Philco townhouse 19" b/w
 

I thought this would be an easy set to fix (60s b/w's usually are), but this one was not at all. The Philco 'townhouse' along with the 'town and country' and 'seventeener III' have long been favorites of mine because of the interesting looking cabinets. The Townhouse is perhaps the most deluxe in that it uses a power transformer, 2 speakers, and has an interesting large light up channel number display in the center of the cabinet.

The first 3 pics show the set and chassis as found. I first figured I would blow all that dust off, clean up the chassis a little, recap, and then see what was going on...

What I got was an awful squealing sound out of the fly and yoke :eek:

I removed the plate cap off the HO tube and could still hear some arcing which turned out to come from one of those integrated circuit like things (I'm not sure what those are called?). So I removed it, cleaned it up and replaced the individual components. (seen in the next 2 pics) But after I put it back I still had that awful sound coming from the yoke and fly. :worried:

Then I removed the horizontal oscillator tube, reconnected the plate cap on the HO tube, and injected horizontal from my B&K tv analyst where the arrow is in the schematic. Then everything worked (next pic) so I at least knew the fly and yoke were ok, and the problem was with the oscillator circuit.

Then I spent a lot of time poking around the oscillator circuit with the scope and vtvm trying to track down the problem. I eventually gave up, fixed the remote control stuff in that GE console with the rf remote I have (which I'll put in another thread) and didn't come back to the Philco until today.

I eventually found out the problem was that the horiz centering control was open (well mostly it read about 4 megs across it). It's on a single unit with the vert height and horiz width, those controls were ok. I removed it, and thought maybe if I cleaned it it would work, but some of the conducting material was actually worn away and I couldn't repair it. (The control is in the 1st pic). I wound up removing the 3 pins from the centering control, and resoldering the rest of the multiple control unit back in. The adding a fixed resistor across the bottom of the chassis to replace the centering control. (next pic) - I used 3k.

By this time the wire to the HO tube plate cap (which was very brittle) just broke - but I had one of these wires with the tube cap attached nos in a plastic bag and I replaced it.

Finally I had to take apart the broken on/off switch. The piece of metal in there actually doing the switching was partially worn away, but by turning it upside down I could use the other side and make it work (next pic)

The TV really working with it's own horizontal oscillator is the next pic after that.

The next pic is the chassis as it looks now. I still have some work to do. On one tube socket (the sound discriminator - there's an arrow pointing to it in the pic) the plastic has totally disintegrated even though it still works. I have some of the 9-pin Philco board mount sockets, but none of the 7-pin ones that this is - so if anyone knows where I can get one let me know…

Also the cabinet's going to need quite a bit of cleaning up, and repainting of some of the silver trim. I'm also missing the volume knob - so if anyone has one of those let me know too…

Good work Adam! Thanks for sharing. I always wanted one of these and was curious what they looked like inside and about the picture quality.

I've got a bunch of those Philco "striptrols" - two and three pot varieties, should you want to replace it wholly.

Model number of the set, or a chassis number? (Helps greatly for the next guy looking for info....se4arch only works if we feed it intel....)

Model Number?

Thanks, I'm in the process of moving to WI, I think I'll take you up on that after I get there. (The post office has lost more of my rare parts in the mail at this address than anywhere else I've lived:thumbsdn: - I'm hoping this problem won't follow me to WI)

The models is 13J45. I don't know the part number for the knob. I don't have the Sams for this, only a partial scan of the Beitmans. (It's in Sams 650-2, and the 1963 Beitmans)

I think this is a nicer set than that Seventeener III I used to have, not being a hot chassis. But all these Philcos from this era despite having cool looking cabinets, all seem to have weird problems, like that bad control, or bad tube sockets...

Welcome! What city?

.

Madison.

I replaced that tube socket that was bad (it was the sound discriminator socket). The old socket just completely fell apart as I took it out. I found a new Philco replacement socket though. Now this set is finally really working well, but I still have to do some cleaning up of the cabinet.

Wow - that old socket sure didn't hold up. Very cool that you scored a genuine replacement part. I like the early 60s Philcos too. Funny how it seems harder to find set from the 60s than the 40s or 50s.

Arvin and Magnavox used the same lousy socket. It was a single nylon disc with the pins pressed in it. At least Arvin used it for tubes that didn't run as hot, ie 12BA6.

There was very little of the nylon disc left even before I removed the socket. When I first took out the chassis and blew out all the dust, bits of that socket went with it.

The Philcos seem more rare than others. Zenith 19" B&W sets are much more common. I wonder if these 19" Philcos, when they were all around 10-20 years old broke down because of weird problems like bad tube sockets and controls and nobody wanted to put in the effort to fix them and junked most of them.

Here's an ad showing the different early 19" Philco B&W models. I've been looking for one of those Town and Countrys for years. Those 19" sets in what look like Seventeener III cabinets with rectangular 19" CRT masks are cool looking too. It also says they made some of these Townhouses with a remote control.

Your Striptrol is, according to Sams, a 33-5600-3. I have 33-5600-7 and 33-5600-11, both quite different.

My striptrols start at 33-5595-8, so most are post-1965 or so. I bought a Philco/Motorola dealer's stock back in 2003, mostly in hope of finding a W-I-T-D Motorola. The Philco stuff was nice, but who needs 300 Philco transistors or pots?

Thanks for looking! At least that resistor I have in there works ok for now.

If it weren't for that ad I posted, I wouldn't have known how much of this cabinet was originally painted silver. I've been experimenting with using Q-tips as small paint brushes to repaint those silver lines on the sides of the screen. It kind of works.

If anyone has any suggestions as to how to redo the "Philco Townhouse" script under the channel number indicator let me know? At first, I noticed it was slightly lower than the rest of the cabinet. So I painted the whole area, then attempted to scrape off / sand off the paint around it, assuming the paint in the lower spots would stay put if I just sanded over the whole thing. But the depressions where the letters were were so slight that just a little sanding with 600 paper managed to make parts of the letters level with the rest of it. So if I tried that technique again it would just come out worse.

Unfortunately, this cabinet is messed-up in several ways and there is no way I'll be done with it before I have to move to WI next week. I hate moving projects that are underway. I always loose parts.

When you get here, make sure you check out the Wisconsin Antique Radio Club. A lot of the WARCI members are also here on this forum as TV collectors. Yes, we do more than just antique radios. TV. phono, hi-fi, etc. are all represented here. We'd be glad to have you join us. We normally meet in the Milwaukee area, but have two swap/social meets in Madison each year. One is coming up there just next month, on August 20th. See warci.org for details!

.

A pad lock maker used to use a thick near dry paste paint to fill sunken dial numbers*. Perhaps you could use a similar approach. I think your better off applying paint 'wet/uncured' and removing it wet.

*IIRC some of my peers at MSOE had a college senior design project to come up with a less antiquated method.

I don't know how small it is, but perhaps a fine tipped paint pen or artists brush and a steady hand could fill the letters.

We used the Testors paint pens - get both the red/white/black and gold/silver/black kits and 99% of your needs are met. Paint the area, and go back over with either some micromesh to remove the surface paint, or a MrClean Magic eraser, with light passes. The magic eraser is fine enough and firm enough to not dig out the recesses or mar the surface.

I dunno what grit our micromesh kit is - nothing is marked.

http://www.advantagehobby.com/246235...ite/?pcat=1028

Link provided only as a reference - Amazon is probably cheaper.

I always liked Philco's wacky early 60's designs. Was this branded as a "Cool Chassis" set?
I have a 1962 Deluxe 23 "Cool Chassis" consolette that I rescued from the loft of the theater department Prop barn at Hiram College back in 2009. It's a hot chassis set that worked great as found and hasn't needed work since. It was a dorm lounge TV in it's previous life.

http://i.imgur.com/hEhmqSG.jpg

I did my first post in the Introductions forum a few days ago, lamenting the fact that all the cool old TVs are from the US and I'm in Europe where everything pretty much sucks. I've been looking online and in thrift shops for months and just finding icky 80s solid-state stuff.

But thanks to this thread, I happened to Google "Philco Townhouse" because I thought that pic looked like one of the ugliest TVs I've ever seen - in a good way, I mean, like lots of those midcentury Philcos. And what was the VERY FIRST thing that popped up on an image search? A freaking Philco Townhouse. In Spain. For 30€. That looks to be in pretty good shape, physically. And further thanks to that listing I have figured out what I need to be be searching for and discovered several other sets from the same era -Zeniths, Sylvanias, another Philco - that were either imported and converted, or made for export. Odd considering that in those days there was only one channel and it was the propaganda channel run by the dictatorship so I have to wonder why they were importing expensive American TVs. But regardless, good news!

Many years ago, one of my neighbors called and said they were looking at new sets. Their choice was between a Zenith and a Philco set for about the same price!
I told them, " Stay away from the Philco, they don't stand up worth a damn". The Zenith is a better buy. :thmbsp:

It may have been the only thing on, but there was one Spaniard who was damn determined to watch it in style.

Back then when Americans moved abroad, unless there was an engineer or particularly sharp person in the family, folks would often bring 117V 60Hz NTSC sets to PAL/CCIR, or SECAM countries, hook them up to 240V 50Hz watch them blow up then goto a TV repair shop and be informed that electronic standards are not universal.