Westinghouse K840CK15 Restoration

[etype2]

We left the cable in its original position. Hopefully it will be stable.

[dtvmcdonald]

Originally Posted by etype2

I can tell you I never saw well adjusted color on the early 50’s sets. In my opinion, the color chain just was not as capable as what we have today.

That's not true. I saw color TV right from the beginning in our town,
in 1954, and my uncle had a CT-100 for while until he got a 21CT55. The color on his
set was always perfect when I saw it. It is true that he had a good antenna,
about 1/2 mile from the transmitter (WBAP), and that station transmitted all
local live programming in color, right from day one. I saw lots of stuff on the
monitors because my best friend's father was the weatherman. There was
no difference in the color between the monitors and the home set. I was 10-11
years old at the time and mightily interested in the technology.

And the color on my own CT100 was quite good until the CRT died. Dorothy looked just like what you see in the current Westinghouse threads ... the white parts of her dress are too blue. Interestingly, now that I have substituted a modern monitor for the CRT (taking the RGB from the CT-100 grid drives) the white parts of her dress are white, not blue. This is due to the gross difference in the necessary drive level for the red versus gren and blue guns of a 15GP22 or 21AXP22, resulting in different nonlinearities. These disappear when the CT-100 drive controls are readjusted to drive a monitor. The demodulation and matrixing is perfect. Some day I will have a 21CT55 chassis driving a 21FJP22 and we shall see.

[etype2]

When the first color telecast arrived in January 1, 1954, I was 7. I didn’t see color TV until 1956 at my Uncle’s house. No one in my neighborhood had color TV in the 50’s. A grade school friends parents had a color set and I got to see it one time. Other then that and department stores were my only exposure to color sets and I was very interested. As I explained, folks would adjust color sets on display in department stores and they had green faced, over saturated color. If you saw the restored tape of an “Evening With Fred Astaire”, that is my recollection of what 1950’s color looked like. In the mid 60’s color quality improved compared to very early 50’s color sets.

I wasn’t exposed to professional monitors or TV engineers. I bet your Uncle was a perfectionist like yourself. :-) So ... I say to you, I never saw well adjusted color on early 50’s sets.

[etype2]

UPDATE, OCTOBER 2, 2019

Today, I learned that this Westinghouse has a built in degaussing coil. Most early color televisions had to be degaussed externally. It also has front panel color and convergence controls which are unusual. The color control adjusts to the color carrier frequency. The hue control is inconveniently located in the rear panel. I haven’t fiddled with the advanced user controls thus far because Mike has the set adjusted spot on. The controls operate progressively with a nice smooth feel.

This set dose not like the frequent bright scene changes and commercials of broadcast television. The images bloom and loose focus, however the set had no problem displaying “The Wizard Of Oz” on DVD. I’ve added a few broadcast screenshots and a number of “Oz” screenshots to show the imaging quality of the Westinghouse H840CK15. Tap on any image to access high resolution 6000 X 4000 images. https://visions4netjournal.com/westi...r-tv-part-two/

[old_tv_nut]

That is not a degaussing coil, but a field-neutralizing coil, which carries a constant adjustable DC current to counter the Earth's magnetic field.

A degaussing coil works by applying a large, decaying AC current once when the set is turned on. This actually magnetizes the metal CRT shield opposite of the Earth's field, thus canceling it inside the CRT.

[trinescope]

Marshall,

How bright does the picture look in person? Reason I ask is because when I was taking pictures of mine in a dark room the pictures looked much brighter than actually seeing it in operation.

[etype2]

Erich,

Look at post #224 on page 15. The shutters were closed with front facing illumination in mid-afternoon sunny day. The picture is washed out, but gives an idea. It is brighter then I thought it would be and maybe because the light is concentrated on a small screen.

My camera won’t pick up the intensity of green on the Westy.

I saw your video on Facebook. Looking good, congratulations.

[freakaftr8]

Wow that looks amazing! You guys really do good work!

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

Erich,

...

My camera won’t pick up the intensity of green on the Westy.

...

No picture posted to the web will show the actual green because
1) the picture will be in jpg/sRGB color space with a restricted color gamut compared to the original NTSC (P1) green
2) it may be further restricted if the viewer's computer monitor gamut doesn't cover full sRGB

[trinescope]

Originally Posted by etype2

Erich,

Look at post #224 on page 15. The shutters were closed with front facing illumination in mid-afternoon sunny day. The picture is washed out, but gives an idea. It is brighter then I thought it would be and maybe because the light is concentrated on a small screen.

My camera won’t pick up the intensity of green on the Westy.

I saw your video on Facebook. Looking good, congratulations.

I looked at the pictures you referenced and I get the idea. The red on mine will go out of focus if run too bright, but the grayscale will still track normally, so I don't think it's all that bad. I was trying to tweak convergence last night and the horizontal oscillator decided to lose lock and go off frequency, so it's back to troubleshooting for me. It looks like one of the mica capacitors is failing, so I'm just going to replace all the ones in that circuit. The resistors seemed OK, heated them with a soldering iron and they didn't change value much. Swapping out tubes did nothing, so it's not that. Oh well, we saved two more of these early sets.

[etype2]

Originally Posted by freakaftr8

Wow that looks amazing! You guys really do good work!

Thank you. It’s all Mike’s work, but I did the cabinet.

[etype2]

Originally Posted by old_tv_nut

No picture posted to the web will show the actual green because
1) the picture will be in jpg/sRGB color space with a restricted color gamut compared to the original NTSC (P1) green
2) it may be further restricted if the viewer's computer monitor gamut doesn't cover full sRGB

Is there a setting on the Sony A 6300 that I should use? The green in some scenes of OZ is really intense on the 15GP22, and the camera dumbs it down to pastel green.

[etype2]

Originally Posted by trinescope

I looked at the pictures you referenced and I get the idea. The red on mine will go out of focus if run too bright, but the grayscale will still track normally, so I don't think it's all that bad. I was trying to tweak convergence last night and the horizontal oscillator decided to lose lock and go off frequency, so it's back to troubleshooting for me. It looks like one of the mica capacitors is failing, so I'm just going to replace all the ones in that circuit. The resistors seemed OK, heated them with a soldering iron and they didn't change value much. Swapping out tubes did nothing, so it's not that. Oh well, we saved two more of these early sets.

There are thousands of parts in these sets and one can’t replace everything. You hope you address the key failure points and mitigate potential problems ahead of time. I will never use this set as a daily viewer and keenly aware of future failures to come. I should not own this set, because I’m not an engineer, but knowing the history and the nostalgic value was my motive to restore the set. Your set failure is just a minor setback and you have the smarts to fix it.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by etype2

Is there a setting on the Sony A 6300 that I should use? The green in some scenes of OZ is really intense on the 15GP22, and the camera dumbs it down to pastel green.

In a word, no.

If you try to set the camera for a wider color space (Adobe RGB, for example, which does include the NTSC green), most viewing software, including most common web browsers, will not read the info in the jpg, and all colors will be really desaturated and distorted. Plus, as I said, unless you have a monitor capable of displaying Adobe RGB, the green on your screen will never be as saturated as the NTSC green.

[old_tv_nut]

From the Viewsonic site: