RCA CTC? Table top with rolling cart
 

Picking up this beauty on Sunday.

Very clean. And no cataract. Very odd. Time capsule like.

Any guesses on which model, chassis? Almost looks like a CTC-16 with those channel knobs to me, but the grey screen bezel is odd. Usually I thought it was green.

If it's amenable to being rolled around, it'd hafta have auto-degauss. That would make it a '16. The '15 has no auto-degauss, and would be losing purity every time it's rolled around, requiring a service call to degauss it.

Good call! This will be my second CTC-16! My avatar is a snapshot of my first CTC-16.

Perhaps a 20? :scratch2:

jr

Doug Harland drh4683 has a CTC-16 metal table top on his YouTube channel. It's a CTC-16.
Looks alot like this.

Looking at pictures of the 20, it's possible you are right it looks as if the 20 had the same knobs as the 16 and the placard on the top is more antiquated to a 20 ..

It's probably a 16...I don't recall seeing a 20 with a separate UHF tuning knob. CTC20s usually had the single knob tuner some later 16s had the single knob tuner too.

The UHF tuner was an option on my CTC-15E. Congress mandated UHF tuners be included on sets starting with the 1965 model year.

If there are any photos of the back of the set you could tell the difference between a 16 and a 20 even with the back on. The 16 has a slide switch with a vertical opening for the peaking control, the 20 uses a round control shaft.

Congress mandated UHF tuners be included in 1963, NOT 1965.

I thought it was June or July of 64' that the UHF mandate took effect on new sets...

April 30, 1964.

https://transition.fcc.gov/Bureaus/O...tories/612.pdf

jr

Yup, and the 1965 model sets hit the dealer stores in fall of 64.

That's right. In the 15, wasn't there a plug in the hole of the UHF tuner if it was optional?

I suspect that there were some late 64 sets with mandated UHF tuners, but indeed, all 1965 model year and later sets should be so equipped.

jr

An excerpt:

Television and FM tuners? What's next? Will all smartphones have to come with little TV dinner trays and beer bottle openers, too? But seriously folks, what's intriguing about the article (aside from that reference to "the broadband elite") is that it cites a number of precedents for the TV tuner move—first among them a mostly forgotten mandate from the early 1960s.
"There is precedent," the essay notes. "In 1962, Congress passed the All-Channel Receiver Act requiring UHF tuners in all TV sets."

The “All-Channel Receiver Act” was passed by Congress in 1961 and mandated by the Federal Communication Commission. It did not take affect until 1964 and the 1965 model year receivers were first affected. It is true that some manufacturers had UHF tuners in their sets prior to 1965.

My CTC-15E has 1963 date codes but was marketed as a 1964 model. It has a space for the UHF tuner on the front model.

On the subject of UHF tuners, I remember seeing when I was very young, UHF to VHF adapters , for TVs that did not have them built in. :o

Ah yes. The Blonder Tongue one and two-tube (two and three knob) models pictured here were the most popular in our neck of the woods...
https://www.bing.com/images/search?q...rter&FORM=IGRE

Picked up! More to come.. Found out it was a road find sitting with a bunch of BPC tvs in Oakland. The gentleman I met that grabbed it from near certain doom is a fellow AKer. Nice guy. Our kids got along great and met up at a Rock and mineral store.. One of my other passions.

FG 551W = CTC 16XH

jr

Interesting, the last CTC 16 I had used the XAE chassis I believe. Should be the same? I took a peek in the back. So far it look like RCA red label tubes

Good sign. Next is a Picture tube check. Coming soon.. It's a 21FBP22A RCA Hi Lite. Matching serial number to the chassis and no brightener!!

Well... Results are in..

Red and green bias were 3/4 turned up, blue halfway. Kine bias was on medium.

I'm going to let her cook at 8v overnight. have a feeling shes a bit sleepy (hopefully)

Overnight results. Not horrible but that green gun may be a little on the weak side.
Good thing is, the needles don't drop when using life test..

Had a quick look at the flyback.. there's some wax. Doughnut is not too crusty and no obvious carbon tracks...
Looked for obvious issues and everything seemed like it was ready for the gold..


Disconnected HOT plate cap, used my light bulb variac cord... instant circuit breaker trip. Have filament glow to all tubes. Light was not showing a short. reset breaker, tried once more.. bright light and circuit breaker trip again.
2nd can lytic is quite warm to the touch. Obviously a short in the b+ filtering.

So to recap, it needs a recap.. :D

A very nice find indeed! The back is in excellent condition with a crisp ID label.

Thank you. First order of business is to replace all those 80uf 450v lytics. Kinda feels like 2007 all over again. haha. (I had a helluva time with my first CTC16).

http://videokarma.org/showthread.php...ghlight=ctc-16

Btw, if you look at the 2 sets of pictures on the CRT tester, you'll notice the first time I had the meter set to 6v range, next time was 8v range.. At the 8v I'm still able to achieve 6.3v so I left it there.

With a B+ dead short, the rect diodes took quite a hammering. I would change those just on general principles.

:oOOPs! Double post

Milwaukee, as being a UHF town way early, there were many makes sold here. It seems Mallory and it's clones, Alliance, Silvertone ,CBS Columbia, Sylvania and Arvin, all made by Mallory. Then there was Granco, Blonder Tongue, Regency, Radio Receptor and Dewald (same).
I've seen them all, the Regencys the worst and the Radio Receptors, close to the best.
I got a lot of them as freebees, when people bought new all-channel TV's.:thmbsp:

is wax loss like that something to worry about?

It looks significant. I dont think I've had one with wax loss that much. I had a '66 Magnavox color once that had a ton of wax loss and a burned up flyback.

I haven't found any shorts on the filters. But a shorted fly I dont believe will cause excessive wattage upon powerup immediately. I believe the Horizontal output plate cap removed should shutdown HV? Am I correct?

I'm grabbing my watt meter tomorrow.

Those old electrolytics have always been a weird beast, no telling how will act once they get 100v-400v on them, that's why they made those old leakage testers, may not see a short with a meter, but once they get up to voltage, they crap out.

I'm surprised my CTC-16XL did not pop breakers after sitting in storage for so long.

not sure what you mean by c2, but if it's C2 via the SAMS on my CTC-16XL , then it might be C2a, that has the highest V, right off the choke.

or you may be thinking of C1a SAMS placed C1 in the middle of the 2 :/

As far as flybacks, i think you are right, with the HOT removed, the load should be removed.


that is always the fear with mine...
Even though there is no wax seen under mine and it looks fine, I'd feel beter having a spare.

In a turn of events, I will be replacing all the lytics in the power supply. Some of the 80 micro farad are pretty excessive. Ill be cutting off the cans and restuffing them. The reason the circuit breaker was popping is because it is apparently bad. When I wiggle it I can watch the resistance go from to 250 down to about 8ohms.

Just not worth the chance that I may stress the flyback more than it looks already by running a worn out power supply.

This tv should be fun! Haven't even got to power it up yet to see how many gremlins it has and it already under the gun..

I lifted the chassis out tonight and brought it upstairs to my workbench to start the process but too dang worn out from Taekwondo with the kiddos so I'll be ordering caps tomorrow and cutting the ol cans right off to prep.

Are you measuring this between the circuit breaker's two contacts, or between a contact and ground?

Between the two pins on the breaker.

On second thought, after looking over the SAMS a bit again, removing the damper should de-energize the FBT completely, it gets is voltage via the damper through the horizontal linearity coil & L35(ctc-16 ) L36 (ctc-16xl)

So if by any chance, there is a short in the primary, removing the damper will take the load off the main bias.

Good call. I found C136a and C136B, the 450v 80uf and the 350v 2uf on the shortest can filter bad with high ESR. The other two cans seem ok thus far. One goes to the deflection yoke, and the other is part of the RF AGC.

I'll be replacing those tonight and maybe fusing the bad circuit breaker and attempting a powerup. First I'll test the shunt reg, HV rect, and H output tubes for shorts. That fly has seem some hard use it looks.

I quickly dialed in the bad from the checkable by the old speaker test.. both C136s off the short can produced no audio.

Well after replacing the 3 450 80uf and a 350v 2uf heres what I got.

So looks like a vertical recap and something not right about the IF stage. Blank raster.

By the way. The circuit breaker was doing its job. Was tripping at 985w!!!

check the 150k resistor on the vert height Pot, they are almost always bad.
(the one to the 390v)


and the 180k and 150k in the IF section ( r48 / r50 on CTC-16xl ) off of bias point 3, they always go out too, they were out on mine.

Have you DeOx'ed the service switch? It can cause blank raster.