[bgadow]

Wanted to share the "finished" product. Things went very well. Actually, one of the biggest challenges was that long ago some dolt glued the volume control knob in place. And it was some good glue! I actually ended up pulling the shaft out "by its roots". Oh, well, the power switch was bad anyway. I had to destroy the old knob to get it off the shaft, but it was interferring with the fine tuning knob so this gave me an excuse to change to a smaller one. I didn't do much with the chassis while it was out besides vacuum it & replace a ceramic disc which had cracked in two. Almost all tubes appear to be original, with spring of '63 date codes. Counting the 3 or 4 replacements I put in there I guess 6 are newer. The CRT is original, I confirmed. The cataract surgery went well-just a little harder than I thought. It didn't loosen as quick as I imagined, but I had help-Mrs. Gadow worked the heat gun while I worked the perimeter with popsicle sticks. I was really surprised, once everything went back together and I switched it on nothing was out of tune! I like stability like that from a set. One of the oddities-the first I've ever seen,anyway, is the set has a glass color crystal (like a miniature tube). I had only seen the metal ones. Whats the story behind that? Is that OEM? Well, it works! A little tweaking of the color alignment brought the tint back around. It was thrown off, I think, earlier when I was using the screwdriver instead of a new tube to fix barberpolling. Convergence & purity went well. The worst remaining trouble is a mechanical problem with the UHF tuner. I'm going to have to pull it but for now I'm just using an old VCR. Another thing I thought was worth noting: my CTC-5, which I bought locally, is full of repair tags (imagine that, a CTC-5 that needed repairs!) with an address of Elkins Park (Philadelphia). This set came from the basement of an old house just miles away in Philly. (about 2 hours from me)

I have really earned a lot of respect for these sets-the CTC-12/16 chassis is, from what I've seen, a real solid performer. Others have commented on the famous crisp picture of RCA color sets & this set does not disapoint me.