60s / 70s Admiral 'Instant Play' Portable

[MadMan]

Hi guys. Long story short, my grandpa passed away and I got the honor of cleaning his attic. I found my mom's childhood TV set. A POS Admiral portable that she gives no craps about. He was a top electrical engineer back at Simpson Electric, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this tv was retired because grandpa either couldn't or didn't want to fix it.

I thought it might be a nice set for me to practice my tv-repairing skills on.

So first thing, I tested the picture tube. Huzzah! It tested good! Second, I took out the circuit board and resoldered all the (many) broken joints.

Big Mac disapproves of this filthy circuit board.

Next, I powered it up on a variac, using my new (grandpa's old) Simpson watt/voltage meter to monitor it. It... started smoking. But hey! I fixed that, I think. One of the metal shields around one of the transformer thingies was... improperly installed, and therefore touching (grounding) one leg of a capacitor. I unsoldered it and positioned it the right way and then I resoldered even more joints. The holes in the board are too big for the pins, so it's easy for components to rock around I guess.

Also, the grounding spring that touches the aquadag was hooked to that shield thingy, which seems awfully flimsy to hold that spring. Then again, this set is a POS, so...

Anyway, this time, it didn't smoke, and I got some good high pitch tv-working noises. And actually some kind of display:

The yoke is crooked.

I didn't let it run too long, but it seemed liked the horizontal was getting weaker and weaker.

Best I can guess is the horizontal circuit has a problem. (I'm so smart.) Now, the horizontal output tube (33GY7A) is made in Korea, and this youtube guy says they suck, so I'm guessing this one's gotta go. However, this tube got super hot, as well as the sync. sep(arator?)/vertical oscillator & output tube (23Z9) and the sound det(ection?) & output tube (17BF11). Which are all original Admiral tubes. Ironically, every other tube is another brand, even the HV rectifier tube, which... do those ever go bad? It's just two pieces of metal and some mercury, right?

As far as I understand, a hot tube implies a short or other circuit problem. Most of the caps on this thing are ceramic, with a few that are clear plastic ones I've never seen before, a couple film caps, a couple mylar(?) caps, and then that giant worrysome filter can cap thing, which is made of cardboard painted silver, pretending to be metal. I guess replacing all the not-ceramic caps on this thing wouldn't be too hard. It's probably only 10 or so. But could this be a resistor problem?

And uh, I can't test most of the tubes in this thing because they're 12 pin compactrons, and my Hickok 533A doesn't have this new-fangled socket! /cry I did a little looking into this, and I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to make a direct-wired adapter from a 12-pin socket, but then... how would I know the settings to use on the tester to test them? Well I'm not in a hurry on this one, and who knows? Maybe grandpa has the fancy-shmancy adapter device hidden away in his garage somewhere. Or maybe not, and that's why this set was retired.

Can anyone give me an idea of what the model number might be? The sticker on the bottom is completely obliterated. I tried some searching and came up emtpy handed. I'd kinda like to get a Sam's for this thing, especially if I'm gonna have to start poking circuits.

Big Mac is wearing a yoke and standing on a yoke.

Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks!