Back in the 80s and 90s there was a business on my street that sold 2nd hand hospitality furnishings. They sold televisions and all kinds of furniture. In 1987 I bought a 20 inch color TV that also had an AM FM radio receiver for $80. It was in "like new" condition. I used it for 12 years. I also bought a king sized bed, delivered for $100. They went out of business in 1996.
@@robinsattahip2376 I furnished my whole apartment for $200 at a liquidation place. Sofa, La-Z boy recliner, coffee table, kitchen table with 3 chairs, bed, dresser and nightstand. Even though the items were used, they were better quality than you get at those cheap furniture places that use particle board.
When I worked at the TV repair shop back in the late 1970s these sets would come in for repair from the turf motel and the strand hotel in my neighborhood. I am glad to see one of these survived all these years later and to see it working again. I really wish that the younger generation would show more interest in vintage electronics. Us old timers are dying off. And I hope this rare stuff doesn't wind up in landfills. I really appreciate your videos and I am well entertained by them.
It really depends on interest, and hobbies. Some of the people my age are really into restoring and fixing up old computers, some are into coding, and some are into drawing, or other things like doing stupid junk on tiktok. The thing is that the people who like to do this are rare, and always were rare. The scarcity of people with such interests, and also the fact that this stuff is slowly crawling it's way into unrepairable without extensive modification territory is not helping the situation.
I'll have to agree with you about the sound of a pipe organ - our church has one, and it's a treat to hear it every Sunday. As I tune the church's pianos, I've had the opportunity to 'touch-up' a bad note or two on the organ from time to time. The pipes are unbelievably touchy to get 'just right', especially the very high notes.
To the AM radio lovers in L.A. I want to give a thumbs-up to 1540AM KMPC, which is a Korean language station. I don't understand a single word they say but late at night they play an amazing variety of music in good broadcast quality. Totally all over the spectrum from stoner album cuts of the 70's to Korean pop songs and what I would call world music. Check it out, you might be pleasantly surprised. I have heard pipe organs and they are amazing but the MOST amazing thing I ever heard was about 20 years ago when I worked in South Torrance in a small machine shop and one Saturday morning a group of WW2 fighter planes was practicing for a local air show doing low altitude laps, and the sound of those high compression piston engines pounding in unison was THE most amazing thing thing I have ever heard.
I'll have to check it out, thanks for the recommendation. I have BT modules on all of my older radios. I like fixing them and listening to them but have basically zero interest in anything being broadcast these days.
31:30 -ish I looked down for a few moments and looked up and did a double-take, noticing the knobs framed at the right side. I liked that look. I believe those of us of a certain age will always looking at big screen pictures and "miss" seeing the channel control knobs at the right. As for the "brown" greens, one memory that will always stay with me is the experience of going to friend's houses of different economic stature, and seeing different green grass colors of the ubiquitous football games playing on the varying sets.... but the "richer" houses did not always have the best greens. I never minded the "softer" pictures on hotel sets because although the TV was mandatory, at least in those "Good ol' Days", it was secondary in importance to the Trip.
5:00 - Security wiring - I had a weird situation in a nice hotel in the early 2000s. The sliding closet door had hopped the rails, and I wanted to hang up my shirts (business mtg the next day) . I rehung the door. Next day at checkout, the clerk leans in and says "Next time you have an issue in one of our rooms, please just call the front desk." Creepy as hell 😧.
Interesting video, Shango! I bought a 19''' RCA Extended life Chassis the first year I met my wife for Christmas. After 15 years of trouble free service we were ready for a new set and I tried to donate it to a local tv repair shop. The owner was not interested. He said the pin cushion circuit always needed re soldering! Needless to say a perfectly good set went to the landfill, you couldn't kill it! Love the governor limit on the volume control of those hotel sets!
32:23 pipe organs are cool as heck. I got the experience of messing around after a wedding before and a friend was playing some cool songs on it... It's quite an experience when you hear something other than somber church or funeral music on it. No where near as crazy as that, but still really cool. Especially the real low tones.
Sure is. Growing up in the Philly burbs myself I've heard that very organ live many times. You can feel the music all through your body, truly an experience! There's an impressive Christmas Light Show featuring the organ that's been playing for decades
26:42 ..... or... if you were a Holiday Inn manager, and a rock band called "The Who" was staying at your establishment, it was a warning that one of your TV's was going to take a multi- story drop onto concrete, or maybe into a swimming pool. Roger Daltrey did state, that, the tricky part was, to try to get an extension cord long enough to keep the set plugged in and turned on until the set met its demise. I would imagine that one particular filament in a series strung device always takes the brunt of the power on cycle, but that one is very obvious. Another interesting resurrection. 👍
@@mohinderkaur6671 It's all changed now with flat panel LCD's. When they land & get cracked you can just drill a couple of holes through and zip-tie the pieces together so it's all better again...
The channel label I think aligns with Houston assuming the hotel channels align with the over the air numbers. KTRK 13ABC, KHOU 11 and KPRC 2. Could be another city, could be a false connection.
Thanks for featuring my set in your video! It was interesting to see the small differences between the sets, one being original and the other modified for a hotel. I've definitely got my work cut out for me but I hope to get it in some better shape when I have the time and expertise to restore it!
Your set is in rough and poor condition. You can do whatever necessary to clean up the cosmetics so you'll be satisfied. It's almost ruined so there's not too much concern about trying to keep it original. Epoxy and paint will go a long way. The electronics will be more challenging. That green wire coil was damaged. The three pots at the back of the sweep board are probably not functional. But you will have to figure out work-arounds. You'll learna bunch. You'll be doing a Shango066 resurrection! Good luck and I hope to see your work and results.
@@johnnytacokleinschmidt515 yep. Cosmetic restoration will be the far easier part. The electronics may take me a while to figure out since although I've done quite a bit of electronics repair, tube televisions are new to me. I'm hoping the flyback is salvageable, and once i get a new HV rectifier tube and horizontal output tube, i can start diagnosing the (probably many) problems, like that coil you mentioned.
Years ago, I had one like that, but mine was a hospital TV that had the motorized tuner and pillow speaker/remote plug on the back of the set. I think mine had a 3-wire power cord and a metal plate over the service controls on the rear.
That sucker has lasted pretty well considering the hours it must have on it. I would have loved to see how strong the tube is, but I guess the image speaks for itself...
@@johnnytacokleinschmidt515 yes, if you notice through the video the paint marker in the top left is still there, this one clocked in as "OK"... Accurate enough i think.
That's pretty slick how they used those VHF terminals for the alarm system,,,, and you can't just jump it out or cut it, that's what that resistor is for,,, it's a supervised loop or supervised circuit,, so if the alarm panel doesn't see that resistance it's gonna trip the alarm.. I wrote this before the section of the video where shango explains it...
What about seeing infinite resistance? I'm guessing it is a circuit that has to remain CLOSED to prevent tripping a relay. It's not looking for resistance. It's looking to keep the current trickling through. No current is the trigger.
I enjoyed my 19 inch I think 1978 Zenith last night watching old recorded movies on A VCR. I really enjoyed how movies started on HBO back in the 80"s.
Always enjoy your videos. Back in the 70s my aunt took us to a pizza restaurant in the Indianapolis area with one of those huge organs. It was very cool.
Much much nicer looking set than the consumer's version. Very educational and entertaining as usual. Your Saturday video is what I always eagerly expect (I must admit that I miss a lot your Sunday's videos -no pressure hehehe- ). Thanks.
This was the model RCA recommended changing the original 31LZ6 horizontal output with a 36MC6. A shorted mylar capacitor in the H-Out circuit was also a common problem.
I remember that ‘buzz” in the audio just before the high voltage kicks in on the tube chassis color sets. Thanks for the cold start up and great job! Still looking for that 21 inch roundie color set to restore!!
The rocker switch above the channel selector is probably the AFT. Try switching it off to adjust the tuning for a sharper picture in manual mode. The color with snow is different from the color with raster for some reason. You can try the grey scale pattern to adjust the color.
Without the color burst in the signal (superimposed in the back porch of the horizontal sync pulse of the luminence, Y, signal), the color killer cuts in for B&W reception on NTSC TVs.
Motel 6 had coin operated TV's in the rooms (late 1950s or early 1960s) and 25 cents would let you watch TV for 5-6 hours. It would be cool to find one and see how it works.
The security feature using an in line resistor is interesting. I wonder how many would be thieves who were “hip” to the spade terminals being alarm wires attempted to jumper them not realizing there was a resistor in the circuit. Also,if the alarm was tripped how did they know which room the tv was in that was being “boosted”? I have an old Holiday Inn Predicta with the “Tele-Sound” label on the side. Back then they just bolted the TVs to the wall or so other surface.
This would likely work almost exactly like a fire alarm panel, with individual 'zones': 47k Ohm EOL resistor = normal state < 1,000 Ohms = fire alarm (pull station activated) > 100k Ohms = fault alarm (open circuit) In the case of the TV theft alarm, either of the two bottom states would give the theft alarm signal in the hotel office, showing the wire was either cut or bridged.
I had assumed it would be something like that,but I wasn’t sure if In 1972 they’d go to the expense and complexity of having each set wired to panel with 50 different lights on it so they could monitor each room,or if it would be like the old window alarms where if one was opened an alarm would just sound and they would have someone watching outside for the guy carrying the tv. Maybe there’s someone watching this who ran a motel back then and can tell us for sure.
The boardwalk organ in Atlantic City, New Jersey was once the world's largest pipe organ, but it was partially ruined during a hurricane in the 1950s. They are currently working on restoring it. I have a recording of the instrument from the late 1950s.
Hybrid sets like this are interesting to me, because you can see the behind-the-scenes cost analysis going on. Or in other words, with some circuits it was more cost-effective to keep it tube, rather than design a solid state alternative. I'm surprised they used a tube audio out, though
@@jamesplotkin4674 I don't know what the price difference would have been, by that time almost all radios were transistor based. But it is true that tubes were being phased out, so they might have wanted to get rid of tubes surpluses. Who knows.
@@jamesplotkin4674 Nah....by the early 70's, radios, record players and other electronics had already migrated to solid state, and tube manufacturing was on it's way out
All ctc-53 sets have the thermal fuse mounted near the horizontal output tube. The ctc-36 and 53, only have the 3 top controls up front, color, bright and tint. Contrast and vertical and horizontal hold controls are in the back. Pretty nice sets, low focus voltage CRTs.
Back when my father was the chief engineer for the local holiday Inn, they threw truckloads of those and tables and chairs and what have you out to do a remodel, he got this cool chair that needed to be re upholstered and a roll of the cloth for it
28:15 I've read that RCA slapped the "New Vista" label on a number of items that never had nuvistors in them, including their stereo consoles. I suppose by 1972, they could have modified the circuits that had used nuvistors to substitute J-FETs or MOS-FETS for them.
Thanks for including the review of the neglected example at the end. Compared to yours, it illustrates the adage "There, but for the grace of god, go I."
CTC-40 was the first all transistor set RCA made. I always thought that everything after CTC-40 was transistor. How wrong I was. Hybrids were still around for at least 3 years.
that security system of the hotel ..?? A lot in common with the airbags in our cars today ! Wow! could they of made steeling something you would never forget!! Airbags in all hotel TV's?? good enough for cash machine security man? good enough for EOL HOTEL!!!!
I would love to learn more about all the old hotel TV ALARM technologies available during those times and even the newer flatscreen security tech hotels use today would be interesting.
Shango, that is really cool to learn about the Casino having a pipe organ. I have been two Avalon and Two Harbors dozens of times (for trail hiking mostly), but I will find out if the Casino allows visitors to see (and hear) the pipe organ). ... if the current US administration allows to travel back into the USA, due to my medical choice... :( Latest SCOTUS decision might be a good start... or maybe they will lash out even harder because of it...
I had one of these in college. It was a hand me down. It worked great in black and white. Something was wrong with the color demodulation. After being on for a while, the picture would have random, pulsing color patterns.
I wonder if this set came from near Baltimore. The network listings match up to what their local stations used to be. Some time in the mid 90s 2 went to ABC, 11 went to NBC, and 13 went to CBS.
I'm thinking it might be Houston. CBS has always been 11 (owned by Tegna), NBC has always been 2 (Graham Media Group) and 13 has always been ABC (network-owned and operated since the mid-80s).
It is a RCA TV from 1973 and with a little tweaking by Shango it is alive! The video guests TV is all original and gonna need a lot more work for a resurrection. Huge amount of weather deterioration.
Hey Shango066. Cool set. The guy that shows his set at the end. Needs to get a 55gallon drum of rust remover. Got his work cut out for him. Hope he updates the repair's All my best. Hope you do a Sunday video also.
It has some safety mods at the normal consumer set didn't get. What does that tell you about RCA's opinion of their retail consumer's? They thought more of their hotel motel hospital customers. Obviously they didn't want a business to burn down but hey Joe Schmo's home?? Burn baby burn!
Consumer - it's got to be cheap or it won't sell. Hotels are more sensitive to "total cost of ownership" including repairs. Some really big hotels had their own TV repair shop. I'm sure those repair guys had some opinions about the TV's internal features.
Those memories. Watching some commercials or a Programme about pipe organs after a business meeting, fair or other job. Resting at the hotel and watching something on the color tv and enjoying a beer and a doobie. Good memories
I remember TV in the Hotel room...I remember turning it on..to see what it can get....I remember getting weird channels on 3 and 6... like Movie Channel 3 and Weather 6...showing Temperature Gages...in seen this in the Black Stone Motel in San Luis Obispo Ca...2 and 4... would have UHF stations from San Francisco,...5 and 7 would have A video of the area or some kind of Teletext...stateing what was happening...the rest was CBS 12 on Channel 8....(KCOY)...PBS (KQED)..9 on 10.... Spanish on 11...(Just think when my dad turned on channel 11 to view the Dodgers..it was in Spanish)...He Screamed....12 was ABC 7 (KABC( L A ....13 was NBC11 San Francisco...the UHF. .was more weird stuff...that was in the 1970s and 1980s...I do remember seeing TVs like this one;!😅
We had the 1974 residential version of this set, the picture was never very good as far as color and sharpness. It was a hybrid set with about 6 tubes IIRC.
I'd be a bit disappointed that this set doesn't have a built-in AM-FM radio; some hotel sets did. Did RCA find an inconspicuous place to put Nipper? I've seen plenty of sets from as late as the 1990s with Nipper and his horn printed on the back, over which they could presumably have placed a label if the set had to be exported. I assume they were trying to keep control of the trademark without actually using it to promote their products.
I was wondering why they didnt just put the resistor straight across the back of the VHF terminals instead of at the end of that wire tangled around everything, but maybe that was to stop the back being removed and the rest of the set being taken without having to disconnect the loop at one point or another.....
I just got a Bradford B&W tv from the same year and it buzzes a lot on the converter box. Crazy how this one doesn’t buzz as bad. I would say the high voltage is so loud on it. Only thing I hate about it is it’s got instant picture and there’s no switch to turn that off. Seems to have a pretty decent picture tube, more I run it, the better the picture and brighter it gets.