Hallicrafters T-54, 1948
 

Got an old one here...

Need one of those to match my SX-62...(grin)

So begins a restoration.

Just missing 1 large knob, and one pushbutton knob. Anybody have a junker with spare knobs? Else, we are going to learn how to cast in resin...

Also, the antenna cable was cut short, but seemed to exit out a slot in the back. How is that actually supposed to lead out?

Yup, it does!

I never thought about that before. My Hallicrafters-made United Motors Service TV has the same slot, but on the wooden cabinet, the back is made from fiberboard.

If the back on the metal cased set is metal, that sure could be a nice ghost generator back in the analog age.

James

Nice find:thmbsp: My T506 has the same 're-phased' sticker and final test tag. You can read about the restoration here: http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=246486

Good luck!

Nice, Going to pick one up one just like it next week about 2 hours from me! I love the design of the case by Raymond Loewy. I am going to have to get the matching radio to go with it once I get the TV going.

Some day I'll get around to restoring my dusty T-54 and take a side by side photo with the SX-42. (BTW, the SX-62 mentioned earlier is electronically very similar to the SX-42 but it has a rectangular slide rule dial.)

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

http://www.antiqueradio.org/art/hallisx42.jpg

http://www.antiqueradio.org/art/Hall...levision01.jpg

Phil your restoration pages and the info on your SX-42 were my inspiration for wanting to get one once I get my T-54 and restore it. That SX-42 is a great looking radio but sounded like a very complicated restoration, and even more challenging then a TV. I had not seen the SX-62 before I will have to read up on it. But I have to admit I like the look of the 42 a lot more, the dial matches the CRT in the T-54.
There is a SX-43 on e bay now, but I would rather get the better made 42.

Where did you end up getting a spare knob from?

My wife tells me to do this restoration publicly, so I can further refine my techniques. Can't disagree with that. Photos and commentary to follow...

What did it terminate with? A terminal block? A pair of spades?

Another forum member had a spare. Sorry, but I can't remember who.

I THINK the SX-62 was aimed at the "Casual" SW listener, it has no BFO, so you can't decode sideband/CW signals, & it has a more "Hi-Fi" sound. Actually, someday, I hope to have BOTH an SX-42, & the TV-54, to go w/my SX-62. Hallicrafters was trying to cover any/all of the postwar radio/TV/hi-fi market.

I have seen some initial promotional material for the T-54 that pictured it with SX-42 style knobs.

Wow, we should all be glad they didn't produce the TV with those stupid knobs. Very clumsy looking.

You might take that as evidence that Loewy designed the SX-42 but had no hand in the T-54. I can hear some cigar-chomping executive saying, "OK, let's make a TV that looks like that radio we paid the poofy guy to design, and use the same knobs to save money; we already ordered a million of them."

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

Rider apparently copied the original instructions and they show a 300 ohm twinline stub that was supposed to be soldered onto your antenna.

Go to the Early Television Foundation schematics page and see the second half of fold-out Hallicrafters TV-54 page 1-21, 22 for an illustration:

http://www.earlytelevision.org/tv_sc..._diagrams.html


On most of the sets that you see today, someone has cut an extra hole and added a normal-for-the-era two screw terminal.

My UMS set came with a cut and stripped vintage 300 ohm wire and no extra hole.

The first privately owned TV in west Tennessee was a Hallicrafters and it was purchased almost a year before WMCT then Channel 4 in Memphis came on the air on December 11, 1948. The owner hoped to pick up St Louis, MO, on a single channel yagi on a 18 foot tower on top of his two story house. He only saw a few ghost images, and was never able to lock in a picture except for a few moments and never could hear any sound.

Once WMCT came on the air, he received it very well. When I first saw his set in 1954, it had a small flat plastic fitting on the end of the 300 ohm antenna wire from the set. It has one pin and one socket and was shaped like and slightly wider than the twin lead. The house antenna had a matching pin and socket. The connector was slightly larger than the hole in the back. I assume that he added the connector, but I don't know if it came from Hallicrafters or not.

He said the factory had told him back when he was still attempting to pull in St Louis, that it was best to not splice the antenna and to bring his feed line into the set and then solder it directly to the tuner.


My serial number AB-125404 United Motor Service Delco says to your Hallicrafters,
"Howdy, assembly line neighbor! :banana: I was made one day later."

James.

Haha!! You're supposed to solder it?!? Wonder what that's all about. Probably not so much a concern now with the signal coming out of converter boxes. Thanks for the info - it makes more sense now.

As others have posted non TV boatanchor (SW) Hallicrafters, here are a few Hallicrafters radios that are not boatanchors
http://www.wa2ise.com/radios/hall5r14.jpghttp://www.wa2ise.com/radios/hall612.jpghttp://www.wa2ise.com/radios/hallfm48.jpg

Yeah-Hallicrafters tried HARD in the postwar years to "Run w/the Big Dawgs"-RCA, Zenith, Admiral, Motorola, Emerson, but they just couldn't quite pull it off...

That was Tuesday and Wednesday of that work week. Latent F-ups should be at a minimum.

Photos of chassis removal next week once I get back from my business trip. Can hardly wait to get a close look at this 7" CRT up close and the inside of the HV cage.

Was not able to find knobs (need one large, one small). So, I am going to mold some using black resin.

Are there other folks out there who have interest in new replacement knobs for their Hallicrafters 7" TV?

I bought two sets of repro knobs for my Hallis about 10-12 years ago, one Black for theT-54 and one Brown for the wood version, I can't recall right off who the guy was but he was well known for Repro knobs, maybe someone will remember his name, not sure if he's still in business.

Remembered who (well Google did anyway) it was Larry Bordonaro http://www.antiqueradioknobs.com/

http://i.imgur.com/fRrDH.jpg

Restoration begins. Album Here: http://imgur.com/a/fUMgt#0

Removed knobs, then front panel, while supporting the kinescope. Removed the kinescope. Removed the chassis from the metal case. Pulled all of the tubes and tested them, only need to replace a 6AU6 and 6AG5.

Dusted the chassis off, especially the pushbutton tuning section. It will be cleaned later, but I like starting off as fairly clean as I can.

I tilted the chassis up and did a count of all of the electrolytics, papers and suspect resistors that need replacing. An order will be placed with Just Radios.

For the electrolytics, they are going to be restuffed. This chassis is spacious and it should be possible to gut those without cutting wires.
The Micamold manufactured electrolytics - with the end wax cracked away from the paper tube - look especially easy to do this way. With a heat gun, I soften in the internal wax/tar enough to push the guts out. All three Micamold caps go easily. In fact, I didn't even have to cut the metal bands holding them in; the spot weld that holds the band together is small and weak. With a little prying, it pops.

The final electrolytic is on the lower corner of the chassis. A rivet needs to be drilled out to get it free. This cap does not spew its guts easily like the Micamolds, and I have to cut the leads to it, and dig out the wax by hand to get the guts free. With repeated scraping with a screwdriver, heating, and hits with a large bolt and mallet, the guts come out, and it is ready for restuffing.

While I wait for the parts from Just Radios, I have some rubber parts from McMaster-Carr, using cut-up pieces to replace the rotted out sections of rubber bumper that used to damp the return of the pushbuttton. Photos to come.

Part 8510K12 and 8507K52 - rubber edge trim

Hey David, I noticed something different between your chassis and mine.

Mine uses a large multi section resistor riveted to the top of the chassis and yours doesn't. Yours also has channel one, my chassis seems to be wired for channel one but it's been cut short and there's no hole for it in the cabinet.

Guess I could drill a hole in the cabinet and make a "Rare" channel 1 505. :D

I know yours is a T-54 and mine is a 505 but I thought they used the same chassis? I imagine mine is later since it's minus channel one. I know the really early ones used Octal tubes in the i.f. strip.

It also looks like that decal I so laboriously restored is different on yours also. :sigh:

Eric,

Your set is a late production, while David's Hallicrafters and my Delco are early productions.

And I just got a surprise seeing David's photo which included the patent sticker on his that I thought was unique to the Delco clone. His Hallicrafters also has the name "Hallicrafters ... Chicago" trimmed off the bottom of the sticker!

David's photos are on http://imgur.com/a/fUMgt#0

FYI Eric: I started converting your art to match my Delco, and will post when I finish.

James

Crap - that reminds me I owe you the photos and text of the sticker under the CRT. Coming up tonight!

What is the art you are talking about?

I believe he's referring to the picture i posted of the restored patent label for the Hallicrafters.

I hadn't thought of it as Art, at least not in the way Picasso is art...:D

Here you go...

1.875" x 3"

David, I noticed yours has .05 uF caps for Vertical deflection plate coupling. The Sams parts list (and photo) calls for .03. Do they look like they are replacements, or do they look undisturbed and original?

Thank you!

In this case, since it's just text in what looks like a normal Font, it may be easier to create a new label using Word or Photoshop instead of trying to doctor the Photo.
The dark stains make it really hard to clean up.

Funny you should mention this because I have a question about the HV caps in these sets.

Mine had one .03 and one .005, the .005 was a replacement and way off on value, I don't know how well it would have worked?.
03@6000 is not an easy value to find but I picked up a few on eBay so those are covered.

My question is about the 500Pf (.0005Mf) Horizontal caps.
.0005@6000 is also not all that easy to find but I do have some .001's, or double the value.

Does anyone think those would be OK to use in the Horizontal circuit?
What would it affect, the width of the picture?

I used 0.001s in my 506 and it works just fine :)

Cool, then I can use those.

Just noticed the serial number on Davids set, 124900 something, mine is 241926, about 117,000 apart!
Either they made a gazillion of these sets or they shared the serial numbers with other products.

I looked at it carefully - the solder joints looked clean and of similar sheen to the other joints. The caps have clamps, as you see, but they are not actually bolted to the chassis. Best I can tell is that they look original, and are the correct value from the older Rider sheet, despite this being a miniature-tube IF.

I actually gutted my 0.05 caps to take a set of caps to make that value.

Eric, it seems you are going to finish way ahead of me. I can't spare the time like I used to with two jobs and travel. Guess I'll just have to watch you!

For the folks with the loose tube bases - how did you get adhesive down into the base? I was thinking of filing a small hole in the nub and pulling a vacuum to get it in. But what say you?

I just shoot or squish glue into the space between the base and neck, wiping off the excess.

Lately, I have been using black RTV, since I have an open tube and like to use stuff up. It seems to hold well, and if you ever wanted to get a base back off for some reason, you'd have better luck with that than with super glue.

I have learned over the years to pull tubes out by their bases, not their envelopes, so I don't think you need to use epoxy or super glue.

Phil Nelson

It has been a long time since I recapped my Hali 7", but I recall wondering about those .05/6KV (.03/6KV?) vertical coupling. I recall looking at the other 7" set designs, most all of which used .005/6KV coupling caps, and came to the conclusion that .005/6KV should work just fine..... and they did. I think Hallicrafters just got a good deal on .05/6KV caps and used them. :-)

I wouldn't be too sure, I still have some serious cabinet work to do. :yes:

As for the tube bases I use Phil's method, squirt some Silicone in around the edges and call it a day. Trying to grind a hole in the end is way too risky, you might break of the evacuation nipple.

Are you talking about the CRT in this case?

For those who don't know, the CRT in the Hallicrafters is held in place only by the front mask and the base of the CRT, I think Silicone is fine for the job in this case.