Rca Tk-41
 

Just in case someone knows of one, I'm still looking desperately for a RCA TK41 television camera! Finders' fee paid! I posted several before but would like to keep it fresh in case one is known for sale. If anyone knows of one, please call me!! I need pieces or parts of any of it. Camera, CCU, cables or books-I need it.

Any early studio equipment or associated equipment as well. Soon I will have a website of what I have in my collection. I have a beautiful working TK-60 (RCA's last B & W camera) of which I will share on U-Tube when I get my home garage cleaned out for the "studio" of all my 30 or so cameras. My microphone collection and early radio will also be shown. I appreciate any responses or leads!! It will all be seen, shared and heard! 865-288-0900 eves Julian Burke
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Have you ever tried to contact Chuck Pharis?
He has at least 1, maybe more. He might have an extra for sale, Logan
Here is a link to his site, http://www.pharis-video.com/

If I remember, I think he did contact Mr. Pharis at one point. I also had recommended a place, and unfortunately the TK41 which I had met and known had flown the coop. I have to say, they are insanely large cameras though.

Good luck finding one Mr. Burke.

David

Sheesh, I want an all tube color television camera too! (even if is not an "R.C.A." TK40 or 41)... this when I will have enough money.

I have since located a TK41B from New York and it is a very nice one; unfortunately, it is missing its' CCU and will have to work on finding one. I have an extensive collection of all kinds of electronics that I have been building for nearly 40 years and I think of all of the engineers and others that I have made friends with (many are gone now) and what a rich and rewarding life that has been so far.

I have a nice complete working TK60 and a nice complete working TK44 among my 30 or so cameras.

Are you getting the big dolly along w/it ? I'd like to see yr set up some time...Terry has told me a lot about it & set my mouth a-waterin'...(grin)

Yes, and I have several other spare dolly units that would work too. They too are getting hard to find as I think there are more cameras than dollys.

Chuck is the best contact I know of... Also there's a guy by the name of Jim Bragg, a retired CBS camera man in Acton, CA. I haven't spoken with him in probably 15 years, but I know he has/had a TK-41C head in his collection. No idea if he'd sell it, or has others, but it would be worth a try. Sorry, I have no contact info on him anymore.

Charles

Sometimes I sell cameras. Right now I am working on restoring a TK-41 to running condition. I need all the spare parts and extra cameras that I have. I can't go to Radio Shack and pick up a part, so I take parts off my spare cameras. I currently have 3 1/2 TK-41s, and one very early (1942) TK-40. I have one complete set of CCU support equipment, and a few other pieces of spare equipment. I am looking for another view finder. TK-41 ccus and support equipment are almost impossible to find. By the way, if anyone has any personal comments to say about me, please contaxt me directly. chuck@pharis-video.com
As far as I know, there are no working TK-41s anywhere right now. I hope to have the first. My collection can be seen on my site. http://www.pharis-video.com
I am currently having some web software problems so my site is not updated as I would like it to be.
Chuck Pharis

I'd almost volunteer to update your site for you Chuck. I've been dying to see some recent updates.

David

Thanks David! Julian

Did you ever contact WCOV-TV in Montgomery, AL? they had a 41 there for a long time just on display in the building.

Wonder how many 41s were made in the 1st place ? 500? 1000? 2500? When were the last ones mustered out of service? 1980? '85? There's GOT to be a few of 'em stuck around in dusty junkhole corners somewhere...

Tk41
 

I believe WCOV has one but it is their icon/mascot since they are the original owner of it.

TK41's were produced until sometime in 1967 when RCA introduced their new full line of "New Look" equipment which was light blue in color instead of the "umber grey" so long and famous in the earlier RCA stuff. TK41's were used by their original owners for at least 10-15 years minimum until they were sent to other sister stations or universities/schools in favor of newer and better cameras not necessarily RCA. In their secondary market, they were used until they could no longer keep them up or knew how to. Others were used for remote pickups. They did make great color pictures unlike its' successor, the TK42-3's. RCA was flooded with orders for that "New Look" camera and sales were brisk but it later turned out to be a hated camera. They were early solid state, always required maintenance and would drop out of the chain without any notice. The TK42 had internal mechanical focus and zoom which was ill designed as the cable would bind and then become jerky which is a disaster when on the air. I don't think these had barely a 10 year life span in the studio. They were traded in or disposed of. The TK43 was an identical camera except the focus and zoom was external and trouble free. The TK43 is a very rare camera as it was short lived (too little too late) for its' successor, the TK44 which was a far better camera, produced a great rich and crisp color, more reliable and used the then new Plumbicon tubes. About this time other very good name brand cameras were available and many stations were jumping ship in favor of these such as Philips, Ikegami, GE, Norelco and others as they were outperforming RCA so the handwriting was on the wall. The TK series of 45, 46 and 47 were better than the last one and RCA sold a ton of TK47's all over the world. This was the last model produced by RCA. I have about 12 of these and they are getting harder to find. The TK48 was engineered and in production until RCA went out of business in 1986 or sold out to Thompson Ltd and they decided to not go into the camera business. None were shipped, and every unit that was finished on down to the bare chassis was hit with an ax and tossed into a dumpster.

A local engineer (my friend Doug) was the last class to graduate from the RCA Camden facility and he witnessed this action. They were trying to get them to take some of the stuff but most had no way to get it home or just didn't want it. Mostly video amplifiers or other small stuff-no cameras. I'm sure if I was there, my trunk would have been full as I saw the worth of it then. (That's why I have about 12,000 SF of stuff over 40 years!)

Regarding the TK41's, I think many more are in existance but they are overseas or squirreled away and forgotten. Anything that weighs several hundred pounds is not a really popular item! They are slowly finding their way out like the CT100's and I sometimes use the common rule of thumb as much as 10% of some stuff remains. If they produced about 1000, perhaps around 100 remain in one form or another in parts. Somewhere I saw production figures for this camera and it surprised me how many they did make but some went overseas. Most likely time will tell. BTW, the TK41 was a very serviceable unit, was very reliable for what it was and the engineers liked it very much which gave it about a 20 year life span which in todays advancement standards was phenominal! Plumbicons and vidicons took over the market until CCD's were introduced.

Now for an update on where I saw that list, Steve McVoys website has a camera listing showing Lytle Hoover's compilation of RCA cameras sold. It shows about 239 TK41's were sold. It shows 376 TK42's were sold and that is a scarcer camera to find! Less than a hundred TK43's were manufactured so they have to be very rare! If I am reading and gleaning all info from it, that includes overseas as well so correct me if I am wrong here. 239 is NOT a lot of cameras spread out throughout the world camera market!

Today, the lenses are larger than the camera.

Total production figures of the TK41's were 330, and a third of those went to Europe.

Well, trying to put some logic to it (like trying to roughly estimate the volume of the world's oceans without knowing much of the details):

Production stopped in the mid 1960's.
How many stations had live color capability by 1965? Generous guess, 500. Average number of live color cameras per station, guess, 2. So let's say max 1000 TK-41s in service, in 1965. Number of those that were replacements, probably close to zero - my impression is it was most common to just keep them running, second choice being to upgrade to the prism optics and lower-noise video amps. No real replacements until later models came along.

So, I'd guess about 1000 total manufactured, and this may be on the high side.

I hope someone with actual knowledge can provide some enlightenment.

it is true many models TK 41 were exported abroad, below the two photos will see 3 who were employed by RAI in Italy in 1968 for the first transmission experiments in color.

I'm personally trying to track down a TK-41 in Australia though only mainly have the internet as an info source to work with. My mate James found this pic of a TK-41 http://www.slv.vic.gov.au/hwtports/0...hp004692.shtml . According to the source of info http://nla.gov.au/nla.cs-pa-HTTP%253...HP004692.SHTML this photo was taken at St Vincent's Hospital, Melbourne, Victoria in 1965. I've noticed this TK-41 type camera has a modified tilt adjustable Marconi MKIII type viewfinder.

Apart from that the other early colour cams we had in the 60s was an EMI-204 3 tube vidicon colour camera which was for demos at Powerhouse Museum in 1965 http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/coll...se/?irn=249192 and on 15th July 1967 ATV-0 used TK-42s for an experimental colour broadcast of a horse race in Pakenham, Victoria http://www.oldradio.com/archives/har...tk42(atvo).jpg .

I can imagine that TK-41s were used over in Philippines as they started colour in 1966 and TK-41s were the main colour camera back then alongside with Norelco/Philips PC-60s, so I tend to wonder how many may be in existence over there.

Lastly I hope Chuck will be able to get his TK-41 going, will be awesome to see one in action again and be compared with a modern CCD camera, will be interesting to put two side by side and and do a comparison hey.

Just curios, what made this cameras so relaible?

TK overkill
 

This was an all tube color camera just like the TK11/31 B&W camera which was a workhorse in the industry for all of the '50's and '60's. Their problems were well known and most of the time an easy fix. Tubes are also forgiving under critical moments unlike transistors. These cameras were built to be serviced and easy access to all componets was engineered in an overkill design.

TK42's were designed with plug in modules with a lot of germanium transistors which by todays' standards are terrible. The edge connectors on the boards also gave some trouble. Current surges in supply power were common and seemed to bother the '42 whereas the '41 was not as succeptable. Any engineer who worked these cameras will pretty much tell you the same thing. However the '41 was bothered by heat buildup so the later ones had a blower system inside them. The TK60 B&W had a chimney on top of it for good reason.

What critical moments?

It was late and what I meant to say was at certain times if you had some kind of power surge or something bumped the camera, the '42 would seem to react to it. A 42 could have a color drop out, sometimes suddenly no color, adjusting focus or zoom and cable would jump, and other assorted video problems due to the nature of the edge connectors on the modules. Excessive humidity sometimes would find its' way to the camera (we couldn't figure that one out either) closing the side hatch could sometimes knock it out of whack or an intermittant we could never find. Yup, any institution who had one didn't keep it around for long. They didn't seem to get any better with age either. I know of some who had '42's who wished they had their '41's back until the '44's came along.

My dim memory reminds me that NBC never bought any TK-42's. They kept the old beasts until the 44's came along.

I was behind a 42 one day and the talent in front of the lens started moving so I panned with him...I thought. It was the complete horizontal in the camera drifting to the side of the frame. The talent was not moving but started leaning to the side when he saw me pan. Just about the the time he was ready to fall over, we figured it out and quit for the day.

TK42 woes
 

Tee hee hee, I rest my case, yes they did some strange things and time didn't help them either. Since NBC and RCA were together, I sometimes wonder if it was a known problem (early on) regarding TK42's and NBC wouldn't touch them? It is well documented that they waited until the TK44 Plumbicon cameras were a worthy replacement. After all, these are production cameras, were used pretty much 24/7 and down time costs thousands. It was in the later '60's when NBC used their colorful station ID's and I especially like my favorite-the one where it states "THIS HAS BEEN A COLOR PRODUCTION OF THE NBC TELEVISION NETWORK" and a cameraman in the background wearing a red shirt dollying a TK41 through the NBC "snake" in the foreground. This ID ran for a long time too! The "New Look" equipment had long been in production when this ID was made. It still impresses me how a true "hands on" piece of equipment like a '41 could be used day in and day out for nearly 20 years and work sucessfully and perfectly that is all tubes! Remember, this is 55+ year old technology that we can't even claim today! What a masterpiece!

Check this out and watch carefully: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e2xb...eature=related

-Julian

We have Sony DXC-3000 cameras in our studio that were installed in 1989. They're still plugging away. I'm not sure its unusual to have television equipment for a long time. Its not the same as consumer equipment. In fact I think the only reason there's been a big wave of replacement of studio equipment is due to HD coming in. Otherwise a lot of places would still be using their mid 90's (or earlier) vintage cameras.

David

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/att...0&d=1183932275

That's interesting about the 41s-I would have thought that since they were pretty much a "leading edge" product, that they would be pushing the technical limits of what was possible back then, & as such would have been troublesome, balky things. YetI remember seeing them in TV shows into the '70s, when they wanted to show a "TV camers", it was always one of those big battleship gray, humpbacked beasts. Guess the engineers REALLY did their homework when these things were designed, & told the bean counters to go pound sand if they wanted to use cheaper components in them.

I have a question, where are all of the obsolete sdtv studio cameras going to go in feb 2009? I know most of them have been already pulled from service, but there should be a huge pile already of working videogear, ready for the dumpster or better yet Audio Karma video collectors. Is anyone here making contacts with their local TV stations for the surplus stuff? Logan

Don't confuse the broadcast analog shut down date with changeover to digital SD or HD studio gear. The changeover at studios has been going on for some time, both to digital routing/switching and to HD. The final digital transmitter can be fed from an analog studio and vice versa.

Thanks for the pictures!

Yes i Know, but still there should be thousands of old Low D cameras, vtrs and switchers laying around somewhere, shouldn't there? did they all go to the dump?

Tk-42's
 

the TK-42 had myraids of problems as mentioned previously, in addition they sucked up light like crazy; we had 2 of those at WEDU in Tampa in late 60's-early 70's and had to light the sets at 1000-1100 ft. candles for those things. But they were the stations first local color cameras and were donated by another local channel so they were put to good use anyway. We had a great engineer there who worked and worked and mangaed to get very good video out of them most of the time. Don't know when they got rid of those things. When I left the station in '71 they were still in use. We did an annual auction beginning in 1968 and used remote facilities of BIG13 in Tampa who used GE pc70's on their truck---what a difference!

Actually, as I said, a lot of them are still in service. I know our studio isn't due for a change-out until next year. And even then it will be with digital SD cameras. A lot of SD gear has also found a second home in schools, churches, government, plus internet web streaming. You don't need HD cameras for a lot of web streaming applications. And when equipment does reach end-of-life its often auctioned on eBay or can be found at B-stock suppliers like Broadcast Store, etc

Usually its only when the device is non-operational does it usually find its way to a recycler. I know I helped load the dump truck on Friday with a Chyron Maxine, several 3/4" decks of all sorts of variety. A 3/4" robotic server (that killed me, I'd have liked to take such a unique beast home), Several BetcamSP decks that had ended up underwater when our Odetics robotic Betcam server was flooded out because a pipe burst. The Odectics itself had to be chainsawed to get it into small enough pieces to leave the building, it had literally been put in there when the place was built.

Anyway, to answer your question, its still out there.

David

Since most equipment being used today is much smaller that that was used 50 or so years ago, much of it is being brought home by the engineers or given to another facility. If you go to any good or larger hamfest, you will find this stuff. I recently went to the Shelby (NC) hamfest to find older ENG cameras were everywhere.

Regarding the digital transformation that is due to take place next february, it involves the transmitter and not so much of the studio gear. Transmitters can transmit digital or analog without too much modification. Most stations have already done this and are ready. Our local PBS channel 2 had to shut their secondary channel 15 off because of an aged klystron ($125,000?) that they had babied along but it didn't quite make it to the end before they install a new digital transmitter.

Just this morning at a flea market a man was selling a small handheld Casio color TV that uses 4 AA batteries. (kind of neat looking too) He wanted $20 for it but he may not realize it won't work after february! No, I didn't buy it as I have plenty and BTW, does anyone have a good idea of what to do with these Sony, Casios etc. when they no longer work? Perhaps a low power RF to make them work in your house, or just display them in your collectors case?

you think that RAI when replacing equipment as cameras, mixers, television monitors, microphones, etc.. etc.. sent them to Turin for the destruction. in practice they destroyed with the hammer. This information gave me by a men who work in RAI of Florence in 1978.

is a pleasure to be able to contribute in this very interesting forum

Julian, do you know if they ever have "Clean out the Junque" sales over at Oak Ridge ? prolly not much TV-related stuff, but you never know...

They do and had a recent sale last week. They don't have much if any vintage TV stuff.

This site

http://sixtiestv.com/color_tv.htm

says that in 1964 that only 137 out 565 commercial stations in the U.S. could originate color - often only film. So, the number of Tk-41s built may be much smaller than the 1000 maximum I estimated. It also said that NBC was scrounging color gear from such places as the New York World's Fair to supplement its equipment in the 1964-65 season.

According to back issues of TV Guide, the local station was running newscasts in bw into the mid-70s at least. On a tour of the station in the very early 80s I recall seeing "new logo" RCA cameras. Always kinda wondered what model they were, and if they are still around.

Thanks old tv! I looked at the site and on the home page I found my NBC Color Chimes Photoshop artwork borrowed from my post at Pete's site a few years ago. Purely my own idea of the color chimes look. It was created from a scan of the real B&W version of the NBC logo and doctored from there. Credit where credit is due was requested.

All you AK'ers are welcome to use it on your sites if you think it serves a purpose. Just let me hold it for a future avatar when I get tired of the Philco babe.

Dave A

Either a slide projector, film chain or network programming was the only color source in many stations. This sort of reminds me of some motels in the '60's that would have "color TV" on their signs giving the impression that each room would have color TV's only to find that a 21" roundie would be the only one in the lobby.