[jshorva65]

First, a question. I remember having read somewhere that either Tele-Matic or Channel Master marketed a line of replacement tuner shaft and detent assemblies for various makes of TV tuners and seeing a listing of available types (with photos and part numbers) somewhere online. I also remember that shafts for the RCA 630TS and similar models were available and that there were two versions of the RCA-type shaft having very similar appearance. Is anyone else aware of these or know which site had that old catalog listing? In 2006, my HD crashed and some of my Web resource links were among the files I wasn't able to restore from my backups.

On a recent 630TS restoration (a "severe shipping damage" casualty), I encountered absolutely pathetic signal strength (slightly better on channels 12 & 13 with a high RF output from a B&K 1077, but still highly degraded), after replacing all the paper caps, re-forming, and performance-testing all the electrolytics. Accompanying this was a medium-loudness, brief, single "pop" sound from the speaker during warm-up, followed by good picture and sound with signal injection into the IF. What I found with a 7-pin tube socket test adapter inserted between V1 (RF Amp) tube and socket was 0.5V on each 6J6 plate. Resistances checked OK the FIRST time. Subsequent testing, after removing the tuner from the chassis, revealed that V1 pin 2 intermittently went from infinity to about 18 ohms to chassis ground. R14 measured 7.6K instead of 4.7K and one of C14's leads was too close to and intermittently rubbing against the ground connection at the center of V1's socket. Carefully re-positioning the displaced C14 lead and replacing R14 fixed that issue. Since the short was at the plate end of R14, V2 and V3 still received enough B+ to (barely) continue functioning; C13 and C14 coupled some signal to the grid of V2 due to the not-quite-zero-ohms short, hence the overall pathetic performance but slight improvement at the upper end of the high band.

Louis Stangle of Quality TV Tuner Repair told me earlier this year that he no longer services low-IF tuners, only the 44-MHz types, since he no longer has the equipment on hand to support the low-band IF systems. This came as very unwelcome news to me since I had two low-IF tuners in need of repair at the time. I am equipped to fix SOME problems with RCA-type tuners of the 630's vintage, but am hesitant to attempt any "major surgeries" (ie: rewinding a burned-out segment of the wafer-mounted coils) without more practice on sets from my own personal collection.