French Provincial CTC12
 

Currently, I am in Port Angeles, WA... awaiting my turn to go home from the boat. Was supposed to go home a couple of days ago, but they couldn't pull it off. That's okay... it just makes my vacation time longer. This vacation should end up being about 3 months long! That will give me plenty of time to play with a new toy... a CTC12.

A lady in Dallas contacted me last week with photos of this roundie... asking if I was interested. Without asking a price, I told her I'd take it. It was too clean looking to pass up. Also, it looks like the CRT has likely been replaced because the face does not have the typical green tint from the FJP safety glass. Not exactly my favorite cabinet style. If this was 1963, I would have never bought this set. I don't find it attractive. However, being different is what makes it interesting. When I finally asked how much money should I bring, she said a hundred bucks. Cool!

Since I'm stuck on the boat till at least the 20th, I called my brother in Dallas and asked him to go get it. I spoke to him yesterday and he said he had it sitting in his garage... along with the paperwork and remote. Paperwork and remote??? He said it was all in a plastic bag... along with a plastic banner.

I asked him to snap some photos and send... and unfortunately, it turned out to be a remote for a newer set... a colortrack 2000. Oh well... no biggie. However, it still has nice paperwork to go with it... the manual, a schematic, the Mark 8 tag, and a plastic banner that I assume was on the face of the tube when it came out of the store all those years ago.

The set looks so clean... I'm willin to bet the damn thing works. I'll have to wait till I get home... I don't want my brother trying to plug it in.

WOW, thats very cool! You hardly ever get any paperwork with old equipment. None of my sets have anything except for my '59 CTC-9 but just the hang-tag. looks to be well cared for. RCA's always seem to be the easiest to get going. Maybe I just understand them better. :)

Great catch Charlie! Bergerac, a wine, noted novelist and small town in France.
I bet this set was tuned to one of the Dallas channels (4,5 or 8) when JFK was shot.

I have the same model with UHF and an original (weak) CRT.
Looks like all the sales literature is there also. If only I could find THAT with such a set.
Must be a great example of how the bourgeois liked their furniture.

Looking forward to the next updates.

WOW, great score! Personally I'm not a fan of most french provincial cabinets either but I think this one is really pretty. Those manuals and tags look like new!

Cool find! Not my favorite cabinet either, but who can complain when it has a big roundie in it. :D

Wow, your brother has a carpeted garage!? Classy, like the TV!

:D

Nice set!
I remember going on a service call way back in 79-80 to a little old lady's house, I remembered it because she had a white French Provincial set similar if not exactly like that.
It impressed me at the time because it was so different from all the usual Walnut/Maple sets popular back then.

Na... no carpet in the garage. The photo of the TV is the one the lady first sent me. The photos of the paperwork were taken by my brother.

I will like looking through the owner's manual. I haven't had one for a roundie yet... looks like some cool reading.

This will be my first CTC12 to play with. Is the 12 pretty close to a 15? Any major differences?

Now I need a roundie in a Chinese cabinet. That would be really cool. We've seen a few come thru here before. Seems I remember Doug has one by Zenith.

I would love ANY "chinese" themed set....especially if it was a cabinet.

IIRC the only real diff is the 12 uses a tube focus rectifier and I think octal based sweep tubes. Maybe a different video out as well. the one thing for sure is it does NOT have the blanker tube bias connection to the horz out tube grid. the 15 and forward had this as a protection from a shunt tube failure. If the HV rose too high the rectified pulse from the fly at the grid of the blanker is tapped with a voltage divider and fed back the the horz out grid. as the HV skyrockets with no shut tube load, the increase neg a the blanker bias off the horz out tube.

Something to look for if you ever have low HV and higher than normal neg readings at the horz out control grid. this presents as poor HV regulation and maybe poor width. there is a voltage divider resistor that connects to the ground thru a thin PC trace along the edge of the chroma board that is right next to the horz out tube. If that trace crack and opens (high heat from the HOT and flexing of the board to replace the 6GU7 blanker tube) the the voltage divider is upset and you will get a large fixed neg bias at the horz out tube grid that is NOT a result of the horz osc drive.

Ah-ha... thanks Dave. At least I don't have to worry about expensive 6JE6 tubes.

Very nice find. I'm amazed that the set still has all of the paperwork. I never get any paperwork with mine :sigh:

I think the cabinet is cool. Totally early '60s. Probably wouldn't really go with my Sante Fe style house, but I'd find room for it anyway.

That is a beautiful set, in great condition. It looks like the RCA cousin to my Maggie combo.

12's will eat flybacks as all the later typical flat mounted chassis's like to do. Hopefully yours is in good shape.

lowering the input voltage, adj the eff coil and keeping the HV in spec will go a long way to keeping the flyback happy. Of course making sure the HOT grid cap is not leaky and the HOT itself is not gassy helps too. I think if some more proactive service is taken the Flys will last a lot longer.

I'm guessing the flyback in a 12 is different from a 15? I think I still have a 15 replacement.

As long as it says "Made in USA" on it! :)

I believe RCA used electrically equivalent flys from the CTC-7 to the CTC-17, but don't quote me on that. You should be able to adapt a CTC-15 fly to work in your CTC-12.

On land again
 

Got home from the ship last week... and now I'm at my brother's house in Dallas... come to pick up this set he got for me. Got some good news and some bad.

The good news is the set is extremely clean... so clean that it's like brand-spanking new! Not a scratch on it. Even the rear cover is like new. This must be the cleanest set I've ever come across.

Now for the bad... although it's not too bad... just quite yet. I brought my CRT tester and variac with me thinking I'd get a chance to check it out a bit. When I removed the rear cover, I found the CRT plug laying on the chassis. The pin cap on the crt is busted... broken in about 5 pieces. So, it looks like I will have to desolder all those pins and install another cap. I don't remember if I have a spare... I'll have to dig around once I get home and see.

I did, however, try to plug the tester in. I got nowhere with it. It was all to flimsy to work with. Decided to quit because I didn't want to chance stressing the leads and then one break off at the glass. I almost brought my "traveling kit" with me... which would have included many alligator clip leads... but decided to leave it at home. Now I wish I would have brought it. I could have used the leads to connect to the tester. Oh well... I will be home Saturday and will look into testing the CRT at that time.

As I suspected, the CRT had been replaced. It had a RCA Hi-light with a date cold of 7135. That's cool... but I still have concerns. Since the CRT was unplugged, it leads me to think that someone had tested it, and likely found it to be weak or dead and that's the reason it wasn't plugged back in. Perhaps I am wrong, but it does seem logical. I also wonder how the cap got busted up so bad... but I guess that's the least of my worries for now.

I peaked in the HV cage. There were some wax drippings... but then many of the flybacks dripped wax even if fly was good.

The rest of the chassis looks good... just some dust... and should clean up nicely.

Over all, the set looks really good... like new. I just hope my suspicions about why the CRT was left unplugged (other than a broken cap) are wrong.

I'll get some close-up shots taken when I return home.