Old Meck TV for sale Locally to me, Should I pick it up?
 

Hello Everyone yesterday I was looking through Facebook Market Place and I saw what appears to be an old Meck TV for sale on there for sale on there for $5 and I was wondering if I should go and get it or not at that price, because I know the old Meck TVs are fairly rare TVs in any condition and this one appeared to be all there and in really good shape (no peeling veneer or water damage and the picture tube looked good yet).

Pictures of the unit in question is posted below.

What do you guys think? Should I pop for it at $5?

At 5 you can get your money back parting it out if you need...If the CRT is good that is a cnote to someone in need.

Mounts (edit my phone's autocorrect apparently thinks the name Muntz must be replaced with the word mounts or mints :lmao: ) sets are simple to recap and make basically work, but if you expect really good scan geometry/linearly or perfect performance you will either never achieve it or drive your self nuts trying to find the right combination of tubes it likes and changing all the resistors and other similar things...


Muntzes are like 2-4 tube AM radios... they receive the signal under the right conditions but don't out perform other sets of their time (often even when the other sets are getting close to needing repair).

That's not a Muntz, it's a Meck. Made in Plymouth,Indiana, possibly rarer! :scratch2:

Even Better, because I have relatives that live near there and my dad is from Culver, Indiana which is just up the road from Plymouth, Indiana.

At 5 bucks I'd already have it in the back of my car! :yes:
Get it, before some fishtanker does.

I would also be picking up whatevers beside it.......

I think the set next to it is probably a small screen electromagnetic deflection Motorola (based on the chassis glimpse) those are nice too if pricing is fair.

What Tom-and Tube TV said...

I'll be going over there tomorrow to check it out, and I'll definitely check out the other TV next to it and see if they want to get rid of that as well and maybe do a bundle deal.

By the way they do have the knob for the TV that is missing in the picture.

Well I got the TV today, it said Philharmonic on the front of it, and its missing the Power switch/Volume control knob and the fine tuning knob for the tuner, and the back cover and the channel display panel for the tuning knob.

Other than that its complete.

It has a 12P4 Picture tube which looks like its in really good shape yet. :yes:

I actually got a bonus piece thrown in for free, an old Westinghouse Columnette Tombstone Radio that the cabinet is shot on it but the chassis and speaker is still in excellent shape yet with all of its original tubes in it yet, and its original cloth cord still intact yet. I'll add pictures when I get a chance.

Philharmonics are rarely seen too. It's not the most unique looking early TV, but the odd-brand name and roundie screen make it certainly worth getting, preserving, and having it performing again. The low price make it a no-brainer. Good luck with it!

Whomever made it they sure adhered to a minimal circuit approach. Or maybe the tubes are all scrunched up towards the front of the chassis? In any event it's an interesting find. Looking forward to more detailed pictures. :thmbsp:

I took a closer look at the TV set yesterday and just like DieselJeep said it is a Meck TV.
I'm guessing the Philharmonic Designation on the front of the TV was the model name of the TV.
All of the tubes that were present in the TV still were all badged Meck and actually this TV has way more tubes in it than it looks like it has, they are just mostly in the front of the cabinet and inside the High Voltage Cage.

This TV actually has an interesting Story behind it, the person I bought it from found the TV in a really old farm house that the roof had collapsed on it 20 years ago and the TV some how managed to survive all that time in really good shape (the cabinet didn't rot or anything and the chassis and the tubes aren't horribly rusted away or anything).

I think that what saved this TV from degrading too badly was that the cabinet on this TV was actually Solid Wood and not just veneered plywood like what they did with the old radios from that period.

Glad to hear you got it! This gives us all a bit of hope that there are still a few neat sets out there a a fair price.
Look forward to seeing some more pictures of it.

Whether Meck, Muntz, or Philharmonic, they were all budget TV's. These secondary companies sales edge was making them seem like bargain through bare-bones electronics. The funny thing is these sets often perform just fine. Today, as a collectible, these more unusual sets appeal to collectors more than the popular named sets. I have a friend who owns a 7" combo console Philharmonic. It looks pre-war. It'll be one of the last TV sets he parts with!

Meck made TV's with other private labels too. Spiegel's Aircastles and even those so-called custom sets badged Radio-Craftsman.
Meck bought the E.H. Scott radio name in the late 40's or early 50's. :scratch2:

Ok that makes sense as to why it would be a Meck and have the E. H. Scott Philharmonic name plate on it. :scratch2::thmbsp:

OK so I was finally able to get the chassis out of my Meck/Philharmonic TV and repopulated the chassis with known good tubes from my tube stash and plugged it in to test it out and when I turned the TV on all of the tubes including the Picture tube started glowing but then a few seconds later the 5U4G Rectifier tube for the power supply starting sparking and arcing inside so I quickly turned it off and unplugged it.

Any ideas as to what could be causing the arcing 5U4G Rectifier tube? thats the only tube in the whole TV that was arcing the rest of the tubes were working fine.

I did notice that the Power supply filter caps (which are in a cardboard can) was snapped off from its phenolic wafer that held it to the chassis (the phenolic mounting wafer that the capacitor can was mounted to itself was snapped off from the chassis not the capacitor can itself).

Here are some pictures of the chassis of this TV showing the Tubes.

It is super obvious. You shouldn't have to ask. One or more of the lytics is almost certainly shorted.

Most sets made before the mid 60s will not work or eventually kill themselves if all the lytics and paper caps are not changed.
The only reason to power up before a recap is on the off chance it works you have a baseline to see if you make a mistake and add a new problem when you recap it immediately after.

Well I was trying to power it up to see what kind of working order it was in. I figured it was going to need new capacitors but I wasn't sure.

How does the underside of the chassis look? The top shows signs of having been a rodent hotel at one time.

This TV as I had stated previously had sat in an old abandoned farm house that its roof had collapsed on it 20 years prior and the TV sat in those conditions for 20 years prior to it being found by the person I had gotten the TV from.

The TV's Cabinet is actually in immaculate condition and was just really dirty despite it sitting in the conditions it had sat in for as long as it had, the undercarriage of the TV is also extremely clean for the conditions the TV had sat in.

Unfortunately the Westinghouse Radio I had gotten from the same person which came out of the same place wasn't so lucky and its cabinet was trashed but oddly enough even inspite of a little rust on the chassis (which cleaned right off with some #00 grade steel wool) the radio still worked flawlessly.

Unfortunately it seems that finding the correct knobs for this TV is going to be quite tricky even with fleabay, which I found a few knobs on there that looked like a close match to the original Channel Selector knob and volume/on/off switch but nothing exactly like the original knobs, and also there didn't seem to be any channel selector escutcheons for sale on fleabay like the one I needed.

Post a WTB on antiqueradios.com, with pictures of what they should look like if you can. I've found some knobs I never expected to be able to get that way!

I've had issues with that site in the past and so I would rather not deal with that site anymore, otherwise I would.

Here are some pictures of the cabinet for this TV, you'll be surprised at how immaculate the cabinet is considering this TV had sat in an old farmhouse that its roof collapsed 20 years ago.

That is quite amazing.

Wow that's nice woodwork. Sometimes you get and get one with a nice cabinet.
This is one of those times.

Thanks! And yes I agree this is definitely a very nice cabinet, and the fact that its all solid walnut and not just veneered plywood might be why this TV cabinet survived in such good shape after all these years. :yes: :thmbsp: :D

OK so this TV's Power Supply Cap Can is a 40/40/40 @ 450 VDC I would of tried to keep the original cap in place for appearances sake but somehow the phenolic wafer that the power supply filter was attached to was snaped off at the chassis so the power supply filter cap is just hanging on the chassis by its wires and what not.

I'm thinking of mounting a small terminal strip under the chassis near where the original power supply filter cap was originally as there is a blank hole located conveniently next to where the old filter caps are that I could bolt the terminal strip to.

I'm assuming that the wires that were attached to the mounting tabs on the original can capacitor were using those as grounding terminals or junction points of some sort and aren't critical as to where they are relocated to?

Physical location of lytics usually is not critical. On cans that connect to chassis (and some that don't but run the can negative wire to convenient points) I often place the individual replacements at the point the wire to the can positive originates from even if that spot is on the far end of the chassis.

One thing to make sure of though if the can negative was insulated from the chassis and fed from one or more wires that are not directly connected to the chassis to keep that floating negative separate from the chassis...In my first year or two of restoring radios I messed up a Zenith Transoceanic replacing a floating negative lytic with individual parts that I tied the negatives of to chassis instead of the floating negative...Later I figured that mistake out and fixed it.

Its a capacitor can with a cardboard tube jacketand the capacitor didn't seem to have a ground that I could see on the jacket anywhere, it gave the different shapes for each section along with the values for each section but it didn't list anything about what the negative connection was for the can.
Could it of been that they used a non-polar capacitor can for the power supply filter caps?? :scratch2:

No non-polarized lytics are not used for filter caps in these sets (sometimes single section non-polarized were used to couple the yoke and allow centering DC to be added).

If there is a metal can under the cardboard then there were negative terminals on it's bottom (they may have snapped off when it got busted off its wafer). If there is no metal can or terminals on the cap and just wires out the bottom then there has to be a negative lead if it is a multi section cap.

You need to get the schematic and trace things out if you can't make sense of the wiring that's there.

The reason I was asking about the ground connection with this capacitor is because on the bottom of the capacitor there's only 3 terminals for the "positive" leads and then theres the twist-loc tabs that held the capacitor to the phenolic wafer that snapped off the TV chassis and one of the twist-loc tabs has some wires attached to it but I'm unsure as to whether they are ground wires or if they are just using it as a convenient terminal strip.

Like I said the Capacitor is a cardboard cased multi-section capacitor with no apparent ground connection of any sort, at least not to the chassis anyways that I can see of.

As you will see from the pictures that I took of this can cap, it has absolutely no mention on the case of having a ground of any sort, and you can even see the wiring on the capacitor that there is abolutely no ground connection on this capacitor, and that the one twist-loc tab is just being used as a terminal strip and that's it, nothing ground related.

The one twist lock tab with wires on it is the common (negative) terminal of all three 40 mfd capacitors in the can. The design of this power supply calls for the this cap to be connected to a point other than ground. It might be a way for the power supply to generate a negative bias power supply. If you could get a schematic, it would be obvious.

95%of the time that a can is covered in cardboard and mounted to phenolic it's can negative terminals are NOT connected to ground but instead tie to a floating negative line at a different potential than the chassis. The can is not a tie point but the negative of the caps and the wires connected to the can are a negative rail.


One other use for the wafer and separate negative from chassis: in some series string sets the chassis is not used as a ground/B- and serves only as a shield with it's only connection to the rest of the circuit being a parallel cap and resistor to couple it to signal ground, but limit chassis shock current.

I do have a schematic but it's hard to make heads or tails of it as far as finding the Power Supply or what not.

You know, SAMS Standard Notation might be one of the best things that ever happened for the television service industry.

If there is a power transformer, look for it. If there is a power rectifier look for it. Even the wackiest non- standard schematics and circuit designs can be followed if you find the recognizable stuff and trace from it to what you need. If parts values are only listed in a separate table print the table and have it next to the schematic. If the schematic is on multiple pages print it out and stick the sections together into a single page.