Not 1950's but the price is right...FREE

[twintubdexter]

Decent Frigidaire range in Campbell/San Jose (my old stomping ground.) Ad says one burner needs work which is no huge thing.

http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/app/4737835838.html

 

[philr]

I have the 30" single oven version of this in white and harvest gold and I really like them! I also have a similar one with a full glass control panel at home (in the second picture). 

 

[ovrphil]

This just blows my mind, that a stove like this is free and later, I'll see someone asking $300 or more for the same thing. Where are the takers? It's a biggie.

Now I see how a higher back panel on older stoves make not only functional sense, but they look, to me, a little better as they rise up closer to the bottom line of the cupboards. Thanks for posting your kitchen again, PhilR.
It depends where the stove is placed(and again, this is just me and my visual pickiness) but with a higher panel , your Frigidaire stove panel top adds a visual continuity to from the cupboards on the right to the cupboards on the left. It really looks better than the more contemporary stoves(as the later 70's stove my mom used)with a shorter panel height. (it makes sense to me and I like it all the more, but I don't expect anyone to care, LOL! )
You sold me on the all glass panel stoves.

 

[danemodsandy]

For The Sake of Discusson:

This is not intended to be argumentative, nor to "put down" anyone's favorite brand, okay? It's an observation, for the sake of discussion:

Looking at that Frigidaire range, and looking at a GE from roughly the same time frame, I think I see the handwriting on the wall for Frigidaire as a General Motors subsidiary.

Frigidaire doesn't have the windowed door that GE does by this time. The two ovens are still the same width, in spite of the obvious appeal GE's wider master oven has. The storage drawer on the Frigidaire does not have the presence that GE's drawers do. And the backguard styling is no longer as elegant as former Frigidaires.

Look at the GE below. That's a company that's committed to its product - that oven window was a new feature at the time, and the backguard is a new color for that year, which I think was 1967. Now, look at the Frigidaire, which looks to me like the most freshening the company could do with limited approval of styling funds.

All of this looks to me like some minds were already made up at GM - it was time to start cutting losses and start courting a buyer.

Does anyone agree or disagree? As Linda Richman used to say, discuss. And again, I'm not trying to offend anyone - I'm seriously interested in opinions.

P.S.: I'm not sure I buy the "taller backguard is safer" idea. If you'll look, both brands have their burner controls at the right end of the backguard and their burners at the left end of the cooktop. If their backguards were one inch high, you'd still be safe from burning yourself reaching for a burner knob. The oven controls aren't all that elevated on either brand.

 

[ovrphil]

Is that a chartreuse color? I don't think it is, but it looks like a lime sort of green on this end.
It's still one of my all-time favorite stoves...it just looks right.

 

[philr]

Sandy, you're right about Frigidaire 40" ovens not having a larger oven and that the 1970s Frigidaire styling being less interesting than it was on some of the previous models. But for daily use, they're still my favorites!

 

The oven sizes are OK for me and I don't care much about windows but I know that others do! I have quite a few non-self-cleaning Frigidaire ranges that have windows, as in Canada, oven door windows were a much more popular feature (on Frigidaire ranges at least) than in the US. And I have no idea why Frigidaire waited until 1975 to offer windows on it's self-cleaning ovens <span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px;">while GE and other brands already had them for years </span><span style="font-size: 12pt;">and also why even so many non-self-cleaning Frigidaire models lacked the windows back in the 1950s-1960s. </span>

 

The Custom Deluxe model that's advertised for free is not the most interesting model in the lineup either and it lacks the full glass control panel that the Custom Imperial version would have, which I consider as an important feature for the ease of cleaning. But they are simple to use and relatively simple to repair and more trouble-free than the earlier and more complicated models. 

 

It also lacks the broiler grill feature that the 40" Custom Imperial had.  GE offered a thermostatic broil instead, a feature that Frigidaire rarely offered.

You can see that the paint is getting thin on the aluminum part of the control panel. The woodgrain pattern isn't the nicest either, it looks better on models with the glass panels. 

 

The Frigidaire storage drawers on the other hand are of a clever design, there's no brace under them so they have a large capacity and allow storing taller items and they can also be easily be removed to clean the floor under the range on both 30" and 40" models, even very old ones. Since 1964, the Frigidaire drawers were recessed, probably to compensate for the lack of a brace / toe kick space. The newer drawers like those on the featured range have no rollers, they just slide on plastic glides but they're those that work the best, even when they're packed full of heavy stuff!

The Frigidaire drawers used to be covered with porcelain but these newer ones are painted instead. Some would say that was a way to cheapen them but I think it was to make them more resistant to chips that could happen if you accidentally kick on them. And since they are so easy to remove, that's all you have to do if you're using strong cleaner to clean the non self-cleaning oven (I know, GE often had two self-cleaning ovens and not Frigidaire...). 

 

 

Brand preferences aren't always rational choices! And believe me, I do like GE appliances too! It's just that in my territory, I try to leave them to Paul who's a true GE fan!   There's one GE thing I can't resist to, it's the small GE Toast-R-Ovens from the 1960s to the 1980s! They also have plenty of downsides: they have a very small capacity, they aren't easy to clean and they have a lift-up Flair style door with a window that's also hard to clean (unlike those on Flairs!) but I just love them and I have many of them! Every time one shows up, I have to grab it! I can't resist! I even drove quite far to get my oldest one!

 

Back to 40" Frigidaire ranges of the 1970s...

 

<span style="font-size: 16.3636360168457px;">Here's the Custom Imperial version that has more features but still relatively simple compared to earlier models (and for those who don't like avocado, it was available in white too!). Unfortunately, this one isn't mine...</span>

 

[danemodsandy]

To the Phils:

ovrphil:

That GE is yellow - the true yellow that preceded Harvest Gold.

PhilR:

My question is: Does it look to anyone else like Frigidaire was in the process of giving up at this time? Like GM was saying, "Don't spend any more money?" The rather austere styling seen in this thread is only about a decade after Flairs, Pull 'n Clean ovens, drop-down burners and other Frigidaire "glamour" innovations.

 

[philr]

Well, I think they had too much trouble with the 1960's gadgets and they were trying to make things more simple... But that's until late-1973! That's when they introduced the Touch-N-Cook ranges. The Custom Deluxe range I have at home is a late 1973 model, it's almost the same as the 1971-early 1973 Custom Imperial model with one less feature: the Speed Heat burner. Since the new TOL model was a Ceramatop and had no Speed Heat burner, they probably didn't want lesser models to have more features. And that was a good thing since Speed Heat systems did have durability/reliability issues... 

 

The Touch-N-Cook were certainly not the best or more durable models but they were a technological breaktrough. As the first picture shows, the Touch-N-Cook ranges didn't get a glass door at first but by 1975 they did (along with some non Touch-N-Cook models). And later in the 1970s, self-cleaning wall ovens had windows too.  

 

There were certainly plans to get rid of Frigidaire for a while at GM before it happened in 1979 but the first sign I see is probably the Frigidaire products used in Automotive A/C that were rebadged as "Delco-Air" in the 1976 models.

 

[firedome]

agreed...

Frigidaire lost some of it's styling mojo after the mid '60s, and with things like the 2 same-size ovens and windows they certainly lagged GE... hard to know whether the motive was thoughts of a spin-off, or just taking the wrong path ala cheap looking wood grain decals over aluminum panels, they committed that particular sin on the laundry stuff as well, and it doesn't wear well. You could even see it in little details like design of knobs and clocks, viv a vis Flair as an example. Not the kind of effort was being put in design as was found earlier.

I would say, though, that they had a bit of a small last gasp resurgence around the mid- 70s, "discovering" some of those GE features and improving styling with the all glass panel black background high backsplash models, cool colors like Poppy, the quasi- "control tower" looking 30" drop in ranges, etc, all of this not long before the GM to WCI sale... maybe they were sprucing up their image a bit for the chopping block?

In any event by the advent of '76 our current Custom Deluxe REG-38 improvement was made, they had lost that ersatz "Woode Grayne" look for a more sleek appearance, stainless caps on the top of the cooktop sides, full all-glass 15" high backsplash with black/silver background, nicer looking type fonts, '80s-ish chrome/black knobs, glass oven window with ElectriClean, roller number digital timer clock, etc, and the last GM Custom Imps with their electronic digital display and ceramic top, all were more up-to-date and competitive in appearance. No doubt, though, that '56 to '63-ish was the real apotheosis of Frigidaire design.

Here's some shots of our REG-38 daily driver (thanks PhilR!) in situ:

 

[danemodsandy]

I Think....

....That the oven window situation was driven by GE's patents on their window shields.

The word "shield" was actually a misnomer; the device actually served more as a reflector, reflecting heat back through the innermost panel of the glass pack so that the panel would come clean. It was complicated to manufacture (do NOT take a GE oven door with the shield apart unless you want to spend some real time getting everything back into the needed alignment), and added expense.

Unless I'm wrong, it was Frigidaire that came up with a solution that didn't infringe GE's patents or call for licensing them: A reflectorized layer on the glass itself. This solution was so brilliantly simple and cheap to manufacture, it became the de facto standard for pretty much all SCO windows, including - eventually - GE's.

IMHO, the GE shield worked better overall, because it did keep P*7 cleaning temps away from the outer layers of the window, increasing safety for children, etc. But it was a pretty fancy and expensive solution, and you're supposed to keep kids away from hot stoves anyway.