I want to bring everyone up to date on the CRT rebuilding equipment – which is now a CRT rebuilding project. I have heard from many of you and I do appreciate all the input. Special thanks for those bits and pieces of the “black art” that several of you have posted and which may prove to be critical in helping to put the puzzle together. Keep it coming. But not to me. I’m pleased to announce that Steve McVoy has taken this on as a project for the Early Television Foundation Museum in Hilliard, Ohio – a suburb of Columbus (where you can probably still find real potato chips). As I understand this would first and foremost be a preservation project – to house the equipment in a museum where it can actually be seen and inspected by every person who is interested enough to make the pilgrimage to the heavenly hills of Hilliard (I’m guessing about the heavenly part – I have yet to visit there myself).
It goes without saying that many of you, including Steve and me, would like to see this equipment achieve its intended purpose – not to go into competition with anybody – but to make an effort to see that we, as collectors, are never left high and dry when it comes to freshening up those picture tubes that will keep our collections alive – especially those which are more near and dear to us: the 3KP4, 7JP4, 10BP4/FP4, 12LP4/KP4. Well that’s as much as I can lift. But others might have larger tubes in mind and there’s always the heavy lifters – the true masochists – who have to have it brought to you in “living color”. The equipment might even be able to handle a 30BP4 for the humongous DuMont – but that’s out of my lifting league. When this equipment goes out my door, the future of it will be up to Steve. Is there any one of us who wouldn’t like to see it fired up – if nothing else to try some dry runs to make sure everything works? I’ve heard something about his plans and they sound ambitious but practical. If you have ideas or comments – then by all means send them along to Steve via
[email protected].
Thanks to the internet we in California scanned and e-mailed the instruction manual for this equipment to Steve and he now has a link to it on the museum’s site under “restoration/rebuilding.” Perhaps it will jar your memory and elicit some more pieces to the puzzle – anybody out there ever re-phosphored a tube? Know anyone who might have?
And just remember there was a time, not so long ago, when those CRT gaskets for the Motorola 7”ers were unobtanium.
Roger Dreyfoos