RCA Victor CTC-9
 

Here's something I never expected to find - a 1959 RCA color set. :banana:

She's filthy and the speaker wire was cut, but she's complete and the original 21CYP22 tests strong :D

http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s...5/P1040627.jpg
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s...5/P1040635.jpg
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s...5/P1040636.jpg
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s...5/P1040639.jpg
http://i154.photobucket.com/albums/s...5/P1040643.jpg

Cabinet looks vaguely familiar to the 7 Phil picked up not too long ago:

http://www.antiqueradio.org/art/RCAC...AtPurchase.jpg

That's the CTC-9 "Latham" model. Very nice find and a good CRT to boot.


-Steve D.

This has been a really good few weeks for finds. I have a CTC 25 out in the back of my truck someone gave me. That is a really cool set. Needs some caps and I bet it will work nicely.

Looks like you've got very promising start with this one... I wonder when it was last actually running?:scratch2:

Plug it in, it probably works. Mine did, 9's are very well built sets.

Based on what I observed in the house, I'd guess it hadn't been lived in since 1975-1980.

I'm not going to put any power to it until I check the chassis out carefully. I found the speaker wire cut inside - the end coming from the chassis is stripped, like they had wired in an external speaker. The cover on the HV cage was left open also. Also, two of the other sets had been fooled around with - I understand the husband was a ham, which may explain this. Have to make sure all the tubes are the correct types, nothing else cut or hacked on. The chassis on this one is way cleaner than the others - I'm guessing because it is vertically mounted.

Ooo-la-la! Triple speakers 'n all. You will enjoy the audio on this one.

It might play as-is, but I would still replace those old maroon drops, as well as the electrolytics. Those boards are really easy to work on; replacing the little caps will go quickly. When I did my CTC-7, I found it easiest to saw the electrolytic cans above the chassis and mount the electrolytics on the bases, rather than remove the cans completely. Then you can slip the empty cans back on.

Nit: I think you're missing the little metal bezel for the fine tuning control. The cabinet only needs minor touching up, otherwise.

I need to finish my CTC-7. It works surprisingly well after basic recapping, but I haven't done any of the usual setup, much less the cabinet. Then I need to find a place in the house to put it!

Enjoy!

Phil Nelson
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Nice Find! I seem to have the same problem like Phill and everyone else. Small house with little room for my restored sets.

Just curious, what about them goes bad? I've never seen one fail in 32 years of messin' with electronics. Not to say they don't fail, but I'm curious as to what you've found. Leaky? Shorted? Changed Value?

I have seen the leads corroded right off of one (thanks to mouse pee!) in an old Magnavox 21" B/W console I restored in 1989.

Cheers,

I used to figure they should be good, too, but no longer. If you skim my CTC-7 article, you'll see a series of screen shots where things come together step by step as those caps are changed out. At first, the picture was a big fat mess with weak color. By the time I finished recapping, it looked pretty darned good, without doing any of the usual setup. I'm not curious enough to test old caps, so I can't say what defects they had -- maybe a little of everything. That TV sure works better without those maroon drops, anyhow.

Same deal with mica caps. I used to assume they were bulletproof, but now I find more and more bad ones. Maybe they're all getting older, just like me :)

Phil Nelson

I too have had problems with mica caps - mostly Sangamo molded ones - they are "pinker" than most.

The brown Elmenco "drops" are all mylar-paper caps, vacuum impregnated just like the old Sprague Orange drops. I've used them in sets for years, depleting my many assortment kits (Arco/Elmenco sold the "brown drops" in service kits years ago) and most of my sub-.01uF 600V stock. Never a problem with any of them. I've got tons, thanks to friends that shut down TV shops over the years. They sell the test equipment, but give away the parts. :yes:
I've had to quit using orange drops - the manufacturer (SBE) has shifted production to China. I found several new .0047uF Orange Drops that were leaky - several hundred microamps leakage at full voltage, giving me some freaky grid voltages in a Motorola radio I was working on for a guy at church. I think the shift to Rohs/lead-free or poor Chinese quality may be to blame. I've since shifted to Nichicon (XK series) and Illinois Capacitor (MSR/MPR) radials and axials. Much easier to obtain in small values, and cheap too.

There was an earlier thread talking about the Elmencos/maroon drops and problems, but nobody ever gave specifics. My Sencore LC102 and Sprague Tel-Ohmike both check caps at full voltage, so I've always relied on them for testing most caps. For quickie tests, I used to connect a 90V battery up to my VoltOhmyst with the cap in series to check for charge/discharge. Any residual voltage indicated leakage. I don't anymore - the dang battery went dead - ever price a new 214 battery these days? :sigh:

I'm gonna re-read your CTC7 saga!

Cheers,

Thats why you build a 90V boost converter from a couple of 9V batteries. :-)


I did this to my old Eldorado/RCA portable tube radio. i created a 65V boost converter that ran off a single 9V, and then wrapped a couple turns of wire around the inductor, a diode and filter cap to get boost-derived filament battery supply. the 9V battery ran dead pretty quickly, but the circuit ran good otherwise, and so did the radio for the short time period :-) Same concept as the nixie tube power supplies, i basically used the same regulated nixie supply circuit. The only downfall to all of this, is you have to size your inductor, and i dont know the math. so i experimented. too small and the B+ wont reach required power and the inductor will overheat/saturate. Too large and it draws excessive current, and harder to regulate/overshoot.

What would be better is building the circuit inside a replica-style looking "battery", or a an old original but gutted battery and have a rechargeable lithium cell inside to run it. when it dies, remove the battery from radio and plug the charger into it.

on my cap tester (eye tube type) the caps will test fine for leakage, but on value the eye will not fully open and the edges will be fuzzy. Sort of looks like a electrolyitc looks when the power factor has increased. Heat will effect it also, will change the value (have to reset null setting) and changes the fuzziness as well.

Has the cap tester been restored? They have caps in them as well. The Heathkit testers will act funny with old caps. But they don't have many in there and you can restore them in an evening...