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?

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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.