Rca Ctc9
 

Hi Guys;

This is a little out of my area of expertise, but I thought I'd check in with you all to obtain a little advice. My first love is antique radio/phonograph, followed by early black and white TV. While doing my usual searches in various places I came across an RCA Model 210ck856 which uses a CTC 9 chassis I believe.

Here are my questions to you. The original owner is looking to get $150 for it. Is it worth it? I don't yet know the condition of the CRT. Is the CRT used in this set rebuildable? The cabinet looks to be in respectable condition. Is this a very desireable set? How's the quality? Were they reliable? How involved (in general) might a restoration be on it?

My only real experience with "roundies" was with our family owned 1965 Zenith. It was a great TV, and I spent many an afternoon playing with the controls, both in the back and front of the set (and there were LOTS of controls to play with !!). I eventually ended up putting a new picture tube in it in the early 1970's. I guess I have that set to thank for helping me to learn the basics like purity, set up, convergence, and the general principals of color TV. It was a really reliable easy to work on set.

So what do you all think about the CTC 9 ?

Thanks for your guidance.

Bob.

I would grab it for $150. The CRT is rebuildable if it is bad. You can also stick a 21FJP22 in it as a replacement. Most of us here would already have that TV in the truck going home!!!! Hope it is still there.


polaraman

Agree. Get it if you have any inclination at all. That set is 50 or so years old, and is quite rare.

Seems like the story of my life...."a day late and a dollar short". I called the seller of the CTC9 as soon as I read your replies to my posting and the set had already been sold.

Ah well...that leaves more room for some other goodies I suppose.

Thanks for the info and advice.

Bob.

Damn! You have to grab them when you are there. If you hesitate you'll miss out. Color roundies of any generation are ALWAYS good finds.



polaraman

Hi Guys;

All may not be lost. I just had a call from the seller of the CTC9 and his previous deal to sell the set fell through. He then offered it to me. While trying to contain my enthusiasm, I calmly agreed to buy it. I go tomorrow to pick up the set. I'll let you know how I make out.

He gave me some additional information about it. It has been owned by the same person since new, never been moved out of the room it's in now, and was used pretty regularly until about 15 years ago, at which time they threw a blanket over it and left it alone until now. Almost sounds too good to be true. But we'll see about that tomorrow.

I'll report back.

Bob.

Aww, man ! Does sound almost "Too good to be true"...Maybe bring 'er up slowly on a variac....I'll be interested to hear about the cosmetics...My luck, I'd have a dream deal like this, slip 'n' bust th' damthing gettin' it in The Valdez...<Sigh> SO BE CAREFULL !!!

Yes Sir !
I promise to be VERY CAREFUL. I'll report back tomorrow.

Bob.

Hi Guys;

Well, here it is... fresh off the truck...well almost anyway. I left it on the truck for it's "Beauty Shots". Figured I wanted you all to see it while it's still virgin material.

Looking inside it seems mostly original, with the exception of an alligator clip across the glass fuse. That could be a little worriesome. And the other thing I see is LOTS of dust, about 50 years worth I'd say. The CRT appears to be the original. I haven't had a chance to test it yet, but I'm guessing because of the age, the emissions will be pretty low and a rebuild will probably be in order.

I'm a little disappointed at the condition of the top of the cabinet. It's one of those photo finishes and it looks like it's starting to flake off. I'm not sure what if anything can be done to repair or replace that? Maybe some advice from some of you would be in order on that one. The sides and front are respectable looking.

I brought the set up on my variac and although I did see signs of life in that the tube filaments lit, that was about it. No high voltage and no sound. I expected as much.

Can anyone steer me in the right direction to get service info. on this beautiful creature?

Thanks again for your guidance and advice. Without that little extra "PUSH" I most likely would not have moved to get this set. It's definitely a "keeper".

Bob.

Bob:

Very nice set. Those CTC-9s produced an excellent picture. Don't worry about the CRT yet. Last week I got a 21 in round color CRT from a friend that was original to a 1961 set. It didn't even move the needle on my tester (which I think works). Anyway, yesterday I put it into my CTC-10 RCA remote set (thanks Steve D. for the help) and after playing for a little while it produced a nice bright picture and is good on all guns.

I can send you the service info and schematics for that set if you'd like. Just PM me with your address.

Steve

Bob,

Now you need a Doiley,TV lamp, A cool set of rabbit ears and a vintage UHF converter. That will be plenty to cover up the top of the set. Your cool factor will exponentially go up with all that stuff on top of the set. You'll really be in business!!!: Right SandyG? banana: :banana: :banana:


polaraman

Yes, polaraman I quite agree. I think I already have a very large doily, and it seems to me I've seen one of those panthers lying around here somewhere. I'll have to keep my eye open for some other "interesting" things to put on top. Thanks for the ideas...

Bob

Stewart Schooley has done lots of experimentation over the last few years on reproducing photo finishes.

http://pages.cthome.net/ptf/photofin/photoFinish.html

Long story short, it's possible, but not easy, to reproduce it.

It depends on how much you care about the cabinet, and what's underneath the photo finish. In certain old radios, the wood under the decal is actually a nice walnut veneer, which you can strip and refinish with normal methods (although the grain pattern won't match the original photofinish). In other sets, the underlying wood is cheap stuff that won't look very nice no matter what you do.

If the old photofinish just has a few nicks and little boo-boos, your best bet is probably to touch it up with brown paint and little artist brushes, shoot it with a couple of coats of clear lacquer, and declare victory.

If it is too scarred to touch up, then you need to decide whether to redo only the top, or the whole cabinet. If you are able to strip only the top without damaging the rest of the cabinet, that should tell you which way to go with the whole project.

Or, if that's all too much hassle, you can just put a nice cloth on the top and pretend it's already perfect :-)

Good luck.

Phil Nelson
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Hi Phil;

Thanks for the information.

I took a look at the Stewart Schooley site and it looks like the photo finish that I would need to have done is not very practical. It's a very large area, as opposed to a small antique radio cabinet. The top of my set has some pretty severe "lifting" of the finish and I'll have to come up with something to dress is up. I'm not sure just what yet, but I've got time. I think the first order of business is to get the TV working.

Thanks again for the information.

Bob.

Glad to see you got it! I was beginning to wonder if there was a pox on RCA around here (see my tirade elsewhere in this section). I have a CTC-10 remote in a metal cabinet, no less, a CTC-11 like the one used in a 1983 MTV ad, and hope to have an Aldrich someday. They are new enough you don't get that "is it gonna blow?" feeling when you turn it on.

If you know exactly when to turn it on it's less likely to blow, and even then you can always change the channel.

:lmao: :lmao: :lmao:

Speaking of sets that are "going to blow", I'm wondering what the consensus is regarding cap replacement?

All of my restoration work so far has been on sets that are older than this CTC9 chassis and used paper caps. There was no question that all of the electrolytics and paper caps had to be changed. The CTC9 does have a number of electrolytics that will be changed, but it has no paper caps( a couple of black beauties though). Most of the caps it contains look like the predecessor of the "orange drop" type of caps and are a sort of dark chocolate brown in color.

My first inclination is to replace them all and be done with it. I don't like the idea of going through the entire set, doing all of the restoration work on it only to find that there are other problems relating to leaking or open caps and have to yank it out of the cabinet umpteen times trying to troubleshoot it. But there are two potential problems with that scenario....first there's always the possibility that a cap could be installed wrong or something around it could be disturbed or damaged in the process. And number two is that some of these caps have very strange values. The replacements might not be close enough to the original value.

What's the general consensus about cap replacement?

Thanks!
Bob.

At the very least you should replace the lytics' and the black beauties. The future life of the set depends on it. The brown drop lookin things are i believe mylar film caps and usually never die. I would leave those in unless you find problems associated with their circuits.

That's a great set you brought home. I'm jealous.

Hey Jordan;

Thanks for the advice. Leaving the original "Brown Drop" caps alone was what I had in mind, but I guess I wanted to hear someone else say it. I was a little apprehensive about leaving them in place when I did the restoration, just force of habit I guess, since most of my experiences have been with much older equipment and usually contain lots of paper caps and dripping wax.

I've already ordered the electrolytics and some replacement tubes. I'm waiting for the schematic to arrive to check the value of the two "Black Beauties" in the chassis. Surprisingly all of the tubes in this set were still the originals, except for the horzontal output. And even at that I've only found a handful (about 6) that need replacement.

Seems like the biggest mess so far has been trying to clean some of the "ooze" off of the wires running from the chassis up to the CRT socket. I guess there is some sort of a chemical break down going on there and the result is this sticky, gunky, slime all over the wires which in turn picks up and holds all of the dirt and grime from the air around them. I'm making progress cleaning it up, but it's not a very pretty picture right now.

Bob.

You will find that stuff on many old tv sets. I think it is some kind of coating on the insulation of the wires that gets a little sticky and attracts the dust. I find cleaning the outside of the wires with mineral spirits will disolve that gunk away and leave a clean undamaged wire. I hate that sticky stuff, it makes a restoration look incomplete if it's not removed. I just finished a Philco radio that had that on the audio output transformer wires.

Since that chassis uses a solid-state rectifier pair (selenium, I think), it would be wise to make sure all the new electrolytics are "formed", before you install them. Simply put, their electro-chemical properties are optimized for proper function. Even "new" caps can blow chunks if slammed with full working voltage. It's not hard to do, and you need more patience than anything else, but it's worth the trouble.There is an excellent thread somewhere in here on the process.

---

Thanks for the tip. I've already looked up the thread discussing that subject and will be sure to go through the proper procedure before I "fire it up".

And as for the defective "orange drop" caps, I fully understand what you're saying. At this point I'm going to do the basics and see what I have once I get it up and running. If need be I can always go back and start replacing them.

Thanks.
Bob.

Hi;

Just finished the preliminary restoration work on the CTC 9 chassis. Replaced all of the electrolytics, black beauties, off value resistors, weak tubes, and gave it a general sprucing up. I spent a good part of yesterday "forming" the electrolytics and decided that today it's time to see if it works.

I put the chassis back into the set, reconnected all the proper wires and turned it on. Within about a minute I had a pretty dim picture and found that the horizontal control was set way off in left field. After I adjusted the control back to it's proper position, degaussed the front of the picture tube, played with the purity a little bit and then hooked up the dot bar generator, the attached picture is what I had. All things considered I think it looks pretty respectable for it's first "check up".

Some of the controls are a bit "dirty", and the convergance definitely needs to be gone over, but I didn't see any real serious problems. The only malfunction I found is the fact that the red level is too high. Even with the red background control at minimum there is still some red evident in the picture. The green and blue when turned fully counter clockwise will not be visible at all, the red will still be visible. It's not real bright, but has enough luminance to be visible. In order to get something even close to a black and white picture the red must be at minimum and the other two controls close to max. I checked the picture tube on my tester and all three guns seem pretty close in output. Not sure yet what the problem is, so I've got to do a little detective work on that one.


Just thought you'd all like to see what progress has been made.

Thanks!
Bob.

If you can get a good black & white picture by adjusting the blue and green screen and background controls I wouldn't worry to much. The procedure in the field service guide calls for the red control to be 1/4 turn up from ninimum anyway. Then you use the red and green screen controls to get a good b&w picture through the brightness range without blooming. Remember red was one of the least efficient phosphors used. The red control is not to be changed from it's initial setting. On later sets they added a Kine bias control that you would trun down until the dominant color just dissipeared. If red is indeed to high to get a good gray scale, you could check the resistors in the crt bias ciriuits. It is possible you may have a resistor that has drifted off value.

Bill R

Hi Bill;

Thanks for the information. I'm going to do a some additional work on the chassis and will check the CRT bias resistors. I'm not sure about getting a good black and white picture yet. I'll have a better idea once I iron out a few other "bugs" in the system.

I'll keep you posted.

Bob.

Brought to You in Living Color
 

Hi;
It's been a while since my last post, but I've been busy working the bugs out of this RCA CTC9 chassis. The last kink was ironed out today and I finished the convergence for what turned out to be a triumphant finale to a relatively troublefree rebuild.

I'm quite amazed at the quality of the color picture on this set. I've attached several photos so you can see for yourself the beautiful color renderings this almost 50 year old Color TV is capable of producing.

My main concern when I first picked up the set was the condition of the picture tube, but that turned out to be an unfounded fear, obviously the tube has plenty of life left in it.

What do you all think?

Bob

Awesome pictures.

I'm not sure if its just the camera or the set, but it seems a little saturated and the flesh tones are a bit on the purple side.

I am glad you were able to bring the set back to life. I dream of owning a CTC 5, 7 ,or 9 someday.

That looks good, I'm hoping my 10 look will like that when I get to it.

Tv
 

That looks really nice . What a nice picture for a old set . Great job ,

Great job!

That's why my motto is: "when finding a vintage TV, never hesitate; if you have the money at that moment, just grab it, don't think."

Probably I am not a good role model for anyone, since I am crazy, but I am so fanatical about those old beauties that, if the moment requires, I am capable of even not eating for a few days just to have the necessary amount of money to buy a vintage set. But that is just me.

By the way: congratulations! Beautiful set, and gourgeous picture!:thmbsp:

'Tis a fine thing you have done! Savor the fruits of your labors! Seeing that great picture quality makes me think that maybe somehow, Sarnoff, Disney and the Cartwrights had the world by the tail after all, back when that '9 was new!