Motorola 23EGP22 set on evilbay

[julianburke]

Here's a set I haven't seen out in the wild for a long time--esp one with a seemingly good working 23EGP22 & chassis and a cabinet in mint condition! He had it mis-touted as a 1961 model. After a couple of emails to him he finally changed his ad. His price is way out of range but good luck to him. These sets were pretty much gone by 1970 because of the CRT.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...:X:RTQ:US:1123

[stromberg67]

I agree, it's a rare one. I'm thinking now about the 6LE8 do-it-all color demodulator circuit that I believe this chassis and others used. Reminds me od Mad Man Muntz.

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by stromberg67

I agree, it's a rare one. I'm thinking now about the 6LE8 do-it-all color demodulator circuit that I believe this chassis and others used. Reminds me od Mad Man Muntz.

That set has a totally different color circuit and is the first run of the TS908 series. The set uses 28 tubes with several in the color circuit.

[zenith2134]

looks like a really nice set. And as a bonus, the 23ExtraGarbagePicture22 has some life left in her yet!

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by zenith2134

looks like a really nice set. And as a bonus, the 23ExtraGarbagePicture22 has some life left in her yet!

It looks like it could be a Sylvania rebuilt. Too bad the resin is so yellow.

[wiseguy]

whats so bad about the CRT you guys talk about, I never had a Rectangular set before

[bgadow]

The 23EGP22 was the first widely available rectangular color tube; Motorola worked with another company to have it designed on the cheap. The had a reputation for being short-lived. You can replace them with a more common type (25AP22, etc) but it takes some engineering. A number of other companies used that type in the mid 60s, by the way.

[truetone36]

Those 25EGP22 CRTs were made by National Video Corp. of Chicago, IIRC.

[julianburke]

National Video Corporation was nearly bankrupt and Motorola helped bail them out temporarily as Motorola was striving to manufacture a rectangular set to "put them out front" so to speak. They did but the quality output of NVC was far less than adequate from engineering, to having a clean facility to poor labor and management. My second job was with Modan Service here in Knoxville, Tn. and one of the owners was Charles Duncan who was a field representative for Motorola for over 15 years at that time. (1970) He told me the whole story of how Motorola and NVC teamed up but we think the real culprit was a very poor labor pool made up of mostly of unskilled help who basically knew nothing about the trade.

I worked at a picture tube rebuilding plant here in Knoxville after high school for several years and I understand the critical points of tube building esp the cleanliness part of it. Even the simplest parts can be the most critical in the quality of your product.

Building 23EGP22's was a major stepping stone that Motorola undertook when other manufacturers were still doing their homework. The 23EG's rarely lasted over 1-2 years and about 35% of them were replaced within 90 days in warranty right off the bat. About 2 or 3 years later Motorola started selling hardware kits to convert the 23's to a 25AP22 type tube. It took most of a day to do this conversion and we hated to do it as it was a real pain. The kits came out about a year later after the sets were sold for warranty and about a year after that were sold for conversions. Guess who was stuck with the chore of doing them??!! Yup, I became an expert of tube changing. By about 1970 most 23EG sets disappeared. I did love doing Zeniths (We did Zenith and Motorola only) as they were easy and I could do a mechanical change in about 15 minutes, let the set cook out for about 15 minutes and do convergence in about 3-5 minutes if there was no problem with the convergence board. About half of the time there would be a shorted rectifier or a burned pot on that board. I knew where every wire went on a Zenith and could have the whole chassis out in about 60 seconds and I was good! (Knobs first on the front bottom tray, then the four screws on the bottom, then pull the wires off and viol la, that was it-yank it.) For some reason I don't miss those days but we knew of nothing else and that was what you had to do to eat in those days!

Oh yeah, one more thing: 23EG's were never crisp or bright as they almost always looked "soft".

[dieseljeep]

Maybe Zenith hired those same personnel when NVC closed their doors.
Zenith built CRT's, that were state of the art and flawless in performance and longevity.
What happened in the late 80's, to mid 90's, is any ones guess.
The Motorola I bought in December, 1965 and had the last ETS908 chassis, the 23EG lasted nine years. I've also seen some of them go for five years of heavy usage but that was rather rare.

I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that Motorola made some later 23EGP22's themselves after the bad experience with NVC, and that they were much more reliable.

NVC did go bankrupt and out of business in I think 1969. I believe the 23EG was the only color tube they made. Supposedly their B&W's were still ok, but by the late 60's most OEM's had gone overseas for B&W and nobody wanted them to make color ones.

[bgadow]

I really like the trivia/stories that come out sometimes. Thanks for sharing, Julian!

[DavGoodlin]

Julian could write at least one chapter for the book we should collectively publish; "when TV was big"

[snelson903]

i will be picking up a motorola 23sf3 combo later today, i wonder if it has one of though's crt in it to.

[mcmlxv]

Can anyone shed some light on post-EGP23 tubes used by Motorola? I was just reviewing a set of original Motorola paperwork from a set purchased May 9th, 1970. The chassis is R23TS-921-D04, and the model number is CU876ES. I found something interesting: on the factory schematic, the CRTs listed are 23FVP4 and 23DYP4.

It appears Motorola was no longer installing the 23EGP22 at this late date of tube TV production. Maybe Motorola ditched the 23EGP with the introduction of the TS915 series chassis in '67.

Any thoughts?