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Originally Posted by ohohyodafarted
Sounds like a wrap to me Nick.  And I very much like your H drive and HV adjust mods. Next time you are over here you will have to draw the mods on my Sams for me. |
Sure thing Bob, though I had to mod my chassis to work as well as your unmodded one. I think mine had a lot more play time on it, so more parts drifted in value. Based on the voltage readings I took last time I was up your way, I think your set is just fine as is. I don't like the idea of fixed values for h-drive and HV, fiddling has always been my preference. Like tuning an engine for best performance, I can't leave well enough alone.
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And also remember as the young wipper snapper that you are, you have been used to watching modern day tv sets that were more capable of producing a decent picture in a moderately lit room. Back in the day (yes I go that far back) us old farts were used to watching color tv in the evening, during prime time when colorcasts from the network were likely to be seen, and it was common to watch in a dimly lit (if not completely dark) room. So an expremely bright picture was not all that necessary. (IE: we didn't have to turn the brightness up so far that the picture was apt to bloom) In fact lots of people who had nearly dead picture tubes would postpone replacing the crt for years by letting the set warm up for a long period of time and then watching in a totally dark room so they could see the dim image on the weak crt.
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I understand the low lighting thing, but I'm approaching it more from the standpoint of trying to understand why RCA would go from building a chassis with very good HV production (CTC-4) to something that by comparison was quite anemic. My Director 21 and 21-CT-55 both make a full and very dangerous 25kv, and are both able to drive the CRT to acceptable brightness levels even by modern standards. It seems to me that RCA took a step backwards with the CTC-5, by designing a chassis that was simply not capable of driving the CRT hard enough to produce even moderate brightness.
Some have said that RCA realized their mistake in the HV department, since all the later chassis had stiffer HV sections by comparison and were all more capable of producing high brightness than the CTC-5 chassis was. The CTC-5 has a stated HV of 19.5kv, CTC-7 comes in at 22.5kv (23.5 for the ones with silicon in the LV power supply), CTC-9 is 22.5kv, and later chassis went back to the full 25kv of the early models (CTC-16 thru CTC-20). So it seems on the surface that they made an error in judgement, but there may be a reason for their decision. We know that the CTC-5 had 2 distinct lines, both low cost entry level sets and the TOTL stuff. Since chassis tend to share parts on a generational basis, it's entirely possible that the 5 and 5N chassis only had the same HV sections because it was the most cost effective thing to do (parts bin swapping, as it's known). Then again, one could argue that when you make a TOTL set, you put top quality circuits in it. To counter that argument, perhaps they spent all their money with the 5N on it's more complicated chroma circuits and fancy cabinets. Seems an interesting discussion to have.