CTC-11 Found in WI
 

Brought this one home yesterday. I have a thread started over on ARF, but thought some of you guys would be interested in seeing it here. CRT tests strong on all three guns with no shorts. I'm not very enthused about dealing with the cataract.

Kevin

my RCA data shows the 11 can use either the CYP or FJP tubes, looks like yours has an FJP. That thing is so delaminated, I bet it would just pop right off if you applied some gentle pressure. The ones I've done surgery to only had a little mold on the outermost parts, so they were still a pain to remove. I just break them off piece by piece with a screwdriver, it's back breaking but not nearly as dangerous as the heat method.

Yep, it's a FJP. I just noticed it's a model CTC-11C. If you break them off piece by piece, what do you use for a replacement glass? Sounds dangerous. This set came here from CA late 60's or early 70's, according to the previous owner.

Kevin

All my sets have flat glass in front of the CRT anyway, so the lens doesn't get replaced with anything. You might be able to get a lens off someone on here, they get removed often, though rarely in one piece. Perhaps your set could have a flat glass installed?

nice set. you could do the catarac removal, look for the catarac removal procedure. if i did it any one could do it.

Don't break the glass. Like miniman said, that glass is close to coming off. There are mixed feelings about cataract removal on here and a few years back a member had a CRT implode on him from a heat gun. I have personally done a few with a 1600w heat gun with impressive results on and FJP.

Low heat and circular patterns. Never stop on one spot. Ever! From the outside in

I'm slowly restoring that same set. Mine has a slightly different CRT mask and with a BFP and separate safety glass. Should be a looker when its done. The 9 through 11 make damn fine pictures when tweaked out.

I'm glad that implosion concerns and cataract removal have been some hot topics lately! It would be nice if there was some outside vendor that could at least make the safety glass fronts for the 21FJ's. It's just an oversized dial glass! (okay maybe thicker) Seems like there should be some stock somewhere....there's been so many different shades of 'em from various manufacturers.

I'd sure be interested!

Why not just make them yourself from plastic? It's not hard, just make a plaster cast of the CRT face then use a heat gun to form a sheet of plexiglass right into it.

if you do not fix the cataracts, the set will still look junk. if you are in this hobby, cleaning the tube is part of it.

Well sure... On your set the face had practically removed itself, that was some cateract! I'd bet that one was easy to take off....but the results looks good too!:thmbsp:

You ended up following the procedure using the heat gun method and warming up the whole tube, right? As Doug has shown us in his videos?

That’s great to know there is another set like this in the works. Do you have any pictures of the set, or your restore to date?

I have no intention of breaking the safety glass off this CRT… there must be a better way. Time is no concern, so if a slow soak in some solution would work, that would seem a much better option. Last thing I want is glass shards all over the place. My wife would about disown me at that point. Not to mention I’d have a hard time living with myself if I ended up hurting someone in the process.

I’m a total newbie to working on a color set (have only restored two b&w sets to date), so I’ll be proceeding with extreme caution. I do have plenty of tube radio and audio experience under my belt, but this is a whole new adventure.

Thanks for all the comments and suggestions, I’m enjoying just having this set in my possession for the time being.

Kevin

Was just thinking :scratch2:...If a guy was to leave this set alone for another 50 years, the safety glass will likely finish removing itself from the CRT face. :D Anyone ever found one completely seperated? I suppose it would have been in a pretty nasty enviornment.

Kevin

There were pictures of it on here at some point, but I think they were lost when the server went down when it was on the sub forum of audiokarma.

Right now the chassis is out of the set. When I get around to it, I will carefully remove trim and grill and refinish the cabinet.

that one will come off very easy.cut the tape and shoot some wd 40 into in starting at the top.it will work its way down.a little pressure from some wood shims will pop this one off.looks very loose.i did my last cataract a couple summers ago and it turned out very well.after dougs fiasco,i have personally vowed never to do this again.not the heat method.could soak it in a wading pool.good luck and that is a terrific find!

I did the heat method. there is a you tube on how to remove the s...

Hey bluenorm,

Just curious, where in Wisconsin did you find this beauty?

HAHA I didn't pay close enough to the OP, Should've directed the question to Kevin not bluenorm.

It was in a small out building next to a log home. :para:

Kevin

Was going to keep my hands out of this thing for a while, but it's been calling out to me. :sadwave:

So I did I little housekeeping, so I could see better what obviously might need fixing.

The HOT was totally cooked and open to air, and someone had replaced the 6AU4 damper with a 6DE4, is this an acceptable replacement? Also, the plastic focus shaft was cooked, and that fell off when I dusted.

Then I noticed the HOT's plate cap wire was cracked and has what looks like a drip of melted insulation on it. :scratch2: Have not pulled the HV cover yet. I have a new 6DQ5, but something tells me this ain't going to be one of those plug and play sets some of you guys find. :no:

In the process of getting the SAMS. Would appreciate any advise from you RCA experts. I have not applied any power yet.

Kevin

That set sure cleans up nice! That cracked HOT and improper damper would be a red flag for me. Once you get to where you are doing your first power-up, the HOT cathode current would be one of the first things to check. If it runs high (more than 230mA) it can cook the flyback or red-plate the HOT until it melts the glass and looses vacuum (maybe what has already happened). a reading between 180 and 210mA is the safe zone for that. Take your time and enjoy this beauty, I'm finally getting my CTC-9 up and running after owning it for two years so there's noting wrong with taking your sweet time. It's better than rushing and breaking something LOL! Good luck and keep us updated.

Thanks! I enjoy dusting and mopping old stuff. :D

Think I'll test the rest of the tubes and proceed from there.

Nice to see there are several people here from WI.

Kevin

Among the preliminaries, clean all the pots and don't overlook the service switch, which tripped me up once. While you have each tube out to test it, clean its pins with very fine sandpaper or whatever you prefer.

Re the 6AU4/6DE4 replacement, the Nostalgia Air database ( http://www.nostalgiaair.org/Tubes/ ) lists 6DE4 as a sub for 6AU4 (with an asterisk) but not vice versa. You can also look up data sheets at a site like http://tubedata.tigahost.com/tubedata/ for more details.

I'll let smarter people advise you when & how to apply power (perhaps with HOT pulled, for instance?). My advice is usually to replace all electrolytics before powering up, but I've been known to bring up an as-is set on a metered variac to see what happens, so do what I say, not what I do :)

The HV cage has a circular cover that you can slide open to peek at the flyback. One of my CTC-11 flybacks has dripped a fair amount of wax but the set has played trouble-free for many hours in that state, so dripped wax alone isn't a death sign. If it doesn't look completely burned up, I'd assume it's OK for the moment.

Phil Nelson

Thanks, Phil!

Kevin

What part of Wisconsin are you from? Kenosha here.

About 50 miles North of Eau Claire up US 53, little town of Barron.

Took a peek under the high voltage cover, not too ugly under there.

Kevin

Flayback looks nice, that's a good sign. The one in my '9 was all dirty, but it all cleaned off with soapy water and looks almost new now. I agree with Mark about the current readings, I did a lot of work to the '9 and finally got it to stabilize at 179ma. My 4 and 7 both run at 200ma, but I always try to shoot for the lowest possible number.

Kevin, do you go down to Eau Claire very often? If so there's a great little electronics parts supply house there that you should check out called Bushland Electronics. It's always fun to go in there whenever I'm in town. They do have a lot of vintage TV parts. Anyway, they are on South Hastings Way behind WEAU-TV so pretty easy to find.

Matt,

Been in there a few times. I went to Chippewa Valley Technical College back in 83-84 for electronic servicing. Another neat place is Indianhead Electronics downtown on Barstow, thats the place in the old church. I called them today and they still had a new SAM’s folder for my TV.:D Unfortunately both of these places threw out a lot of their old TV parts years ago. Sam at Indianhead told me they had a big dumpster filled with NOS CRT's.:tears:

Kevin

Bushland Radio
 

Funny you should mention Bushland Radio. I made 2 trips up there about 6 weeks ago to clean out his inventory of NOS picture tubes. It took two trips with my trailer and full size Ford Econoline van to get them all back to Milwaukee.
56 NOS crt's in all. Mostly newer types.

He must be one of the last old time independent distributors in the state. Unfortunately he dosent own a computer and has a disdane for the internet or it would be convenient to query him to see if he had an old part or two. He still has lots of NOS inventory. Pretty good supply of old flybacks and yokes too. GE vacuum tubes. He is a Channel Master Distributor. I would have made him an offer to buy all his old Merit, Thordarson and Haldorsen, but he was not in the mood to do any liquidating of inventory. He would rather sell a part here and there at todays market prices.

Very Nice fellow. His name is Roland Bushland and you can get the phone number by Googleing Bushland Radio in EauClaire Wi. IF you need a part give him a call, perhaps he might just have what you need.

Good Luck

Hi Bob,

Do you remember this place?

Check out the list price of a new 21AXP22A in 1960 :eek:

Kevin

Hi Kevin,

I'd figured I get Madison represented in this Wisconsin-centric part of the thread. You are lucky to have Bushland radio near by. The last of the old-time TV repair shops around here closed years ago.

That's good news about the fly. That set looks fairly low mileage to me. I wonder if what looks like melted insulation on the cracked HOT lead was actually a repair attempt:scratch2:

With the temps going way below zero tonight, it a good time to be around glowing vacuum tubes!

-Clark (in Madison)

No Kevin I am not familiar with S&M. I have always lived in the Milwaukee area, and the RCA distributor for this area was Taylor Electric. I believe every RCA authorized parts distributor was assigned a specific geographic territory to cover. I think Tayor Electric had the southeast portion of Wisconsin which covered north up to Green bay and possibly as far north as Marinette. It was the biggest territory in the state population wise and very lucrative for the company. They also were the distributors for RCA Whirlpool appliances. The building they occupied was huge. There were about a dozen semi truck docks on the shipping and receiving side of the building. The photo below is from Google Earth and shows how big the building was and they occupied all of it.

A lot of people were employeed by Taylor Electric. When RCA started going down the tubes, Taylor Electric started shrinking it's opperation. Eventually all those Taylor employees lost their jobs due to the demise of RCA. And then multiply this by all the other RCA distributors across the entire country and you begin to realize how bad a thing it was that RCA went under. This is a prime example of why we, as Americans, need to get back into manufacturing. It's not just the people who work in the factories who have jobs, it's all the ancilary jobs that are attached to those manufacturing companies. Service, sales, and parts distribution companies all who depend on the manufacturing of American products.

Hopefully the future will see the pendulum swing back in our direction. With jobs as difficult to get as they are today, there is bound to be pressure for our cost of labor to become more competitive in the world ecconomy. When that happens, we will once again be able to compete in manufacturing, and our ecconomy will thrive again. But not until manufacturing recovers, will we see a substantial reduction in unemployment. Sorry for the rant, but the demise of RCA was, in my opinion, a failure equal in proportion to if the US auto industry had gone under. We must stop the exportation of our manufacturing base to foreign countries. We have the technology, the skil and the know-how, all we need is a competitive labor pool.

$160 for a 21AXP22 in 1960 was big money. Even a 15GP22 was $160. In todays dollars it would be $1175. So I guess I better revalue my color sets with good 21AXP22 crt's in them. Lets see, I think I have 9 of them currently. Woops forgot the 21AXP22 test jig, so that makes and even 10.

Hi Clark,

I guess Eau Claire must be the regional hot spot for old TV guys to hang out. :D I honestly don't understand what keeps a place like that going these days. There must be some local industry or medical demands that I'm not aware of. I seriously doubt they're selling much to the consumer electronics-servicing segment today. Both Bushland and Indianhead down on Barstow are like walking into a time warp. Very cool, but also a little sad to see all the old parts setting around that hardly no one wants any more. I hope more people like Bob can save a bunch of these parts before they end up in the dumpster. Unfortunately most of what’s left of the NOS is likely 70’s and 80’s vintage TV parts.

Kevin

Bob,

Very interesting about RCA and Taylor. No problem with the rant, I'm right there with you, on those thoughts. I sure hope we can bring back some or manufacturing base to this country.

Along with lower labor cost, we also need to start teaching our youths the value of saving up for something nice that’s made with pride right here in this country. Instead of the "I want it now", and "I need it cheap" attitude.

Kevin

I got the SAMS folder for my set. The only CRT listed for this set is a
21FBP22 :scratch2:

Kevin

The FJP tube is perfectly fine in your set. If not mistaken, it is the same tube.. Just has the safety glass.

My CTC-10 set.... I'd list the model if I had one anywhere on the set.... came with a CYP22. Its neck was broken when the set fell into my hands. I had a FBP tube from another set on hand at the time, and used it for my set. I found out a few years ago, that I should make circuit changes in my '10' to get better color from the FBP.

I used the set with the first FBP tube for over 10 years before I bought a rebuilt tube from Video Display in Atlanta. That tube is still trucking along, and still has the original CYP circuitry. I've wondered recently how much better this old girl might look with the mods.

Good luck with your restoration.

Bruce

Midnight Madness
 

I replaced the cracked plate cap wire going to the HOT, then popped a new
6DQ5 in along with replaced the 6DE4 sub with a new 6AU4.

Then I slowly brought the set up on the metered variac with a second current meter in the cathode of the 6DQ5.

It isn’t pretty, but it's trying to do its thing. :yes: Pretty exciting to see that big round CRT light up, got so excited I couldn't hold the camera straight.


:banana:

Gonna have to go have a couple beer's now and see if I can get some sleep :D



Kevin

Lookin' good :beerchug:

The other night I touched up the vertical linearity and height. Then I tried moving those center convergence magnets around as best I could while looking through that big scab on the CRT. I'm about finished messing with it until I get the nerve to pull the CRT and do the surgery. Still not sure if I like that process.

Kevin