Postwar American Television

Admiral 29A11 Prototype ?

This may be a prototype Admiral from the late 40s. There is no Sams or Rider listing for it. Notice the two chassis on the sides, each with what appears to be a power transformer.  If you have any information on this set, or speculation about it, please contact us. Thanks to Ira Grossman for sending these photos.

Chuck Azzalina located the chassis in Rider vol 2. The chassis a 30A1 (notice the 30A1 hand written on the set's tube layout). It is shown as going in models 8C11, 8C12, and 8C13, all apparently console models. Here is the 8C11. Notice that the cables to the two power supply chassis in this set are long, indicating that the chassis were designed to be in a console set, below the main chassis. Though the chassis is in Rider, the model number doesn't appear in either Rider or Sams. The set was made in 1948.

The chassis is not a prototype, but could the entire set be a prototype? The cabinet appears to be factory made, but it is impossible to tell if this was a one of a kind set or if it was actually manufactured in some quantities. Most prototypes don't have printed model numbers (on the labels on the back of the set and on the inside of the cabinet, and have hand written notations.

It is more likely that Admiral produced a number of these sets. Maybe they had a surplus of chassis from the console models, and decided to make a table model to sell them. It is fairly common for Sams and Rider to not list all variants and models, especially if only a few sets were made. Admiral had a lot of model numbers, often very similar sets with slight variations in the cabinets.

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