Can Anyone Identify These?

[rp2813]

Yeah, Hitch was a local and had a nice spread right here in the Santa Cruz mountains. As far as I know, the place is still intact but doubt it rates any historical significance. Even homes locally where Jack Kerouac and Ken Keesey lived have been pushed over.

Interesting story about alterations made in SJB, and I agree with you about the SF that existed in the 50's. With so many skyscrapers now, several years ago they stopped flying the flags on top of the Telephone Company building that indicated wind conditions for seagoing vessels because nobody could see the top of that building anymore. And then SBC sold it, so it's not even the Telephone Company building anymore either.

 

[mpatoray]

Muntz

Muntz sets where very interesting, the story was told to me by someone at the ETF convention this year, apparently "Madman Muntz" took a standard RCA 630 style chassis and started removing tubes, if the set stopped working he would put that last tube back in and then continue. They where very poor performing sets, just like the Curtis Mathes ones later.

 

[appliguy]

Matt....

Muntz sets were not poor performers they were made to be used in and were usually sold in cities that had local tv stations...One big market for Muntz tv's, so I am told was Baltimore, another was Philidelphia. Muntz tv's were never designed for long distance reception, that is why they were so inexpensive and also why they were popular....PAT COFFEY

 

[rp2813]

It makes sense then that someone living in SF would be able to get away with owning a Muntz set since the transmitters were (and some still are) on a hilltop just south of town. I recently gave some friends in Oakland a small TV I replaced. They hooked it up to a digital converter and are getting tons of channels with just rabbit ears. So much for the pre-digital conversion ads saying rabbit ears wouldn't work anymore. I'm using a converter with rooftop antenna that's non-UHF and it's pulling in quite a few stations from 50 miles north.

 

[danemodsandy]

New News:

Since the identification I posted was made, new info has surfaced. The TV set is a Spartan, not a Muntz. The confusion arose because the cabinets are very, very similar. Spartan was a "value" division of Magnavox created when Maggie bought the TV and radio interests of the Sparks-Withington Company in about 1956. S-W had been making TV's and radios under the Sparton (note different spelling) brand for a long time, but was exiting the consumer electronics biz in favour of defence contracts. Maggie changed the spelling of the brand name a bit.

The confusion arose because of the similarity in cabinets; they are so much alike that it appears both manufacturers bought their cabinets from the same supplier. Stamped metal cabinets were expensive to make (stamped metal anything is expensive to make), so it seems that supplier companies made "stock" designs that could be customised (within certain limits) for smaller manufacturers. The biggies like RCA and Zenith were a different story, of course.

Anyhoo, the TV is very definitely a Spartan; I was given an original manufacturer's photo with a model number to confirm it. So, sorry, Muntz fans!