Philco Roundie Hybrid
 

I wasn't planning on starting this thread for a while since I really did not think this set would just work, I planned on putting it in the que and starting a thread after I had some thing to talke about.

Well...

I tested the CRT, test good on all guns for emissons and cut off.

Since the guy I bought it from had turned it on to show me it worked (was not hooked up to a source and I could just barely see a red raster, hence the check of the CRT) I figured I would try it with a video source and see.

It has a very dirty tuner, so I had to find the sweet spot it it actually works pretty well. I will have to play with the CRT drives to balance the color (I could not find any tint control, and I guess the guy had been messing with it).

I could turn down each gun and then turn them up one at a time and get a nice red, then green then blue pic. A little messing about and I got a decent pic.

Its a tad short on vert deflection. I figure I should at least pull the chassis and check the bypass caps on the vert amp. There was not a hint of hum bars in the pic or hum in the audio. The pic was nice and clean.

I will get a screen shot later...

Its in a rather compact metal case which should complement my Maggie B&W console nicely (I plan to watch color on this and B&W shows on the maggie).

Nice looking old girl there! I remember working on lots of that style chassis!

I was just happy to see that it dd not have the cataract issue, I dont think this tube used that method (bonded lens to CRT) that I have on anohther set (a CTC-16).

Oh it has wood screw on legs as well. The metal cab in nice and rust free.

looks like I need to read up on the mis adjustments re gray scale and I need ot find the tint control.

I wonder if that is one of those "Last gasp" roundies from the 1968-70 era ? Y'all remember those ads-"Full-size COLOR TV for $298" ? Think they've been posted here..Must have been a way to burn up stocks of round tubes-And TV tubes in general, as SS was catching on...

I worked on several of those models and never saw a good color picture on any of them

Well the tint control does nothing at all with the color. so I guess I will start there.

Uhf tuner works, I was able to pick off some low power analog stations. It is one of the detentless types. I like the way it works, it goes fast at 1st then slows down for fine tuning.

I rememember the ads for those-Big screen color for $299.95>
Great find!!!

we had the same set with a modern style small console.right around 1966-67.they delivered it saturday night.we watched the hollywood palace,mannix,news and the all night theater.the next morning-no high voltage!they came out tuesday and replaced a horizontal output tube.back in business!this set lasted about 6 years and it was replaced with a sylvania d 16 slide control.that philco became my set and i reluctantly sold it to some neighbors down the street.the picture was so good on that set it was amazing.lots of friends would come over to watch it with us.many compliments,especially when wrestling and roller derby was on.those were fine,fine,days.

I remember roller derby, those were the days!

Before I do anything else, I am going to make a degausser coil and give it a good degaussing. then I will check.

I am going to buy some 22 gauge wire, and wrap around a form about 18" until its about 1/2 thick. Thats about what I recall them looking like.

After that I will go ahead an pull the chassis and look over for caps and out of spec resistance. There was no bypass cap on the vert osc tube so I will check it with a new tube and if need be adj the pot.

There are a few board mounted electros so I will check them as well as the cans, although I suspect the cans are ok.

I vac out all the dust so I could see things better, no obvious problems.

I am assuming the tuner is a waffer switch type. it will need some cleaning.

its got a few 6GH8's which is fine since I picked up a bunch of NOS ones at a local hamfest (a bunch of rat shack life time tubes).

That model looks to be from the pre Philco-Ford days...see if you notice any date codes. That yellow sticker on the CRT kind of dates it.

As for the CRT remember..21FBP is a non bonded safety glass tube while the 21FJP is.

You can remove the tube and clean between the two surfaces quite easily, there may be a sort of rubber gasket around the two surfaces but it's not glued or "sealed" in any way.

back on it again, need a tuner cover, it was not on the set when I got it.

The color and convergence are spot on but one gun kept coming and going. I had a intermittent short on one of the 6GH8's, so I pulled the chassis, cleaned it up real well, replaced some coupling caps (brown drops that tested a little funky on my eye tube cap tester). the electros tested fine but for the cathode bypass on the audio out (open). I replace one just because i had taken it out fo circuit for test and the eye opened a little slower than a new one.

the pic was pretty snowy, I am hoping the cleaning if the contacts on the tuner will take care of that. I can't imagine what happened to the cover. Is it possible that with out the cover it could cause the snow?

anyway if anyone has a spare cover they could send my way just let me know how much. I would like to get it on now that I have the tuner cleaned up.

the best part...
 

of the tuner pic ..."Made in USA". How many sets can boast that today!

:yes:

I was thinking that too when I snapped that pic

replaced all the weak 6GH8's (4 total)with some nice strong ones (hard to find) also some 6Lm8's (3)as well, weak.

found one way out of spec resistor on the chroma board a 330k testing like 700k+, and a 4.7 ohm 2watt that was at 9+, both where 5% tol so they will get replaced next.

Picked up some sheet copper, will try to build a tuner cover.

been cleaning the smokers tar off the pcb during down time.

Most of the time if the tuner cover is missing, some "TV Repairman" had spray cleaned the tuner and left it off! Sometimes they can be a little tricky to snap back on but jeez....

If you were lucky the cover was left inside the cabinet.

Some of the dirtiest/nastiest tuners I'd see were with missing covers..Duh!!

That tuner looks like it may be a "Sarkes Tarzan". They manufactured tuners for various manufacturers including GE, etc., and would also have their own branded tubes installed with them originally.

They made that style of turret tuner.

Oops, forgot to mention that an easy fix to that tuner is to gently pry up on the channel strip contacts. If you notice they are shaped like a sideways question mark with one side open..(for prying up on!). You'll see some are laid down more than others so the trick is to get them about the same height as the highest. That way you're not prying up too much! Just use a real small blade screwdriver inserted as square as possible to avoid contact with the coil windings.

You can also easily remove the whole turret assembly if you'd like, but shouldn't need to.

What I did to clean those and not make a spray mess was to saturate a Q-Tip and clean/wipe those contacts. You can then take another Q-Tip or your finger and apply a little Vasolene to those contacts. As long as your tubes are ok I bet your tuner problems will "clear up!" (Sorry, couldn't resist!!)

I cleaned them with a big eraser, and then did as you described, Q tip with cleaner/lube.

Its a hybrid that has transistors in the tuner, so I hope they are not noisy, would be a mega PITA to replace them.

If the problem persist I will break out the B&K 1076 and feed an IF signal in to see if the snow is a tuner or IF issue. I hope the clean up will resolve.

I cant get at the fingers on the tuner with out major surgery, so I kept cleaning the turret nobs and rotating. The fingers are next the the UHF tuner and it is hard to get a good shot at them. I tried prying up the tuner stips but they did not want to budge and I did not want to push it. If I can get 2 or 3 in a row out I would have an easytime getting the qtip at the fingers.

Pulling the turret also looks like a pita due to all the hardware hanging on the front. Normally I can just jiggle the snow out, if no change by jiggling then I figure its not the contacts.

got the tuner figured out, push for the back side and then they will lift out.
:yes:

should be back in for a trial run, just have to solder in some resistors.

Yea, that's right...I forgot how easy the channel strips are to remove by themselves..pretty easy to figure out!

If you need some 6GH8s in the future, I think I have some NOS ones.
I may also have 5GH8s and 9GH8s for series string sets.

whew....

ok put it all back together and crap

hold issues
color sync issues

crud...

but the snow is gone :banana:

so I start tube swapping, a combo of the old and new tubes gets it going again, I thought I was playing it smart by replacing the old 6GH8's with new ones that tested stronger, Now I am begining to wonder if the new ones were gassy. I will try them on my cheap emission tester for grid emissons. I tested them on the hickok 533 but not sure about how to do a gas test.

anyhoo pic is looking good and I am sweating like a stuck pig (tv is out in the garage, to heavy to move by myself). So will pick it up again tomorrow after work and see if I can get some screen shots. I just hope that color and sync issues dont come back. I only replaced the tubes since I was getting the one of the guns intermittently, and just shot gunned the chroma board. There was no excuse for messing with the sync tube, my bad, it was fine.

---

Swapping is the best if you have the spare tubes. Recently, I was working on a couple AA5 radios from the 1940s. Once I powered them up, they both had horrible hum even though I had changed the filters. I had checked the 50L6 output tubes on a late 1940s Hickock GM tester that uses a neon light for shorts test. They both looked ok. However, if I used a different 50L6, the hum went away. I then tested the humming 50L6s on my more modern Eico tester that applies 70 volts between the heater and cathode. They humming 50L6s leaked horribly. Goes to show that the old Hickock is not the best in at testing all possible issues.

what bugged me was I had some NOS radio shack lifetime tubes (the 6gh8's) that seemed to cause the problem.

Now that I got a pic I will do a one at a time swap and see if its a particular tube.

another issue vert centering off, there is a pot that is labled vert centering. I figure is just bias the yoke, but have not traced the wiring yet. I will need to get a schematic of this chassis. if its a bias then I need to see what the B+ that feeds it should be.

Just for fun I will put the set on a variac, I have one that can handle the load. See what happens when changing the line voltage.

I has the orig can caps, maybe a weak one in the B+ doubler (again I am assuming it uses a doubler, there are a couple diodes in the PS, guess it could be a centertaped PT and a full wave rectifier). This set does not use a HV regulater either, almost a muntz color tv (I wonder if muntz ever did color?).

About that vertical centering...many times I would see it way off, as well as height and linearity being misadjusted. I believe most of us understand the relationship between the vertical pots and how the top or bottom of the raster moves with it, how they interact with each other.

What I'm getting at is take the normal-service switch and put in the service position and establish your center line. Can be tricky if the convergence is off though. Now you can adjust the other pots for a good, (more) centered and linear picture.

B+, B+ Boost, and High Voltage can affect just about everything so good to check voltages...as you mentioned.

These Old Philco's are fun!!

yes,muntz did color.we saw a scant few back in the day.muntz also was a pioneer in the big screen early projection sets.philco s are well known to have electrolytic problems.those cans leak like like a sieve.as in an earlier post,our families first color set was a philco ford roundie.pretty good set with a nice picture.much better than the higher level rca s in the store.good luck with yours

did the service switch, did not note the center position, will do later tonight.

in service even with brightness all the way down and the red drive all the way down I had a red line, could not make it just go away. The green and blue I was able to make just go away but since I was stuck with the red, I just adj the green and blue to the same approx brightness.

after the above adj the overall brightness in the norm position seems about right and grey scale seems good.

it did not converge either on the center line in the service postion. The pic looks fine in normal viewing. I will put a dot and cross hatch on it later to see how that shows up.

it was the lineraity that was off, touched it up and vert height and center ok now but...

Vert is a little jumpy, not rolling but just shaky, seems to collape a bit and then back, fairly rapidly too.

I am going to set it up and see if just running it for a while will fix. I did try a different 6LU8. No change.

if that does not do it then I will look into some of the vert osc caps, there is a .0082 1000v that I is a brown dip, 5%. that will be a special order, my tester can't go that high to check for leakage.

another thing I will try is to just clean the vert ht and vert lin adj pots.

that helped, a little spritz of tuner cleaner and wipe them thru a few times.

Its a little on the fuzzy side, not sure how sharp it should be. I have an extra focus rectifier I may try with it.

Need to hook the speaker up, I had to cut the wires as the old plugs were hopelessly stuck to the tranny. I wil just put on some new plugs to make it removable. then I will button it up for an extended play, after that I will try the dot/cross hatch for a convertgence touch up. Purity looks fine.

A hint: A soldering gun with the big transformer works well as a degausser, if you have one.

I cannot recall having these high voltage low mfd caps go bad, but guess it's possible. I have however seen the usual 50v 100mfd lytic go bad on RCA's. Not sure if this has similat charactristics or not.

this is the one that I started the blue flashes thread, figured I would bring it back to the orig.

Got it in the office, rainbow starts up, swap a few 6GH8's in to th osc tube spot and that fixed that up.

only thing left is the darn control panel door. I think I got a fix. I need to make the little pegs that hold it in wider, then file a flat on it is a way that makes it want to stay up.

Pics coming later.

dupe post

hmm says to use a high voltage prob and a vtvm. I only have a reg hv prob with the built in meter. this is to set the HV to 25.5kv

I wonder if the VTVM would load it less and therefore get a different reading than my HV prob with the built in meter.

I assume this is pretty critical since it does not have any HV regulation built into the circuit.

My guess is not SO critical, and the HV meter is probably more accurate, although the number in the manual may be fudged to correspond to the VTVM reading in case that might be a little off. But remember, the serviceman would not have a VTVM traceable to national standards and wouldn't be expected to, so I say either way should be fine.
25.5 kV sounds like a case of too many decimal places to me.

I will get some screen shots later. looking good. I was watching rockford on it last nite, fun stuff. I need to touch up the purity a bit (dragnet red was a bit yellow down on the bottom) if a manual degausse does not do it.