Sylvania Roundie arrival
 

Well as some may know about this set being on eBay.. And a thread I posted a few months ago..

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=261840

and Also the Admiral Set the was recently on Craigslist.. It's a BW set, and I didn't want to post two threads.. Let start off with the Sylvania..

First bad start, I was greeted with the set by taking it out of the van and found out, the leg has broken off...

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_1.jpg
http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_2.jpg

Damn particle board.. That's the least of my concerns.. Moving right along.. After spending $300 plus $300 shipping.. The Admiral only took $100 extra plus the $75 more to the grand total, I bought it for..

Here's the second issue.. Funny how it's seen in one of the original photos taken by the seller, but not really noticeable, if you go and click on the thread and look at the pics of the chassis, you can see it's pushed behind the board.. I'm surprised no one pointed it out.. But surely would have stayed the hell away from this set if I would have known about this:

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_3.jpg

Yup, this rare earth tube is pretty much a dud..
Beltron test results at 6.3 volts, and this is after heating it up for a while.. Funny how the Beltron shows better emissions than the B&K and Sencore.. It's usually the opposite..

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_5.jpg

At 8.5 volts:

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_4.jpg


B&K Results:

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_6.jpg

at 8.5 volts.. Not much of a difference..

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_7.jpg

at 9 volts it tends to go way up into the good..


The tube has a purplish glow and the middle looks normal, I took the brightener off and it's not as bright of course, and when I adjust the drives for more brightness, the fuzz gets more blurry the brighter I go up.. I tried hooking a vcr signal to it, and it doesn't go through.. Tuner is fine as it reacts to changing the channels..I'm debating if I should leave it as is, try to zap it with the B&K or the Sencore on the lowest rejuv settings, or take it to the nearby dumpster at the storage facility.. I've had too many nightmares with putting alot of money into sets for dud tubes..

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_8.jpg





And now the Admiral

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...bletoptv_1.jpg


Have no idea what the tube number is.. Testing using the 12LP4 settings.. Great cut off / emissions and life test..

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...bletoptv_5.jpg
http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...bletoptv_2.jpg
http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...bletoptv_3.jpg
http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...bletoptv_4.jpg

If you Zap the Sylvania use the B&K. It's pretty much fool proof and safer. The beltron is great as I have one but you must be very careful. Sencore is good too but has a harsh restore as it snaps the current through the cathode. B&K is a gradual clime of current. Use the Clean Balance setting. Should come back pretty fair.

How about a Beltron "clean" before any zapping?

There's one of the elusive "other brands". That alone should be reason enough to save it from the scrap heap. I'd take any TV on my wish list sans CRT. There are plenty of ugly and beaten donor sets out there.

Not in these parts.. And not likely anywhere else that I'm willing to take a chance with shipping.. I've have two different tubes in a row, from two different sellers arrive damaged.. One was a 12LP4 and the other was a color roundie.. I'm not going through that again.. If it can't show a picture and work as a TV, there's no use in it taking up space that I don't have..

I was leaning more toward the B&K to begin with.. But from what I've read on here, isn't it not good to rejuv tubes that have been on a brightener? Even just to clean and balance?

Also has anyone ever rejuvenated a tube that stayed good, and didn't gradually go back down over time?

I use a Beltron. I rejuved my Zenith roundie about two years ago. It still is clear and bright. I have that B&K also. I use it for Zenith System 3 CRT's. It is a rough restore and from my experience, a "kill or cure".
My Zenith tube was similar in looks when weak. Focus went first, and got dimmer and dimmer.

''the chassis, you can see it's pushed behind the board"

I must be missing something. What do you mean here? I don't get it.

http://i1220.photobucket.com/albums/...oundietv_3.jpg

http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...2&d=1402529134
.

I took it to mean that the brightener was tucked behind the chassis so as to be somewhat hidden and hopefully not noticed by a potential buyer . As in , trying to hide the evidence of a weak picture tube .

If this IS the case , it's a wonder why the seller didn't just outright remove the brightener rather than tucking it partially out of sight ???

Go for broke. What do you have to lose if you zap it? The chance exists the tube was zapped before the brightener was added. Rejuvenation, in my many years of shop work, rarely paid off unless a brightener was added, and you happened to get lucky. Your guess is as good as mine as to its remaining useful life.

Phil

It looks like your Beltron test had the filament set too high. The filament voltage meter needle was above the 6.3 volt reference line. This explains the high emission shown on the Beltron.

If that's what he really meant, I saw the brightener right off in the earlier thread. I wouldn't call it hidden at all, that's the most likely resting place it would have been in when the set was in use. I certainly didn't think we as readers were obligated to point that out.

As you point out, it's really unlikely that the seller was trying to hide it.

You're not obligated to point it out.. You are correct.. But it would have been the right thing to do..

I'm a bit confused.. Some people say the Beltron is a bit hard with the rejuv, and some people say, it's not.. Same with the B&K..

I was thinking that you could pull a good CRT from a RCA as they're much more plentiful than Sylvanias.

Ya, if I had one.. I would.. But I think roundie CRTS in general are scarce, and not shippable items unless the seller is willing to box it like they would have originally been packed, or the other option to spend $200 and have a mover move it..

I went over to my storage.. Attempted to to restore using the B&K, tried both the red and green guns.. It didn't want to restore as the needle didn't move much at all.. Then I attempted with the Beltron, and obviously it tries to restore all three guns while doing a rejuv.. The light indicator flashed on the blue gun side, none of the others.. And now blue tests really good, and others very poor.. I didn't try going into the more intense restore features on either of the testers..

Are you sure it does not have some control to rejuv the guns one by one. It would seem an odd/bad design not to allow the user to select the gun to be rejuvenated.

I believe it doesn't.. They don't even have power switches..

Doing THAT without admitting it to a buyer who expects a good tube--to me anyway--would be FRAUDULENT He should have ADMITTED the tube was weak and on a brightener. Not all that different than the old "sawdust in the gears" trick, IMHO.

Most brighteners are NOT like that--they are just simple transformers that boost ALL 3 guns fils somewhat--to get more emission...for while. You must remember-these were sold to the PUBLIC--and therefore--could not be overly complicated.


Now--there WERE single-gun boosters out there--that would somehow increase emissioins on either ONLY one gun, or all 3 individually. These generally were NOT meant for the average consumer and sold more through parts outlets. The normally DO have control(s) on them, Chamberlin and Oneida are 2 brands I can think of.

Your tube sounds a LOT like the one in my 29JC20. The red gun is quite waek--but the other 2 test well on the 70. it will NOT help the red gun much...the cathode just will not draw enough current to restore. Boosting the fils. DOES help some, and emissions on the red get almost normal..--as does a brightener. But--those are scarce around here. I had a whole BOX Of them, including a number of roundie ones, maybe from an Estes auction or such. BUT--the geniuses who robbed my garage last year CUT OFF ALL of the wires to them..leaving JUST the bodies of them !! If I HAD to--I could "patch one in", to the old harness, I guess.

As for that B&K rejuv...I KILLED an in-line T-815 Mag. tube in 1989 I think..trying to bring it up some..it ALMOST worked...THEN..if left it MUCH worse then before !! (I was able to get a rebuilt tube for it, and it lasted well in my use till I got my CTC-169 in 1998. through a 'mix-up" that tube cost me NOTHING.) this was WAY before I had my "jewell" the CR 70. back then--they cost nearly a grand or so. I paid LESS then 100 for mine--in the mid '00s or so WITH shipping.

When and who sold boosters to the general public? Through 1973 when I got out of the business, I never saw one marketed to the public.

Interesting. When were these 1,2 or 3 gun boosters introduced to the market?

I KNOW they were around in the mid-1970's, maybe before. The Oneida "nu brite" with a control for each gun was from about 1977. Older--simple all-or-none-brighteners appeared for color tubes sometime in the 1960's.

Evidently--Radio Shack even sold them a long time ago, at least for BW tubes. On ebay right now--someone is selling some brighteners, one is an Archer and one is a blue gun only tele-matic

http://www.ebay.com/itm/271574282281...84.m1423.l2649

we had thompson electronics downtown that sold brighteners.anyone could walk in and buy.also,united tuner,sun tv,etc.lots of brighteners sold here in central ohio

i picked up on ebay 2 of these gun boosters and they dont have a transformer in them and they had them for red, green, and blue i dont think it raises any voltage except amplifys whats there already and dont seem to kill the tube for whats left in it already.

:) Hi rca2000 ,

Of course it would be fraudulent to knowingly remove a booster to deceive someone into thinking a tube was in better condition than was actually known ..... Now , this is exactly why I (and I suspect Jim also) think there was no attempt at deception ; the very presence of the brightener in the set . If the seller were a crook , and knew what the brightener actually meant , wouldn't you think he would have just outright removed it rather than trying unsuccessfully to tuck it out of sight ?

:) And I will agree 100% with sampson159 that back in the day when tubes were regularly sold in drugstores , ALL kinds of things like brighteners and fuses and dial light bulbs could be found in the shelves alongside the tubes . Granted , I was raised in a big city , and one advantage was well stocked stores :D

...

I'm trying to find the chassis number, or a number that will lead to the Sams photofact... I've done a model number search in Google.. I was able to pull up some ad literature, but nothing else.. Tried searching all the other numbers and nothing came up.. I've took pics of all the other numbers that are either marked or stamped into the chassis.. All is in this photobucket album..

http://s1220.photobucket.com/user/vi...?sort=3&page=1

Think I found it.

Looks like a DO-1 set. evidently--you have to leave off the K in sams to get the chassis #. 787 -4 aapears to be the sams # There are several suffixes after the DO1, such as 1,5 11, 18 and such.

I have a Beltron, and its instructions tell you to select which gun to rejuv (so you don't do it to a gun that is good). The red-green-blue selector switch. So maybe you can return to the set and do the red and green guns, but don't do the blue gun.

Thanks RCA2000

I've tried to select the gun when doing a cleaning and I had it set to blue gun, the green gun lit up for cleaning.. As far as the restore function.. I haven't gone that far, so I don't know if that's different or not.. I haven't read that part yet..

Crack the end of that tube open and spray some Gumout on the cathode G1 area
then get on it on the highway and burn out all those old Waltons electron carbons
and put on a few good heavy metal videos and that tube 'll be fine.....

How about some good stiff acid rock for that tube? By the way Squirrel, try stealing seeds from a bird feeder when the pole it's on is coated in Vaseline.

This may not apply very well to our antique TV sets that are only occasionally used, but I have indeed rejuvenated CRTs that then lasted a number of years in some cases. Years of 24-hour-per-day operation, in fact. And, that may be the "catch". The CRTs I am referring to are in airport arrival/departure-type monitors that are never shut off (except for repairs). The "catch" is that in many cases when these monitors are shut off and later turned on again, they can take ten minutes to reach full brightness afterward. But after that ten minutes, the CRT looks very good while it had been poor before the rejuvenation. A ten-minute warm-up is not reasonable for a home-use CRT, however.

A family member of mine wanted to keep squirrels out of his bird feeder and of
course did all of the usual including vaseline on the pole..... Actually, all you
need to do is use a 4" or larger diameter PVC pipe so they can't wrap themselves around
it to grab it. I have always fed all out outside critters on the ground under a pine
out front, Squirrels, ground hogs, chippies, and all our birds share all the food
and get along quite well..... They have even adjusted to seeing our cats leer at them
through the window each morning...... In the evening Skunks, especailly baby skunks are
by far some of the most entertaining to watch.....

Back on topic, I have seen a number of people here post about what actually ends
the emissions on a tube, and brings about the end of life. In some cases I have read
that it's the getter material that "runs out" But the rejuvinating process only
effects the cathode really. I imagine items like "clean" button have some "truth" in
the naming of their function.... Does the machine heat and spark off some of the
cathode coating to uncover some unused material....? Could this be the reason in
some cases a rejuvinated tube lasts a long time....? And why Sony tubes generally
don't rejuvinate...? Is the coating too solid...? too hard...? Any theories....?

.

You need to have sufficient cathode material to work with. As the cathode wears, it becomes contaminated with the "used up" material. That's why depending on the thickness or amount of contamination can determine if you are successful or not.

A clean function is usually the mildest and will remove the least amount of material.

Unfortunately, there's no way of knowing beforehand and why some may shy away from the possibly of destroying an otherwise watchable tube.