A new freebie!!!
 

This is one of those things that "never happen", but they seem to come by me more often than not :)

Got a call from a guy that I gave an old console cabinet to, from a set that was too far gone both cosmetically and electronically to reasonably restore. Turns out he does house cleanouts, and came across what he described as "an old RCA TV with double doors in the front". Nobody wanted it, and he thought he'd do a good turn for me and offer it to me. Why sure! :)

Figuring that it was most likely a common-as-water KCS40 chassis RCA, I went over to see it, and what to my wondering eyes do appear but this CTC-12 that someone hung ugly window shutters on!!!

Everything intact, ZERO cataract evidence, with the back and a clean chassis!!

Apparently he comes across these sets "all the time" and has a REALLY hard time getting rid of them because of e-recycling guidelines. I gave him $20 and thanked him for saving it for me, and told him I'd buy whatever he came across.

Picture when I first got it, and a couple shots of where it is now.....wedged in my living room until I can get a friend to help me carry it down (my 15 year old son was pooped helping me get it this far ;) ).

Turns out the picture tube has absolutely perfect emission too! There were RCA service tags laying inside the back, the latest was from October 2, 1973.

Now I've done literally dozens of black and white restorations, but only a half dozen or so color sets, and all of those had already been powered up at least once before I touched them, so they weren't complete unknowns as this set currently is.

My thinking on this one is test the tubes and bring it up on a variac, but I want to give this set a good fighting chance. Do I do a total recap first, or what's opinions on what I should do from here with it?

thats easy, so a soft start, no recapping needed most likely.

I do this

pull horz out and vert out tubes
monitor the B+ (look for a 400v b+ on the chroma board, easy to get at)
monitor the AC input voltage and current.

variac to 10vac to the plug, watch the DC voltage, should be about 3-4 times as high as the AC at the plug, also note the current should be nill.

after about 10 min go to about 30vac this time feeling the can caps for heat and seeing if the DC keeps going up and the current should still be low.

get to about 90vac if all looking good with low current and high B+ the pop the HO and VO back in, hook up a current meter to the HO cathode lead, hook up a HV prob and go for a full power start.

pull the plug if the HO current starts to go north of about 220ma, there is something wrong if its there and no HV.

if all goes well dip the eff coil with the HO meter still attached and call it done.

keep an eye on it of course and see how it goes, check the heat of the fly after about 15min of running (power off of course).

the most likey issue will be vert stability. those caps in the feed back loop of the vert multiplier live a harsh life.

Nice set for $20.00. Best of luck with it, and please post some pictures when you get it operating.

I got a 2-tone metal cabinet tv from a house cleaner-outer-guy he put it on CL
thinking it was too different looking to just throw out..... Maybe regular contact
with those guys would be a good thing.... Maybe even giving them a "keep yer
eyes peeled for" wish list kinda thing would be a good idea to do.... Better than
just letting them get tossed....

Nice cabinet style on that set, by the way....

.

It was kind of ironic how it happened. I ended up parting out a set and felt guilty as hell for doing so....but it had a blonde cabinet painted brown, veneer totally missing on top, blown resistors on the chassis and a questionable flyback and yoke. Had to let discretion be the better part of valor and make a decision that it wasn't worth my or anyone else's time to bother with.

Saved the picture tube and other parts, and listed the cabinet on Craigslist as a freebie. A guy came and got it and was going to refurb it into a fish tank. Ugh.

The guy, was THIS guy. Since he already now HAD a place for his fish tank, he didn't want to cut this one up. Had I not parted that other set, THIS one would now be a fish tank.

Truth is stranger than fiction, sometimes.

Oh, and he and his partner now have my business cards. They do home cleanouts. One of the kinds of people we ALL dream to get to know....

My best freebee was from a neighbor that was looking after an elderly man. he passed away and they had to clean out the house.

I got a nice sylvania 23v all tube set. got a cheap CRT from a donor set from CL for 5$ or thereabouts, it was a VERY good crt.

between those two deal I have prob one of my best looking and performing sets.

If you run across a sylvania from the late sixties don't pass on it.

I'm truly amazed in how often TVs & radios have "Found ME" over the years. Sets that in reality, I should have never had a snowball's chance of finding. But, you start letting it be known that you are a guy who loves this stuff, & you start getting calls all the time...

you took off the doors?! :nono:

In many places, those are a sign of status and power... Like a higher class person owns the TV set. :tears:

Y'know, I considered for a moment leaving them on as they've been a part of the set for a LONG time. But they were home window shutters, even the hinges had TAIWAN marked on them.

If others think I should go grab them out of the trashcan and stick them on, you could "bully" me into it ;)

It's in the basement shop as of last night, and I'll start testing tubes shortly....

I'd leave them off. Keep the set as original as possible. Very nice find. Hope you score some more sets!

Really nice find. I agree that the set should be restored as original, sans shutters. Will follow your progress with interest. Brightened up your last photo a bit.

Best w/your "new" color tv.
-Steve D.

Looking good so far.....with the HO and VO tubes pulled and the set running for about 40 minutes, everything is nice and cool and I'm *listening* to the CBS morning news on the set which is running at about 90VAC currently

:)

I'll play more later today.

Thats a great score for $20 bucks and a perfect CRT congratulations :thmbsp:

Darn fine score for anyone who's into those.
I second that.

I agree about the doors, leave 'em off. I'll leave a modification in place if it's non-intrusive and I consider it part of the set's history. For example, the original owners of my 1988 Zenith console put a small knife switch on the back panel for antenna selection, and I only took it off long enough to tighten a couple of loose terminals. Besides, it's better to be asked about an add-on switch than screw holes that I can't patch properly. ;)

A
 

Looking good!!!

This pic was taken at a calibrated 100 VAC. The picture gradually filled out more, but started slowly increasing and decreasing in size. Shut it down.

The whole goal in the power up was to see if I have something worthy of a rebuild, and I think I do :) .

Here's a video of what the set was doing. Anyone seen this before? Bear in mind that it's got all its original caps. Going to pull the chassis and start a rebuild this week......

The screen really wasn't as blue as it looks in the video....the camera angle was bad.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzOo...ature=youtu.be

I would most definltely call that "potential". Tube looks to be good too !!

I'd say your deflection rail lytics are open.

Kinda my thought too......

Definitely worth rebuilding! The "wave" disturbance in the picture looks like leaky electrolytic filter caps, to me. This should turn out NICE, congratulations!

classic sign of a bad power supply filter. great score on the tv.

I would say this makes up for the color roundie whose CRT filaments wouldn't light.

Perfect emission with no cataract is a rarity in itself.

Well, she's up on the bench :) . Good thing DavGoodlin told me about that tuner mounting trick on these sets!

Ordering up caps this morning. The set's definitely seen some love in its life, there's a brand new color crystal soldered in underneath, and the picture tube is an RCA Colorama that looks relatively new.

classic sign of bad power supply caps. great set.:banana:

ditto that PS caps. Sometimes if you have trouble not getting the vert to fill out (prob just the low power test in your case) the cathode bypass cap on the vert board may be bad, but most of the time its fine too. there are a couple HV caps in the vert feed back that can be problems like a .0082 2kv film.

that era has pretty good film caps so it should not take much to get it worked out. there is a sand resistor down by the choke mounted to a term strip, that strip gets real toasty, can break easy, just leave it be.

check the resistor in the boost supply to the vert, think its a 100k, often will drift high hurting vert height (the vert multivibrator uses boost voltage thru the height or lin pot, not sure about how rca lables those).

One thing you do not want to do is a shot gun replacement of film caps, just not needed, and the pcb's are often cooked, do not need the stress. oh and last thing watch out for the jumper wires on the top of the chroma board, they tend to corrode, when that happens the diff amps lose plate voltage.

Agreed.....I don't plan on doing the film caps at this point, with the exception of two or three white ceramic Elemencos. Don't recall the values but the voltages were in the 1 kV plus range.

yea those are the .001 2KV caps one on the primaries of the audio out and vert out transformers. I do those as well since there is no good test for them.

fyi, you find them in mousers under snubber caps.

Recap is underway, and I ran into a couple headscratchers.....

First, there's a wire coming from the main power transformer that was cut and had black tape around the end. Don't know why, don't know where it would go? The set was working as per previous posts, but I don't know what this could be?

Second, while doing the one filter can, I saw this rating on the first value in the can....160 uF @ 250 VDC 1.1 amp @ 60 ~ . Is this one of the caps like I've run into in Dumonts where the value has to be calculated per that spec, or is it just 160 uF @ 250?

I don't have the Sams for the set unfortunately.

You just missed a few on ebay.....
http://www.ebay.com/itm/RCA-CAPACITO...-/110777567412

I have seen that before, and all I can think of is that it may be the ac component
that it is expected to pass to ground..... Kind of a power dissipation ~ specific
reading on ESR ???

.

Tape wire off power trans is a hi volt primary tap. If you have high voltage (about say 123v all the time) it may be worth using it. Or just leave it be since you will prob not leave it on all day anyway.

to use t you have to find the other primary that is in use and switch them, taping off the unused. Just have to make sure its the right primary, you would not want to connect the power trans to the line using the low volt and the high volt taps, that would blow the transformer.

voltage doubler that cap, a good quality cap should be fine, I would go with a low ESR. Was the old can cap bad?

Ah! Makes sense on the transformer wire. Line voltage here is 117, so I'll just tape it back off.

I'd assume the cap's bad. As per the video I posted on page 1, it had shrunken and oscillating vertical sweep. Figured I'd just do all of the filters in one fell swoop.

looking forward to seeing it going :thmbsp:

Two steps forward, one step back :)

Slow powerup on the variac, and while the guns were WAY off, I had a full raster and all colors!

The tuner was dirty, forgot I had to clean it, so I'm screwing with that and doing a crosshatch to get it roughed in, and then I realize that I lost color. Dammit! Or, rather, everything but green and a pinkish red. This pic doesn't show it clearly, but this is what I've got now.

Snow on the off channels is white with confetti, but that's to be expected.

Still, progress is progress :)

check the jumper wires on the chroma board, of just feel the power resistors that feed the plates of the diff amps, my guess is the wires are broken, common problem on CTC-12 thru 17 at least

see here at 5:22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ1JWdn_kTw

oh and that set had the short vert too, turned out to be the 100k boost resistor.

Son of a GUN. Mine has that SAME SPOT of corrosion on it!

Well, looks like I'm gonna pull the chassis and check all my jumpers! Thanks for the tip!!! :)

the dead give away is the cold power resistors that stand up there are 3, on on the side of the board, two more center right. 27K wire wounds IIRC. look for crystalized solder around those. The whole pcb is subject to a lot of heat, esp around those 6GC7 tubes and the Video amp 12GH7 or 12BY7. just go easy working on it, those traces will lift. Also reflow the solder stakes that are used for ground if they look suspect at all. lastly check the blanker tube grid resistor to ground trace. Its right on the edge of the pcb that is near the horz out tube. that trace has been known to crack, causes a increase in the blanker tube neg voltage, the effect is two fold, a slightly darker pic (the neg voltage is used in the brightness circuit) AND on sets later than the CTC-12 its a HV hold down voltage that can upset the bias on the horz out tube (if the trace cracks open the HV and horz sweep will be reduced).