The BEST ever

[frenchy]

<<The CRT in a pool of water and melted smoking plastic STILL showing a brilliant Chromacolor picture through the soot. I don't know just how it was that the power was still on, but that is a true testament to the quality of those great Zeniths! I told her she should have shipped the TV back to Zenith for advertising....>>

Nah, after all early color sets that burst into flames from melting flybacks and arcing on/off switches etc. I don't think their advertising people would want to start associating TVs with fire again : \ But it would have been a cool ad!

[TVtommy]

Three sets - 1)Zenith, 2)Zenith, 3)Zenith. All pre system 3, of course.

[TVtommy]

oh yeah, Marantz featured a fire survior receiver in their ads in the 70's.

I'll have to say Zenith in terms of reliabilty and picture quality. At the moment I only have 3 Zenith sets, and they are all B&W. One is a 1972 Zenith 4 tube hybrid set I got from maxm (all handwired except the video IF PCB). That TV gets beautiful picture, as well as surviving some shipping damage.

I had a Zenith System 3 set that I got last Winter that sat out in single digit weather after a rain from a warm spell earlier that week. Got it home with ice in the TV. After drying out for a day in front of a space heater, it worked perfectly with no adjustments on it. However, I thought it said 1981 for a date, while it turns out it was from late 1984. A TV has to be older than I am to be in my collection, so I kind of lost interest in it and eventually got rid of it to make more room for some more old TVs...

Though many will say GE TVs are junk, I have a few of them, and they work extremely well, with very little work done to them. One is a 1977 GE with a modular chassis. It sat outside in the rain for about 1 and a half weeks. I picked it up anyhow one night coming home from work. After drying it out, I plugged it in and it worked perfectly as is. The focus is razor sharp on it, and an extremely bright picture tube. It looks like it has had a lot of hours on it, but doesn't show it.

I don't have enough experience with RCA to comment on. I only have two, and the one I bought it 2 months ago while I was in Erie, PA visiting some friends at the SA. This was our first TV from when my parents got married. It is an RCA XL-100 from 1981. Nothing special, but had to have it simply because I remember watching TV all the time on it when I was little. That TV must have had a crap load of hours on it... I readjusted the screen, bias and drive voltages on it. The screen is up pretty high, both drives are at minimum to get the proper greyscale. If you crank the brightness, the all 3 guns start to bleed, especially the red. So the tube is a bit weak, but still bright.
I have a 1974 16" B&W tube RCA with a solid state remote control circuit. Definately not built as well as the Zenith I mentioned, and needs some work.

That's all I have to comment on right now

[JCFitz]

System 3s are good too as long as the solder connections are taken care of once in a while.My 1985 Advanced System has a fantastic picture.Though I don't know if the CRTs are as long lived as the old Delta type tube Zeniths with lots more cathode material to burn before the emission is gone.A lot of the System 3s are still going strong though I've seen some with the CRTS getting weak but the people are still watching it.I think Zenith was stiil good with this chassis but this was the last good Zenith made.The quality started going downhill after that.The chassis after this one had less picture quality,the CRTS were shorter lived and more problems.After this year is when they started having flyback failures too.Flybacks in older Zenith sets used to live forever except for some of the later Chromacolor sets when the tripler would go it would take the flyback with it. And they really hit bottom in 93-94 with the worst CRTs ever.Hearing that 1972-73 Zenith mentioned reminded me of one a lady in my town was still using a couple years back.I went to service it as it had no picture.Only needed a filament fuse.The tuner and some of the controls were dirty.After a little cleaning and adjustment I was surprised at the fantastic color that was coming from this tv that had been used for 30 years with the original CRT in it.This summer they had an estate sale at her house.I just went to look around and was curious about the tv.No sign of it or any other tv.I think the Zenith was her only set.I was hoping to get it if it went cheap and around here console tvs are usually lowly regarded and not wanted much especially old non-remote cable ready ones.Looks like a family member got the Zenith.

[reeferman]

Hands down the Zenith roundies. For both picture & durability. Working in an independent repair shop in the late '60's, I saw them all. Zenith always seemed to produce a more pleasing picture.. maybe the sheet beam demods. I dunno. One thing seemingly common to the early Zenith sets was the glare off of the CRT. Horrible! As far as RCA, CTC 38 & 39 were my favorites in rectangular. Probably the -16 roundie because they were so stinkin' easy to fix. 'Nuff said. Phil

[frenchy]

Originally Posted by TVtommy

oh yeah, Marantz featured a fire survior receiver in their ads in the 70's.

That explains why I've never seen a Marantz television set ; )

[3Guncolor]

I have to vote again for Zenith and the 25EC58 chassis. My parents got one in 1974 that they used every day up untill last year. The only real problems it had was the trippler went out once, had to chage the HV hold down caps, and a problem with the 9-57 module. I did change the CRT about 10 years ago to get better focus it still was brite and had good grey scale. I have the set in storage with two others and some CRT's.

[JCFitz]

Oh yeah forgot about another 25EC58 that was in the family.My aunt's mother had it for years.It had doors on it.I worked on it once in the late 90's.Just some loose module contacts and dirty controls.A couple of years later a squirrel got into the electric lines over her house sending a surge through the lines.The tv made a loud bang and was dead.The power transformer bit the dust and she bought a new Sony.Sure would have liked to have that tv to see if I could find a replacement and ressurect it.Beautiful picture.Seems I'm always out of the loop when somebody I know that has a good old set like this and replaces it.It went to the landfill I'm sure.

[RVonse]

I thought the early RCA's were the best engineered but that the Zeniths had the best build quality. Magnavox and Curtis Mathis had the best wood furniture cabinetry although RCA and Zenith did some very nice ones too.

But the main measure of quality to me was the handwired chassis of Zenith.

[southernguy]

I may be a oddball here but, im going to vote for Curtis Mathis for overall quality and build. Maybe the mid to late 70's early 80's models. My Dad has 2. One is a 1977 Curtis Mathis color console that he purchased new, still displays a perfect new like picture and has a delta gun CRT. Size wise its like a 25VAMP22. This set has had a lot of 24/7 use and has never made a visit to a repair shop. The other is a Curtis Mathis table top set (metal cabinet) from 1980, still works as well. As for my other favorites, of corse would be all of the roundies ever made, Late 60's RCA, Sylvania sets and Zenith Chromacolor II sets.

[TVtommy]

I was never crazy over the system 3 after pulling the back off the first one that I did a service call on back about 1985. I mean did they really think those module edge connect cables were a good idea? This set had a bad 9-160-x module(23" flavor). Little did I know this was the first of about a coupla hunert of these that I change over the next twenty years. at one time I had so many of those laying around the shop i coulda built the kids a fort out of 'em. Never before in any other set did I ever see a pincushion transformer of all things go bad! Pulease!(and 2 of 'em at that) I might have seen 2 out of ever 10 that the tri-pot crt was good for more than 5 or 6 years - as these things started bleeding like a leech victim I continued to marvel at the picture on the chromacolor 2's.From what I recall that tripot tube was gone somewhereabout the time the gen 2 "Advanced" system 3 came out. The RCA early COTY tube with the bonded yoke was only marginally better - the difference being that RCA proceeded to get their inline gun tube down pat while Zenith proceeded to go slam to DOO-DOO. I have to admit though that even in my case theres an exception to every rule - I have a mid 80's 25" console in my shop - the one with the flip down membrane tuner door and it looks great! I still haven't pulled the back to see what crt is in it - hate to mess with sometin' that works! I have to give Zenith kudos for makin' a 23v version of that tube, I just wish I new a reason for it. Must have been to sell twice as many 9-160 modules (they used diff. versions).

[Bill R]

I think every manufacture made some good sets and all of them had their dogs. I saw about as many Zeniths as RCA's or anything else. As for personal prefreance, I am in left field all by my self I think. I did not like anything about Zenith sets. The only ones I hated to work on worse was GE. I never cared for the hand wired chassis, and I just can't stand the awful red-orange phospher of the crt. The color never looked really right to me. Having said that I do own a Zenith roundie. They were quite unique if nothing else. The Zenith sets I (or my parants) have bought new (late 60's early 70's) were just not reliable from day one. That's just my luck I guess. I have had the best service from two Magnavox (1978 and 1984) sets, my Philco roundie, and my current RCA projection set. It will probably die tonight now that I said that.

Bill R