Scored a rare, huge, and HEAVY DuMont.....

[Kamakiri]

Told you that Buffalo NY was DuMont country!

Good God almighty, this thing weighs more than a lawn tractor.

I'm now the proud owner of a Dumont Sherwood RA-101! The guy I bought it from rescued it from a huge garbage pile, and we loaded it in my van from the 6th floor of a theater company in downtown Buffalo. He assumed it was used as a stage prop, but there's no way someone would buy a monster like this for just that.

It's got to weigh at least 300 lb. At the very least. and FORTY FOUR tubes.

Unfortunately, it's too big for my house and will be up for sale soon. Picture tube seems to have decent emission.

http://www.radiomuseum.org/r/dumont_...d_ra_101a.html

From the radiomuseum website: "Several Westminster sets are known to have survived; it is unknown whether any of the other versions can still be found today. "

I assume that I have something rare and great in hand . I have NEVER seen such a well built monster outside of ETF.

These are the pics from the Craigslist listing. I'll take some better ones when I can recruit a few neighbors to help me lift it out of the van and on to furniture dollies. Complete with both backs, and is in what I'd call pretty darn nice shape!

[DavGoodlin]

Great Job Tim, This is worthy of Museum Preservation.

but I have to ask...

How clueless could someone be to put something like this on a trash pile?????

[NoPegs]

Aaaaugh!

Moving out of a 2nd floor unit is more and more attractive every day...

Can you find something smaller next time so that I could at least entertain the idea of acquiring it?


If you can get some serious photos of that I'd totally run it through a large-format printer and make a poster out of it, since I can't physically have it, I could at least admire it. Beautiful doesn't even begin to describe it...

[Kamakiri]

Originally Posted by DavGoodlin

Great Job Tim, This is worthy of Museum Preservation.

but I have to ask...

How clueless could someone be to put something like this on a trash pile?????

This is the story.....

A couple musicians in their 20s were retained by the theater to clean out over 50 years worth of props.....everything from the usual costumes to an exact reproduction of an electric chair used in Sing Sing prison. Everything was tossed in one gigantic warehouse room on the first floor of the back of this immense theater, which the owner of the building wanted cleaned out to rent.

When I got up to the organized room on the 6th floor, there was TONS of antique and vintage furniture, kitchen stuff, etc. He said that this was only one of 2 TVs there, the other I saw, which was a late 50s RCA Sportable in semi-rough shape. Most of it they were still going through, and I had limited time (and funds, after buying this thing), so I didn't opt for the grand tour.

I don't know how the kids were being paid or whatever, but the owner just wanted all this stuff gone. And here it is

[mikeh]

Very Nice find I would be very intersted in that TV. Are you going to list on
Ebay? I would hire a shipping company. What a find!
Mike

[Kamakiri]

Not sure yet. Much as I'd love to keep it, I know that it needs to go to a better place.

This might be a set worthy of someone restuffing the wax caps, and while my restoration skills are decent, this is a set that I realize is probably way beyond my abilities.

[mstaton]

did they use Stromberg Carlson record players in Dumont's?

[John Marinello]

What CRT does it use?

[Kamakiri]

15AP4. Showed so-so emissions when I checked it right there, but I think it'll wake up

[Countryford]

That is beautiful. I hope it goes to a good home. I would so love to have that though. I wonder how much shipping to Arizona would be for that.

[Kamakiri]

Just checked in the back. This is the RA-101-A chassis. I looked quickly, but I saw what looked like a pair of Westinghouse WL-807 tubes on the chassis. Big honkers with ceramic bases.

"Versions with the -A suffix use a dangerous 60 Hz 4.4 kV transformer and a dual 2X2 voltage doubler to supply 12 kV DC to the CRT anode."

Yup, not plugging it in

I also have what appear to be the engineering blueprints of the schematic of the set. Each foldout diagram is a couple feet in length, at least.

[Eric H]

That's a great find!
So which version is it? A or B?

[Kamakiri]

It's an "A". We posted at the same time...see above

[kramden66]

tv phono am fm sw vhf air - vhf hi - vhf marine , geez this thing almost covers everything

[Kamakiri]

Shot some pics while I was on lunch. The coffee cup in the blueprint diagrams is to illustrate size.

This is a rare find indeed.