Went to see an 11 today...

[Charlie]

Today I went to see a CTC-11 that is not too far from my camp. It's a black metal cabinet on shiny brass legs. The set is super clean, but has issues. From what he told me, the guy was watching it till it lost vert deflection about a year ago. I took the back off for a quick glance, and saw the CRT has a brightener on it. The chassis was clean and shiny. Has a few knobs missing due to little kids, but the guy said he can find them. He plugged it in, but seems there was no B+ because there was no audio, no white line on the screen, and no singing of the Horz Osc.

The guy wants 75 bucks for it, and seems pretty firm on it. So far, the only positive thing is that it's really clean in and out.

What do ya'll think? Should I give him the 75 dollars? Or pass on this?

[Charlie]

Also, he said he has the book for the set... but has to find it. Not sure where he put it.

I dunno what that's worth, but if he's firm on the price then at least have him make sure to dig up the knobs and manual and he fails to do so then you may have a little wiggle room on the price.

The flip side is to ask him what he may be looking for (other than cash).......maybe you could do some horse trading that way.

Anthony

[Eric H]

$75 seems pretty cheap for an early roundie.
The black metal and brass cabinet sound really cool and you have a CRT for it so if he can find the knobs I would probably go for it.
I usually regret the ones I passed on more than the ones I buy.

Eric

P.S. did you get a look at the flyback?

[bgadow]

Prices on these are all-over the place. I would agree that with the knobs & paperwork this should be worth $75. I'm kinda cheap myself and probably wouldn't go higher than that. If he can't find the accesories that should be worth $20 off the price!

[Charlie]

I think I am going to get it. It is somewhat local for me, and looks great. I've brought home far worse, but those were free!

Eric, I didn't get so far as to opening the HV cage.

[Charlie]

Went to pick up the CTC-11. The guy actually tried to go up on the price! What a dirt-bag! Anyway, I told him I wasn't going to pay any more than the 75... especially since he didn't even find the knobs. He was very quick to back down and take the money. He said he'd call me when he finds the knobs. Hmmm... we'll see.

As far as the set goes, the insides were good looking other that some dust. The 21FBP needs replacing. The green gun reads good, red reads questionable, and the blue reads absolutely nothing. I tried powering it up and got only heaters. Then I tried the reset button. Using the variac, the reset button trips by the time I get up to 35 volts everytime. Bad short somewhere. That sucks... gotta find a short... and that could be anywhere!

Nice looking set at least. I'll get around to it one of these days.

I'll post some photos when I get my camera back later this weekend.

[bgadow]

My 11 had a bad filter cap (pretty obvious once I pulled the chassis & looked- ) and that was tripping the breaker.

[Chad Hauris]

Use the series light bulb trick and start disconnecting stuff from the B+ supply to find the short...along with bad filter cap, have seen a lot of shorted PS rectifier diodes in these type sets...the diodes can short, they then let AC into the cap which goes bad. I think this is a transformer powered voltage doubler power supply Best to replace both the diodes and the cap (s) when a short is suspected.

Also several times I have found the Circuit breaker to be bad...have replaced it with a fuse.

[Charlie]

Here's a shot of the 11... minus a few knobs. Pretty clean for the most part. A few places on the metal cabinet can use touching up with black paint.

I might yank the chassis later this evening. Just got back from being at the camp for the past several days, so kinda resting and chillin for right now. If there was ever such a thing as "too much" beer and bar-b-q, i definately had it!

[veg-o-matic]

Me like!

A black TV of that vintage?? Wowee kazowie were they ever ahead of their time!

Anthony

[Jeffhs]

In the early '70s, I had a 1964 Sears Silvertone roundie in a black table-model cabinet (got it from a man in my hometown who had had the set in his garage goodness only knows how long). The chassis bore a strong resemblance to RCA's CTC-12; in fact, the set being discussed in this thread (CTC-11) reminded me of mine. Worked after a fashion until 1972, but I had some problems with it after awhile (convergence way off, hum bars in the picture, very unstable color sync), but the final straw was when the video-output tube socket broke out of the circuit board in 1973 or so. Oh well.

Once the knobs are replaced and the cabinet touched up on Charlie's set, I think it will be a very good one. Those RCA roundies (as well as the company's rectangular sets of the '60s through the '80s, including those fabulous 3-way color consoles like the "Brindisi" model of '64 vintage or thereabouts, not to mention the ColorTrak series through ColorTrak 2000) were built to last, and didn't have nearly the issues modern "RCA" sets have these days. However, I have an RCA 19" with a CTC185A7 chassis which has given me no trouble (except one small repair not long after I purchased it) in the almost four and a half years I've owned it. Was I just lucky to have gotten a good CTC185, considering how troublesome a lot of those sets were? The set works great, beautiful picture and all. Purchased an extended warranty on it that runs through 2006, but I don't know if I'll have to use it. I understand that once the issues with the onboard tuner in these sets are addressed and corrected, the sets will run for years, not like Gold Star-built "Zenith" televisions that seem to have one problem after another (including those junk CRTs which have a nasty habit of shorting after only about two years or so, taking much of the video circuitry with them), causing them to wind up in the trash after only a very short time (usually shortly after the warranty expires). When I had the small problem with my RCA repaired, the technician also resoldered the joints around the OB tuner. That did it. Those repairs were done over two years ago, and the set still works great today.

Never had one bit of trouble with the CRT, either. Which reminds me. I asked this question once in a previous post, but never got an answer. Are inline-gun CRTs with aperture grilles and dark-tint screens now the industry standard for CRT-based televisions, or do some very cheap Chinese/Korean-built sets, with manufacturers' names no one has ever heard of (!), still use the earlier delta-gun tubes with shadow masks? There must have been some improvements over the years, as the picture on my RCA CTC185 is absolutely beautiful, like a picture postcard. (For example, the nature scenes on the National Geographic Channel look every bit as good on my set, IMO, as the pictures in the magazine.) Much better than the sets I grew up with in the '70s. The only thing, IMO, that could possibly beat these modern tubes as far as picture quality goes would probably be the old rare-earth-phosphor color tubes of the '60s, often found in the better makes of roundies of that era.

[Charlie]

Got a picture going on this set!

Found one of the rectifier diodes to be shorted. After replacing, it came back to life without tripping the reset. Ran it for 20 minutes and all seems okay. The blue gun is extrememly weak. Perhaps I'll put one of my new CRTs in it. Picks up stations pretty good.

There are some blk beauties and ceramic tubular caps in there, so I'll change those out just to be on the safe side. Still need to check the flyback and make sure it's not getting hot.

Looks like this set will turn out pretty good.

Here are some screen shots...

[Charlie]

And another.