RCA Victor 630TS Now On The Bench

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I bought this set for a whole $35.00 at one of our MAARC auctions. You can see that the cabinet is not bad and the set is mostly complete. Thankfully, I was fully dressed when I took the picture of the front! I have seen some rather funny pictures where the person taking the picture didn't preview it before posting it!!!

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Lucky for me, it has a good General Electric 10BP4 CRT.

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Here are some pictures of the chassis after removal from the cabinet. There have been some repairs to it. Of course, those repairs entailed just tack soldering the new part to the old lead. I have already started repairing the repairs. All paper capacitors will be replaced. The AC line caps were replaced first.

Before starting on this restoration, I brought it up slowly on my Sencore PR57. Needless to say, there was no raster and at about 100 volts, the Horizontal Output tube was showing slightly red. I was specifically watching for that, knowing that if the horizontal was not oscillating, this would happen.
Changing channels did bring some scratchy noise through the speaker some we have some life already.

After replacing a all paper capacitors in the horizontal and vertical sections, I did get some high voltage. Preliminary reading was 3 kilovolts, a lot low. But it was encouraging to see that we had made some progress.

The speaker, which is in perfect condition has been covered with cardboard.

I am aware of the yellow cadmium on the chassis. Proper safety precautions are being taken and that stuff will be removed safely.

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Success! I now have a raster. Pictures to come soon.

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Still a long way to go, but a raster is encouraging.

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I replaced a ton of capacitors around the sound amplifier and it certainly made a difference. Originally there was very little sound and after replacing all of the paper capacitors, it will blast you out now, even with the cardboard over the speaker.

I did rebuild one electrolytic filter capacitor and intend to rebuild (restuff) the rest of them soon.

I can tell that the vertical is about the right frequency by moving the vertical hold control and you can see that it stops rolling. However, it appears that the horizontal is way off frequency. I will have to scope the signal and see if I can get a feel for what frequency it is operating at. I will go back and check all of the resistors around the Multivibrator tube and make sure I replaced the capacitors with the correct value (hopefully not off by a power of 10!). As others certainly know, each step of replacement gets things better and better.

Probably not today because I have other things that need attention... like the outside, weeds, grass, landscape etc.

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Success! I have a stable picture now.

There had been some work around the transformer, T108 "Horizontal Sync Discriminator Transformer", a few capacitors were replacements. Could be that the caps still connected were leaky and someone previously has diddled that adjustment, trying to get the picture back in sync. The adjustment on the transformer was cranked all the way in. Since I had replaced all of the paper capacitors (leaving one previous repair which was a Sangamo 33M Mylar which tested good), it could be the reason that transformer was so far out of adjustment.

I have a very stable picture now with the horizontal hold control centered. I am using a 5AXP4 CRT temporarily whilst the Aquadag dries on the 10BP4. I still need to do some voltage readings, I have not checked the B+ etc. The HV is down to 5 KV instead of 9 KV. I just wanted to get the capacitors behind me.

I rebuilt (stuffed) 3 of the 5 can capacitors because the were leaking at below the working voltage. The other two were on value with no significant leakage at the working voltage for each section. I could tell that the two that were still testing good were manufactured by the same company (non marked BTW). The other three were manufactured by a different company as indicated by the type of construction. All three were the same company. Each capacitor was completely disconnected from the circuit and each section tested individually.

Whenever a resistor was disconnected on one end, it had to be right on value or I replaced it. Some were high but most were still within tolerance. Imagine that, since they were made in 1945-46!

I still have some issues to address.

- The focus control is all the way to one end. That's OK for the 10BP4 but not for the 5AXP4.

- CRT anode voltage is only 5 KV instead of 9 KV.

But I have a lot of good clean loud sound. I am using a DVD player feeding into a Blonder Tongue AM60-550 with rabbit ears on channel 8. The rest of the sets in the house pick up signals perfectly. Now, I have something to work with and refine.

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Moving right along, I was about to just put this set back into the cabinet to make room for another long in queue project. I had noticed a missing screw in the HV case but really didn't pay a lot of attention to it. Long story short (Thanks, right?) the width "Control" was missing. I have adequate width in the picture but upon further investigation, it is RCA #71429 Width Coil, L115 or L196 depending on whether you are looking at the Sams or RCA documentation.

I have a T100 and that has the same part number coil. I will have to dig it out today and see if there really is one there. This 630TS is more desirable to me than the T100. Well, guess I am not quite done for now. Some pictures of the chassis after quite a few components were replaced. You can see the one capacitor that I left in, the green Sangamo 33M capacitor which was a previous replacement. Also, I keep the CRT plug and ion trap tied up so that they are not flapping around.

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Here is the location of the missing Width Coil.

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Yesterday, I had occasion to turn on the set which is in my bedroom (As is the Admiral 26R12). I worked great. I noticed that the vertical centering was off so I adjusted that and the height and it came right into where it should be. The picture below is before I adjusted it. Mind you, I have done no alignment whatsoever on this set. Just replaced any paper cap, about half of the electrolytic can capacitors. The other half had good value and minimum leakage at working voltage. What was interesting is that the cans that tested good had the same manufacturing. The others were different.

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Here is what I replaced. It took time, I very carefully removed all of the original lead from the various lugs. Sometimes, the capacitor lead was under other leads. I just removed them carefully and then put everything back together. This time, I didn't break any lugs. Yes, time consuming but this is the way I want it done. Not criticizing "J" hook connections. They make life a lot easier. But it's what I want to do.

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This is what I use to broadcast the signal throughout the house. It's a Blonder Tongue Agile Modulator. I had rebuilt the power supply in it as well. Filter capacitors were high ESR. Also, I use a Sony Watchman to make sure the signal is getting out rather than going crazy troubleshooting something that is not broken! I have several of these little guys and I can walk around the house and endure that signal is arriving properly.

Under the BT Modulator is the Kenwood 1100-u tube receiver that I restored in the past year. That thing was a real bear to work on. Very cramped chassis. But it sounds great and it is my bench entertainment right now. On the shelf are two Bang & Olufsen S75 speakers. The Kenwood is written up in AudioKarma.

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Next, this is a molded tubular capacitor that tested good except that the eye tube edges were fuzzy. Experience has told me that a capacitor must have crisp edges on the eye tube and they must not have excessive leakage. Even though this "seemed" to test good, it was replaced.

Also, most opinion is that one should replace a few capacitors at a time. I agree. However, I did not do that. I replaced all of the paper capacitors as well as a few resistors and one mica capacitor. Components around the vertical and horizontal oscillators need to be good and I was not happy with that mica cap or the molded cap either.

The other MicaMold "domino" capacitors were line capacitors. They are paper and actually were the first to go. "safety" caps as they call them replaced the MicaMold caps.