1960s Sylvania Color TV: My first all tube color TV

[vortalexfan]

Greetings everyone, I will be picking up tomorrow locally a mid to late 1960s Sylvania Color TV that appears to be from what I can see of the pictures an all tube Color TV or perhaps a hybrid (I'm not sure becuse the pictures I saw of the inside of the unit were kind of limited to a small area of the main chassis where I saw at least two or three tubes in the picture and the convergence board and the picture tube besides a front view and a back view of the unit with the cover on the back.

The person who listed it on facebook marketplace said her husband picked it up at a garage sale several years back with the intention to fix it up but he lost interest in it, she said that when he powered it up it produced sound but no picture which I'm wondering if either the HV Rectifier is dead or maybe they were too impatient to wait for it to produce a picture, especially if it didn't come equipped with the "instant on" feature. One thing I did notice about the TV from the pictures of the inside of the set that I could see, is that it looks to be a low hours set because it has very little dust built up on the picture tube and on the chassis, and the TV appears to have the original Sylvania picture tube in it yet and the cabinet looks darn near mint.

what do you guys think, will this be a good TV when fixed up and what kinds of things should I look out for when trying to restore this set?

Thanks for your help.

See pictures below.

[Alex KL-1]

Congratulations!!
Well, this is a hybrid; in these photos, I can see some transistors in white yellowed sockets.
Even so, is a very interesting piece of it's time: tubes on deflection, all discrete video/IF/RF processing (at least I don't see any IC in it), delta-gun CRT, etc
Anxious to see if CRT and flyback are on a good shape!
Good luck with your restoration!

BTW, is my dream to include a hybrid color TV in my collection, since the first one TV I disassembled in my childhood was a hybrid. All those coloured parts, a lot of coils etc hehe
But I don't had/have luck on finding hybrids here, and these TV's are too heavy to send overseas...

[zeno]

Looks like a good start.
CRT looks original
Run on a variac or dim bulb first, see videos.
If power supply is up find out why no HV FIRST !
DO NOT do a mass recap ! I can give you NO good reasons to do that
but a ton of reasons why not to. Fix the set one stage at a time.
& take your time.
BTW these were decent sets. The main problem was the PCB's were
not good especially around tube sockets.
It also has a chassis number D-08 or something along those lines.
Find that, its the best ref.

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[Electronic M]

Based on a sams search of the model and what I have seen of that era of Sylvania it looks like a D12 chassis.
https://www.samswebsite.com/en/photo.../samsid/1045_2

The D12 and D16 were the chassis that put Sylvania on the map as a good TV brand. (Prior to that their color sets were mediocre RCA clones, and in house monochrome sets where they stuck a lousy portable chassis in a console cabinet with a halolite gimmick to get customers.) They competed on picture quality with the best early SS and hybrid sets from Zenith and RCA.

I've got a D13 (basically a D12 with provisions for a flying spot slide scanner that it was sold with) and ignoring 2 mouse chewed wires and an audio issue I haven't gotten to yet the TV portion still works great.

These sets are known for some resistors in the color demod going low in value and causing issues.

I agree with Zeno that PCB tube sockets aren't the best on these.

As for HV put a meter on the G1 and G2/screen of the H output. G1 needs to be something like -75V (I'd need to see the Sam's to know) if it's not sufficiently negative troubleshoot the H osc first, it it is sufficiently negative the G2s deviation from the schematic value will tell you if something is open or shorted in the flyback/yoke/boost system. High G2 indicates short, low G2 indicates open. HV rectifiers can fail in anything. If the horizontal seems normal and you can't test or sub the rectifier stick a CFL bulb or a small neon indicator near the flyback donut with the set on. If the bulb glows from the ambient RF then the horizontal is running enough to make HV and either the rectifier is bad, the regulator is lugging HV down (removing the top cap and putting it in a jar is a good test of that) or gun bias on the CRT is preventing screen light.

[DavGoodlin]

Sylvania hybrid and others used to get tin whiskers in the metal covers of grouped potentiometers.

Cleaning them sometimes helped but don't jump on this one until you sort out the other issues. The last D16 I saw (2014) had a shorted deflection yoke and fortunately Moyers Electronics had a NOS one. The VK member who has that set posted a picture recently.

I have this set and can cite examples going back to late 50s when these came out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngWMdVjmWQU Also same issues on GE portacolor

[vortalexfan]

Well the set has high voltage and produced a picture, but I am having a hard time getting the tuner to lock in on a signal (digital converter box or DVD Player being ran through an RF Modulator) and when I can get it to lock in on something the vertical won't lock but the horizontal will lock fine.

I checked all of the tubes and they all tested like band new yet except the horizontal output tube which I had to replace with a NOS one because the original one the grid cap broke off when I tried to remove the tube to test it.

This TV thankfully doesn't have the tin whiskers issue, but I have a feeling that the X and Z demod transistors might be bad or shorted because this TV is doing the same thing as the one that Shango worked on where it has plenty of red and Blue but no green or at least not much green anyways, the picture tube seems pretty strong yet other than that.

The X and Z demod Transistors are SE1002s which I'm not sure what those cross-reference to as far as NTE or some other more modern part (this set uses all germanium top-hat and black cap Silicon transistors (the ones that look like
small black gumdrops.)

I was trying to adjust some of the screen adjustments and I accidentally diddled the AGC adjustment (because its near some of the screen adjustments, and now the screen looks weird.

[JohnCT]

I wouldn't run it any further until I verified the carbon resistors that feed the transistor section have not dropped in value. I remember having one about 50 years ago that trashed every transistor and choke coil in the chroma/video section by dumping 2X the voltage into the signal circuits.

John

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by JohnCT

I wouldn't run it any further until I verified the carbon resistors that feed the transistor section have not dropped in value. I remember having one about 50 years ago that trashed every transistor and choke coil in the chroma/video section by dumping 2X the voltage into the signal circuits.

John

OK, will do, I'll check every resistor in that section of the TV and make sure they haven't drifted up in value.

[old_coot88]

FWIW (it may not apply in this case), we ran into some Sylvania hybrids that had two 2 watt carbon comp resistors that chronically cook and go 'waay low in value. IIRC they were something like 27K and dropped to a few hunderd ohms. They were the collector load resistors for the two demod transistors, which shorted from overcurrent. Apparently the resistors' phenolic casing charred to carbon over time, shunting the resistive elements.

Edit... those two resistors may have been more like 2.7K, not 27K. Been a lotta years.

[zeno]

Originally Posted by old_coot88

FWIW (it may not apply in this case), we ran into some Sylvania hybrids that had two 2 watt carbon comp resistors that chronically cook and go 'waay low in value. IIRC they were something like 27K and dropped to a few hunderd ohms. They were the collector load resistors for the two demod transistors, which shorted from overcurrent. Apparently the resistors' phenolic casing charred to carbon over time, shunting the resistive elements.

Ditto
I only saw it on the portables but first thing to check. Basically it
put 200+ volts on the 24 V line. Things explode !

Rolling may be from the AGC oops. If the tuner is SS there may be 2
controls. IF AGC & RF AGC.

Zeno

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by zeno

Ditto
I only saw it on the portables but first thing to check. Basically it
put 200+ volts on the 24 V line. Things explode !

Rolling may be from the AGC oops. If the tuner is SS there may be 2
controls. IF AGC & RF AGC.

Zeno

The tuner on this TV is Solid state according to the tube & transistor placement chart on the back of the TV.

The AGC adjustment that I accidentally diddled was the one that was next to the Vertical Linearity and Height Adjustments, which I was trying to adjust those because of the vertical roll that I couldn't lock in, and the AGC flub caused the picture to do some sort of weird thing where the picture looked like a red and blue candycane stripe going down the screen with some other strange screen distortions mixed in.

The 2 watt resistors you were talking about aren't burnt to a crisp or anything in my TV (they actually look like brand new yet) but they do measure a little low (around 10k-15k ohms rather than the 27k ohms that they should measure, but they don't measure in the hundreds of ohms range that you said they would measure if they were truly bad.)

As for trying to measure whether or not the transistors were bad or shorted, I don't have a transistor checker but I do have a DMM with a diode check mode but the transistors are so small and have such small leads that none of my test probes or aligator clip adaptors for my DMM test probes will fit onto the transistor leads without touching each other.

Do you have any suggestions as to a way to test these transistors without either damaging them or having to spend a whole lot of money on an expensive transistor tester?
I know the $5 Harbor Freight Special DMM had a dedicated transistor tester section but I'm not sure how accurate it is as I've never had a chance to use that function on one of those before (I did have one of those $5 Harbor Freight Special DMMs that I picked up NOS at Goodwill once but it broke on me before I had a chance to extensively try out all of the features on it.)

[Electronic M]

If those resistors are truly as low as you are measuring then they are badly out of tolerance and need to go ASAP....That said it's been a while since I've looked at the schematic and there could be a parallel path creating a false reading. In any event if you don't want to be doing tons of cross referencing for replacement transistors that might get damaged, then your next move should be to unsolder a leg of each of those resistors and double check how they measure and IMMEDIATELY change them if they have drifted low and are out of tolerance.

[zeno]

Transistors on old Sylvanias usually plug in to little white
sockets. Just be careful they go back in rite !

Zeno

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by vortalexfan

Do you have any suggestions as to a way to test these transistors without either damaging them or having to spend a whole lot of money on an expensive transistor tester?

Dunno how well this test would work with a digital ohm meter, but seems like it should provided the test voltage on the leads is proper polarity. I use a Simpson 260 analog meter set on highest R scale. The transistor needs to be NPN type (which your are) and out of circuit. You must identify which pins are emitter, base and collector, and bend at least two pins just enuff to attach clip leads.
Clip negative lead to emitter, positive to collector. Meter should read open circuit. Now moisten a fingertip and touch between base and collector. Resistance should drop as transistor turns on, indicating gain. (In the rare instance of testing a PNP transistor, just reverse the meter leads.)

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

If those resistors are truly as low as you are measuring then they are badly out of tolerance and need to go ASAP....That said it's been a while since I've looked at the schematic and there could be a parallel path creating a false reading.

Do you happen to remember the + source those two resistors are fed from? Seems like it as a lot higher than 24V, but I could be wrong. Also I could be wrong on the 27K value, but that's the figure that sticks in mind. A schematic would sure be handy.