Magnavox First Color TV
 

What year did Magnavox make their first color tv and what was the model?

The answer to that may be a bit murky. One reason that that is so is that Magnavox had a stake in Sentinel Radio & TV and Sentinel produced a color set based on RCA's CtC-4 Chassis, circa 1955-6.
I don't remember Magnavox branded color sets until the early 1960s. They certainly were not color pioneers.

Even when they got into color in earnest, the Maggitboxes never were top performers.

But, at least early on, they often had nice cabinets. The ebony 9-foot combo comes to mind.:banana:

A friend of mine growing up had what I remember as a CTC10-ish Magnavox clone set. Cabinet was quite nice on it too, and had the seperate safety glass front.

I agree with Mal Fuller on the early 60s being the earliest true Magnavox color set. There were Magnavox-branded RCA clones, and the Sentinel probably was the first of those in the Magnavox family. Magnavox and Zenith didn't seem to like to license out any RCA patents from Sarnoff, and they've always kind of done their own thing. But with color TV, that was nearly impossible, so they probably had to give in and pay up to Sarnoff after waiting a decade to think it over.

Charles

So, it appears that Zenith and Magnavox began color production at roughly the same time frame. Can someone here give us the first chassis number and some models which used the first chassis.

I just breezed through the Sams index; the earliest Magnavox color set I see would be in Photofact 517-2, V37-01-00 or the 37 series. That would date to 1961.

When I worked at a Maggot-Vox dealer in the early 70's the cabinets sold the set. Fruit wood seemed to be the most popular back then.
Phil

There was litigation with RCA over bundling patents, and Zenith and some others didn't get into color until they could negotiate a better deal.

First Color Magnavox
 

Hey guys i found it. Here is an ad for the first color magnavox.

Does not say in the ad but where it was posted said 1957 and picture is saved as magnavox 1956.

I think this was the time when a lot of companies showed an RCA clone on paper and then dropped out of color until the 60s.

Thank you Firebird, I was trying to post that same picture but couldn't find the way to do it all of a sudden. Description says it has four speakers, ten watt amplifier, 26 tubes, most of the other controls are under a door beneath the two visible knobs.

Some of the HEAVIEST sets I ever worked on were Magnavox.

As for living a long life, my cousin had a 1967 Maggie rectangular set that never saw service until 1991, when I replaced the vertical output tube. All the other tubes were Maggie branded. I know this set saw daily use all those years.

A lightning strike on the tuner finally killed it. It was starting to look dull and smeary by this time.

The other Maggies usually had bad flybacks that were a bitch to find.