In my youth I have pulled many old sets out of barns, and have made them work, replacing stuff almost strictly on a "need-to-do" basis, owing to the limited funds usually associated with being young. This "low budget" condition constrained me to a "minimalist" approach to restoration, and gave me many hours of troubleshooting experience that I would not have had given the ability to merely "shotgun" the entire chassis in capacitor replacement. I usually found that a set that really misbehaved on plug-in and play attempt would respond well to a 'lytic overhaul.
I restored operation to an amazingly massive Crosley console in this way. It had 4 pix IF stages, and had an amazingly bright and sharp picture. I took this set out of the top floor here in pieces many years later. It came in though my upstairs bedroom window, as the stairwell would not admit such a large piece of furniture.
Back then I did salvage an old Westinghouse table model set that had been in a cellar, and apparently had been very dirtily flooded. The set had no back on it, and the entire chassis was caked in mud of about 2-3 inches, with nothing but the tops of most of the tubes showing above the cake of mud. I got the set for zilch from an antique shop nearby here about 35 years ago, and brought it home in my station wagon. I dropped the set out of the back of the car, rinsed out the innards of the telly with a jet nozzle on a garden hose--tubes flying out of their sockets and ricocheting around everywhere. I then let the set dry in the sun for a couple of days of good hayin' weather as I toiled in the fields here. I then refit all the tubes, renewing ones that were obviously broken or with white "getter" marks on them. I spritzed all sockets, pots and controls with tuner lube. Other than that I did
nothing else to this set except to give it power with an extension cord out there in the driveway. It did nothing exciting--except to warm up and show a raster of healthy snow and a roar of same from the speaker. I put a finger on the antenna terminal screws, and got a picture from local WFSB channel 3 from Hartford here.
That set served my little bro very well as a bedroom telly for at least 3 years before we found somthing smaller. His only complaint was that this beast was so very big, and he wanted a set that was smaller. But the 21" "silverama" replacement CRT in this set gave out a sharp and bright picture, and the set gave zero trouble as long as we used it. I simply threw it out after we had no use for it, as there was no demand for such mdse at the time.
I don't necessarily condone trying to operate an antique set without preemptive recapping. I only bring this up only to illustrate that half the thrill in finding any antique for me was always seeing what it would do just as it was. I realise that a lot of damage could occur needlessly from such approach. The thing was that back then I had no money to speak of as a kid. At the same time I had a degree of courage that made me plug in things that perhaps I shouldn't. While I may have had a few exciting episodes that caused me to yank the plug really quickly I had a lot of successful encounters in just plugging in and firing up just the same. My life was all the richer for the experience I gained from being "Dangerous Dave."
