Sylvania brochure
 

This one I'm guessing is prior to rare-earth tubes. Can anyone identify the model year?

Looks like a RCA CTC-4 (1955) with the Sylvania name on it... bet that is a 21AXP22 under that plastic insulator cone. Several brands were produced that were simply re-badged RCA CTC-4s... at one time, I had one that was branded Hallicrafters, but it really was identical to my RCA set.

ETF has pictures of the clones:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_ctc_clone.html

jr

Thanks - I was going to comment that the yoke looks just like the one on a CTC-5

Since we are discussing early Sylvania color TV, I have a question...Did Sylvania ever produce a color set with halo-light?

jr

I concur, it is a CTC-4. The Sylvania clone is documented on the ETF website:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/rca_ctc_clone.html

Not sure, but I think not.

While some I know have said "yes", I have seen on documented evidence to support it. I would LOVE to be wrong! The 15" set and their first 21" set did not have halolight.

When I was looking for pictures of the CTC-4 clones, I got near the bottom of this page:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/21_inch_color.html

and saw the Sylvania "Granada" and "Saratoga" which both have very nice white, sort of halo-light looking masks, and got excited thinking that they might indeed have used halo-light on some early color sets... darn!

jr

It seems that you're right. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sylvania_Electric_Products

See the advertising section.

John

Here is the page with the set:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/sylvania_21C609.html

This reference claims that it was too difficult to match the gray scale tracking of the color CRT to the halolight. I think that if Sylvania had built their own chassis with an improved tracking arrangement, it would have been possible and would have resulted in a set with much more consistent color than the competition. The procedure would be to adjust first for cutoff (like later chassis with a set-up switch), then adjust drives to match the whites to the Halolight, then maybe one round of touch-ups to cutoff and drives.
The early chassis that had G2, cathode DC cutoff AND drive controls definitely would have been too difficult.

Edit: too difficult and time consuming in the customer's home. Not too difficult for TV nuts like us; witness what Pete Deksnis et al have been doing at ETF.