After removing the HV lead I stared pealing away the burned turns of wire until there were no more that I could see and I had continuity through the coil. I had removed almost 1/4 inch of the layered HV coil! Reattaching the HV wire was difficult but with care and some coil dope it seemed OK. Remounted it and reconnected it and turned the set on. WOW a clean clear picture! It worked! I had that set until my Jr. year of high school.
I could wear head phones and watch 'The Jack Paar Show' in my room without disturbing anyone.

I sold that set to a friend and found another TV at the shop that had been sitting under the bench for years. It was a Pilot TV-125, had a round 12 inch tube and included an FM tuner. This was the summer of 1960.

About that time I found the local parts distributor had two COL-R-TEL color adaptor kits that never sold to any of the local dealers, so I got one and the friend who got the Silvertone got the other one. We got them for $25.00 each! We made them both work, but the tales surrounding the COL-R-TELs are another adventure completely. Waaay tooo much fun for a kid.

Cliff

consoleguy67 · #15 12-02-2011, 08:23 AM

My first vintage tv was/is a 1964 Magnavox 24" B&W combo. It was listed on E-Bay as non working. I won it for a $5.00 bid.

My fiancee(now wife) helped me pick up this monster in CT., on a cold,rainy night. The set is also remote controlled, and there is a switch on the back to let the set be operated manually. I flipped the switch, and the set came to life.

Attatched are pictures of the set, as it currently is.