[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by oldtvman

Although some of the Sears models started out good, the inherent quality differences between such makers as rca and zenith showed its ugly face after a few years of service, just as the previous reply stated, the pc boards were suseptible to cracks, burn thrus, and so on.

About 35 years ago I picked up a 1964-vintage Silvertone roundie in a metal cabinet (one of my neighbors in my hometown had it in his garage and wanted to get rid of it). Did a couple haywire fixes on it (on-off switch on volume control was bad, so I jumpered it; circuit breaker was shot, so I jumpered it too--no fire hazard, as I kept an eye on the set when it was on and unplugged it when not in use) and it worked, after a fashion. I never did get the color convergence right, though, and the video-output tube (6AW8) socket cracked out of the video PCB in 1973 when I tried to change the tube (it almost made me sick to see that happen), so I agree with your comments as to the PC boards being prone to cracking and such in these sets. Two other problems I had with that set near the end were a hum bar in the picture and extremely critical color sync. I had to turn the tint (hue) control back and forth several times to get the picture to look right, but that hum bar still spoiled the looks of what might have been a half-decent picture, again if I could have gotten the convergence right (I made the mistake of trying to eyeball the convergence using just the horizontal line produced with the service switch in the service position, rather than using a generator; believe me, if I ever get another old set, I'll never do that again ). The black-and-white picture was reasonably good, though, considering the convergence problems and that hum bar. When I got the set I lived in a semi-fringe area for Cleveland TV and had fair-to-middling reception on the attic antenna in my house at that time; two years later I moved a lot closer to town, and the reception on rabbit ears was much better.

I was not aware that Silvertone TVs made during a certain time period were actually manufactured by Wells-Gardner; however, I did know that some Sears TVs were made for them (Sears) by Warwick Electronics. Did Warwick and W/G have some kind of marketing arrangement with RCA, allowing these companies to make near-exact copies of RCA's CTC-12 through CTC-15 chassis for sale by companies such as Sears & Roebuck? I realize almost all early color TVs, 1950s vintage until at least the early sixties (except Zenith), used RCA chassis designs, but how long did this last? My set was made in 1964. Was the chassis manufactured by W-G or Warwick? I suspect my set may have been a clone of an RCA CTC12 or just a tad later, say CTC15, as it was in a metal cabinet with a plastic nameplate bearing the wording Silvertone|COLOR above the channel selector. I suspect that nameplate covered a hole which may have been used in other models for an illuminated channel indicator drum (my set had a plain plastic VHF channel selector knob). Also, there was a hole in the tuner bracket which I strongly believe may have been for an optional UHF tuner (my set was VHF only, although I did try to feed the output of a junked UHF tuner into the IF input of the VHF tuner--it worked, but the power transformer kept cutting out because it was a doorbell transformer with a thermal cutout breaker. If there would have been a next time, I'd have wised up and used a standard transformer).

I think Zenith color sets were very good until the company sold out to GoldStar, though some may say even Zenith's sets of '70s vintage were going downhill when the company went from hand wiring to circuit modules about that time. Zenith was once my favorite brand of TV, audio and stereo, and as far as their older radios go, it still is. However, I would not buy a GoldStar TV today, even if it had the Zenith lightning bolt on the CRT mask below the tube.

IMHO, these new GS sets bear more of a resemblance to a flounder than to any of Zenith's better designs of the late '60s or later. I read somewhere, I think it was here someplace, that Zenith only licensed their Z bolt to GoldStar so the symbol would have little or no chance of going into public domain, even though the Zenith Radio Corporation no longer exists. This symbol is still used on Zenith-branded VCRs, VCR/DVD combo units; I believe the mark is even used on GS-manufactured widescreens and HDTVs as well, but it means absolutely nothing anymore.

"Z" is right. The original ZRC went to zzzzzzzzzzzzzz and died in its sleep after GoldStar bought them out, so that letter of the alphabet describes their demise rather well, IMO.