Found a Videodyne on CL
 

I was searching CL last night as usual when this popped up.
This has been one of my holy grails for years but I never expected I would find one locally.
I believe this is the 10FM model.

Drove down to Dana Point this morning to pick it up.
It was located in an upscale Orange County gated community, guard at the gate, and they have to put you on a list to be allowed in.

I got it from a nice older lady who said it has been in the family since new. Her Father worked at Lockheed in the 40's and this set was bought in California and resided in Pasadena for many years.
I liked her because she was truly interested in the set finding a good home and telling me a bit of it's history, she was going to call her Brother and let him know the set was sold, there was some sentimental attachment to it.

It's not without issues, most seriously is the screen mask around the CRT is missing, also the back, though that's a lesser thing. The dial cover is cracked but that looks to be easily reproduced, and the knobs are probably wrong, though they look really appropriate for the set.
the cabinet is is terrific condition, the black trim needs redone but the rest is great and original with the normal crazing from nearly 70 years of aging.

It wasn't free, she asked $175 for it and I didn't argue a bit because I figure I'll not likely have another shot at one.
I tossed and turned a lot last night worrying someone would beat me to it.:yes:

I haven't checked the CRT yet, I'll get back with that info later.

Nice Score , and well worth $175 since like you say , they don't exactly pop out of attics on any kinds of regular basis .

When you get into it , some chassis shots would be great to see !

Wow! Amazing find !

jr

The CRT is probably usable, it went well into the green after a couple minutes, the cutoff is bad but it may get better with use.

Powered it up with the Variac and got a hum and high voltage, it's not making it to the CRT because the 1B3 is gassy and lighting up purple, can't change it without pulling the chassis so it have to wait.

Wow, that is one sharp looking set. Too bad they are so rare...I kinda want one now.

Very nice score, definitely has a look to it all of it's own. Have to wonder how the mask became separated from the set, possibly a servicing accident, or maybe the owner simply removed it when they updated the knobs. At any rate it looks rather sharp, as-is.

I found an ad from May 1949 for this set, that's about all I could find, not much about this company out there.

First thing that pops up on Goggle...

http://www.earlytelevision.org/videodyne.html

There's a link to the Sams 69-15 manual too.

AWESOME find! I've been into vintage TV's for years and can confidently say that you have a set that's as rare as a pre-war. I too would see it as a "Holy Grail" set because not only is it rare, but it is one of the best art-deco designed '40's TV's of all-time. There was more than one version of this set. I believe there was another by Columbia, but this one is my favorite. Even the "Videodyne" name is so cool. I am envious! :) Good luck with that gem!

I know just the thing to place on top of it.
I picked up one of these Kem Weber designed clocks at a swap meet about 35 years ago. :thmbsp:
The clock is about ten years older than the TV so it was a rather odd choice of style for Videodyne to make in 1948.

I'm in love..

Oh, MAN -- some people have all the luck. $175 seems totally reasonable for that scarce set.

You're right, that swoopy Streamline Moderne style was big about 10 years earlier. My GE F-63 is from 1937:

http://antiqueradio.org/art/GE%20F-6...20Restored.jpg

Philco made similar 1937-1938 radios (37-610 and the like). There are probably a bunch of others.

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

This has the serial number of 1811, possibly the 811th of these made, depending on whether they started at 0001 or 1001. I would love to know what the production numbers were.

Sams has a Photofact for them so I would think it have to be a fairly substantial number for them to have bothered. I've had the Sams for it for years, never expected to need it.

Four stage i.f amplification plus DC restoration so it wasn't a stripped down chassis design.

I see, there was a distributor in Milwaukee, although I never saw one in this area. IIRC, the Videodyne sets were built out east, somewhere.
The Empire building has been torn down for about 40 years.
A little bit of history! I had some Wallace's Tel-aids, that were rubber stamped with the Radio-TV Labs, on North 11th St.
I'm not sure if I wanted buy a TV, from a firm named "Fink Engineering". :D
Steve Allen, used to have a lot of fun with the name "Fink" on his show. :D:D

Used to stay up past my bedtime to watch that old Steve Allen show, the one syndicated by Westinghouse. Sure wish the Steve Allen estate would put out some of those on DVD. I've asked them to!

Videodyne set/w mask on display at the ETF Museum. Also a closeup of the knobs.

-Steve D.

It's beginning to look like they used a few different knob styles.

I'm going to stick with these, they are.really Nice and look good on the set.
They shined up really good too!

Great find Eric! And for a great price. What do you plan on doing for the mask?

Eric,

Not sure if you attend the ETF Convention. Maybe you could have a 3-D copy made in Columbus, Oh. from the ETF set? If Steve McVoy would lend you the mask.

-Steve D.

I pulled the chassis out and took some pictures, it's a most unusual set.

The chassis is quite interesting, made from Aluminum, everything is screwed in, no rivets, it seems to be built around a massive Aluminum top casting with the sides bolted to it and the top welded on, it's so thick on top that the sockets inside the HV cage are recessed into the chassis and the tubes only go halfway into the sockets, also the tubes ride on the tops of the screws holding the sockets in, making the situation worse. It feels like something from a small company working out of a garage, even the cabinet, which looks really slick but isn't all that complicated in construction.

The amount of labor required to bolt it all together must have been substantial, stamped steel and rivets would have cut the work significantly, but maybe that's why they were out of business by 1950.

Interesting that the 5U4 LV Rectifier is inside the HV cage while the 5V4 Damper tube is outside by the Filter cans, I checked the schematic thinking they had been switched but no, that's the correct layout. Maybe one of those engineering Doh! moments when they realized they made a mistake but it was too late to change it?

The CRT has a ground wire taped to it, when the mask was removed it allowed the CRT to slide forward enough to lose contact with the ground springs, the solution was to tape a ground to the tube and screw it to the chassis. The age of this hack tells me that the mask was removed long, long ago, no doubt so the visible area of the screen would be larger, maybe he saw a Porthole set somewhere and got the idea.

I doubt I will make it to the ETF convention, though one of these times I really must.

If there was way to simply put the mask in a 3D scanner and copy it that would be great, I don't know if that tech exists yet or is practical if it does, so making a copy will probably involve a Rubber mold of some sort, not the kind of thing that could be done in a short visit.

I noticed the 10FM is on the ETF's list of rare Post-War sets with two verified examples, three now I guess.

That is so cool, Eric!

I also remember sneaking a watch of Steve Allen's late show, but my mom would insist I turn it off and go to sleep. So I wouldn't fall asleep in Mrs Murphy's boring 4th grade class.

I was around 9 or so, and had thought "fink" was the "F" word. I was a little behind in my vocabulary :D at the time.

Someone with the name Donald Fink wrote a television broadcast reference book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_G._Fink

When this Videodyne TV was made, they may have gotten a great deal on surplus aluminum, as there was tons of it left over from WW2 military equipment manufacturing.

Sorry to go OT. But... I went to Catholic school. In High School, 1962-66, we were taught by Marianist Brothers. I was brought in after school for using that word. I was very close to getting suspended. My, how times have changed...

Eric,
That 10FM or 12FM is in very good shape all around. Great find. The FM version
uses the better tuner I think.
Ed

Videodyne TV
 

I've owned two Videodynes. They are neat sets. One thing to examine are the screws that attach the sub chassis to the main chassis. These work loose over time, and cause weird effects with ground loops. These sets were offered as kits, and were well designed. You have a rare winner!

What, for saying fink?:saywhat::eek:

Yes, I was. Catholic school, goofy Marionist Brother.

I started work on it tonight.

Nothing major, just pulled all the tubes, sprayed out the controls and tube sockets and cleaned the dirt off the chassis. Most of it was loose fluff and it came off easily with a brush and vacuum cleaner, then a little spritz of cleaner here and there.

I noticed that both of the potentiometers have switches on them, one is on/off, Brightness the other is on/off Contrast (the cover page of Sams has an error where it calls them both out as Contrast controls). The second one switches of the "Y" section of the power supply only, I haven't figured out what that is yet but possibly it cuts out the TV circuits when you want to listen to the radio?

I've been working on this slowly but steadily, it's completely recapped but there are a few caps I just tacked in for diagnostic purposes and still need to restuff in the original paper sleeves.

The set was having some vertical issues, sometimes working, sometimes jittering all over the place and folding over, also the vertical output tube was overheating and a 22k resistor to the Sync tube (one I had already replaced) was getting hot enough to discolor.

I replaced the Vert Hold pot that was very flaky, that helped some but it was still having issues, they got worse after it ran a while.

Did some voltage checks and found some serious discrepancies in the Vertical section, that turned out to be an open winding in the Vert Blocking Transformer, tacked in a new (but incorrect) one and it started working very well. NOS Stancor transformer is on order, also some NOS Allen Bradley 1 meg resistors to replace a couple that are more than 50% high.

Here's a short video showing it malfunctioning.

And a picture showing it after subbing the bad transformer.The transformer I used is the wrong part number but is probably close enough I could have gotten away with leaving it, however the correct part (Stancor A-8111) was easy to find and cheap so might as well do it right.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1460338394


The temporary transformer install, all the old paper caps here except the dangling one have been restuffed, the yellow caps and the blue electrolytics will be restuffed inside the original sleeves before it's done.
I had to dig up four 1949 era Sprague .1@600 caps to replace some that had been replaced way back in the sets history, I could have restuffed those I guess but I decided to use the type it left the factory with.
All the OEM caps in this were Sprague, none were Bumblebees or Black Beauties, that's good because they would have been hard/impossible to restuff.
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1460338910

I'm calling the chassis done, I think the chassis is working as well as can be
expected.

I rewired the CRT socket using OEM style cloth covered wire in the correct (as far as I could tell) colors. The old wiring was so cracked and brittle it was shorting to the chassis where it came through the hole.
I also took the focus coil apart and replaced the wiring to it because it was just as bad.

Before
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1464416730

After ( I put all the rivets back in the base after I was sure it was all correct)
http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...1&d=1464416738

After rewiring the CRT socket I was having a problem with a dark bar rolling through the picture and unstable sync. It turned out to be something with the 6AG7 Video Output tube, maybe a bad connection or a bit of solder wedged under the socket, I just pulled it out and plugged it in a few times and it cleared up and became rock solid, the tube is new.

The General Electric 10BP4 that came with the set is very bright and sharp, it had some bad connections in the base but I re-soldered them and it's fine now.

Now I need to work on the cabinet and figure out what to do about the missing CRT bezel. I have a generic 10" mask that I'll probably use until I can find the correct part.

Very short video of it working posted here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leoliK0yhBs