Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: RCA 721 1946 Television

This is topic RCA 721 1946 Television in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-02-2003, 06:50 PM:

here are a couple of shots of my 1946 RCA 721ts television. Bought it off of E-Bay three years ago and completely rstored it. The CRT is still the original one and still has very high emmission and a picture sharp as a tack. Had to replace all the electrolytics and all the paper tubular caps in the thing. Both the tuner and the picture I.F., and sound I.F. needed complete alignment, Unlike present day televisions that ahve a 4.5 mc take off coil for sound early televisions had an entirely seperate fm receiver strip for the sound. Both I.F.'s have to be dead on for thge thing to work or you can tune in good picture and bad or no sound, or the other way round. It has channel one, and came with its original RCA wooden stand.

Mark

Below is an actual off screen picture that I have posted in grey sscale only to give a better approximation of how it looks. This is with rabbit ears!

Posted by Robert E. Allen (Member # 1351) on 07-02-2003, 07:33 PM:

Thanks for the memories Mark!

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 07-02-2003, 07:50 PM:

Great effort, Mark!

I'm surprised that the original kine is still good!

I sure wish that you lived closer to me. I've got projects, too!

I like the way that the NBC logo is partially blocked by the masking around the tube. Seems that the old RCA will be around another 50+ years!

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 07-03-2003, 12:01 AM:

Yea, I've had several old 10 inchers that still had the original kinies in them and they were still like new. A few looked ratty at best. I believe some of that long life had to do with people replacing their first generation TV's after just a few years when improvements like AFT came out. Most were traded in and or scrapped, but alot of people stored them away in basements or attics. There was also not a ton of programming on the air back then so the accumulated hours on a given TV was not that high. Very possibly thats when the U.S. industry and people in general still had a sense of pride in what they were doing and there was also actually very good quality control in manufacturing.

It is still possible today to get a 10BP4 CRT as was used in many post war TV sets rebuilt. A rebuilt tube today would have an alumnized P4 screen and they actually look worse than the old plain P4 phosphor does. Costs about 250 bucks for a rebuild though.... [Eek!]

Bruce...What projects do you have in the works?

Mark