eary color, the public rolled the dice

[oldtvman]

While the early Rca sets with few exceptions had excellent picture and color quality, the same could not be said for such sets as ge, admiral, motorola, packard bell, although most of these sets were nearly the same price as The superior Rca color sets, the color quality and reliabilty didn't hold a candle. After holding out til 1962 Zenith was really the only viable competitor, quality-wise to RCA.

[Carmine]

Weren't they all just RCA clones anyways? Personally, I'd would have either waited for Zenith to build one, or consider something that was point-to-point wired.

PC boards and Tubes don't mix IMHO.

[Chad Hauris]

I seem to remember there being a lot of unique designs for 15" sets such as Sparton, Capehart, Westinghouse, etc. but after these quit being made it seems like the only 19" or 21" sets out there on the market in the late 50's with non-rca designs were the Motorola and Philco and these may have only been made for a couple of years. Seems like from 57-64 or so all color sets with the exception of Zenith were RCA designs.

I personally have not heard reports of trouble in early Magnavox, Dumont, Sylvania etc.color sets in any greater number than for RCA. The CTC-15 upon which many of the mid-60's sets were based seems to be one of the better designed RCA chassis.

RE: PC boards and tubes...I'm working on a 1956 Wurlitzer jukebox that has tubes on a PC board in the pre-amp and driver stages. This has to be among the first pieces of tube equipment to use the boards. Haven't noticed any heat degradation...it's more when power tubes are on circuit boards that trouble occurs (or when cheap board substrates are used such as in GE sets).
Motorola also made printed circuits of high quality around this time with the tube sockets built in to the circuit board.

[Carmine]

I'm no old-time repair man, but I can only go on my experiences trash-picking.

During my prime trash-picking years as a kid, mid-80s, I found plenty of Zenith sets that often still (if poorly) worked. I would find the occasional RCA, but the PC boards would be so brittle that one ham-fisted teenage tube-change would ruin them.

I'm guessing other brands hit the trash sooner.

BTW, I just picked up a Zenith tube color set that appears to have been untouched for a LONG time, but has a nice thick coat of dust/crud/smoke. I didn't do anything to it but power it up, and it works fine!

Pics to follow when I get a chance.

[Chad Hauris]

On all the Zeniths I have seen the chassis always outlasted the picture tube. Found a 1968 zenith color set that had a rebuilt CRT in it that was totally weak...put in a new CRT and it works great.
Never seen a flyback failure in a Zenith yet. The RCA flyback failure in the console models appears to be their weakest point.
All of the early 60's sets appear though to be designed with fairly high quality. On Zeniths the quality stayed high through the 60's whereas the other brands seemed to cheap out.

[Carmine]

Shoot, even the early Solid-State Zeniths are built like the tube sets... Weigh damn near as much!

If Doug is reading, I think you're loosing out by only collecting the tube models! Nothing like having a daily-watcher old-school looking Chromacolor II and blowing a non-TV person's mind with the razor-shap pic and great color.

[jstout66]

Hey Carmine, I hear ya and agree. I just picked up a Chromacolor 2 console, which I put in my office, and people can't believe how good the picture is.

[oldtvman]

a lot of the motorola's could not achieve a rich red color, and most of the truetones, silvertones and so on used pc boards that had problems and some used a similar chassis to the 15 but more accurately the Magnavox chassis. I guess I was a critical viewer and saw obvious flaws in most of RCA and Zenith competitors. keep in mind some of the very early sets were Rca chassis shoved into other brand name cabinets, after that most went down hill till the solid state era, when the quality window got closer.

[Adam]

I got a 1967 Zenith color tube set about 4 years ago, didn't do anything to it and it still works great. I actually traded a late 70's solid state zenith color set for it. I've had about 5 of the early solid state color Zeniths, they were all good sets. I don't keep solid state sets anymore, I gave them all away about 5 years ago when I wanted room for more tube sets.