Rare prewar Westinghouse restoration
 

About six months ago I had the opportunity to restore AK member Doug's RCA TT-5. Recently I finished his prewar Westinghouse which has a chassis identical to that of the TT-5. In fact, the front of the cabinet says RCA but all other labels identify it as a Westinghouse. I believe that this set is one of two known to exist.

This one was not in as good of condition as the TT-5. It had a tuner sub-assembly mounted under the chassis (seen in photo) and a switch mounted in place of the original on-off switch. The high voltage capacitor was missing but fortunately the original mounting bracket for it was under the chassis holding a much later capacitor. The focus shaft was broken off and the antenna terminal strip was replaced with a large coax connector.

I removed the added-on tuner chassis and restuffed all the caps and electrolytics. I thought that the high voltage winding on the power transformer was open and was trying to make a modern high voltage module to work when I found that the original xformer was good after all. The CRT was open but I bought a bunch of 5BP4s from Apex Surplus in LA. They were caked with mud but when I cleaned them up they all turned out to be RCAs and all produced as bright as a picture that a 5BP4 can produce.

The pictures are before and after shots of the chassis and the cabinet which has a pretty good original finish. The transformer is missing in the before picture because I removed it thinking that I would have to have it rewound.

Steve

What a beauty! Very, VERY nice!! Now that's a great piece of history!

Looks great. Did you restore the woodwork on the cabinet too?

- Pete

That would be about like getting to work on Henry Ford's Quadricycle of 1893...Or the Benz "Patent Motorenwagen" of 1886.. or..well, y'all get the picture. Great job, wonderful story, & another piece of history brought back to life..THAT'S the best thing !

That's a nice one.

David

Wow! :jawdrop:

Fine job! Keep 'em coming!

Was this TT5 pre war TV designed for the old 441i system? or was it the normal B&W NTSC 525i system? And if it was 441 lines, did you modify the horizontal circuits some to get it from 13.2KHz to 15.75Khz?

And I heard that the sound on prewar sets was AM, not FM.

Pete:

The cabinet is in original condition. Overall it is very good. I did touch up a small bad spot on the top.

wa2ise:

It was designed for the 441 line system but the horizontal is broad enough to easily lock it in. Therefore, I did not have to modify it. Yes, the sound is AM.

I am missing one channel on this set as a coil was removed to install that modification that I removed. It is best, however, to play these on channel 3 or 4 from a signal source as tuners are not that great.

Steve

Wow, nice work. And what fun to get your hands on a set like that!

Probably a dumb question, but what was the add-on tuner assembly intended for? To change the tuning range?

Phil Nelson

Steve, it is amazing that the cabinet survived in that condition. Sure looks good. If you have time on the 24th come on down to the AK get together we are having in Buena Park.

- Pete