[N2IXK]

OK, it's been a couple weeks, and things are progressing slowly.

Spent several sessions at the bench replacing ALL the paper caps, restuffing the 4 multi-section electrolytic cans, and replacing the flaky candohm resistor. Used a 820 ohm/50W aluminum cased unit to replace the 850 ohm/12W section, and a pair of 20W axial ceramic units to replace the original 650 ohm/6W sections. Also disassembled the volume control, and got the power switch working again (really dirty contacts).

Now it was finally time to apply power to this beast, for the first time in who knows how long.

Hooked my DMM across the 5U4 socket plate pins, and plugged into a dim-bulb tester and a variac. Turned the switch on, and brought the variac up while watching the DMM reading. Brought the applied voltage up in slow increments until the applied line voltage was 117V, and the 5U4 plates were seeing about 800Vrms. The series lamp was dark, so no shorts in the power tranny. Let the unit sit for about 30 minutes with no drama, so powered down, removed the dim bulb, and repowered the set. Again, no drama, and let it sit for a while to see if anything was going to fail.

While the set was cooking, I gave the tubes a quick cleaning to remove the grime, then powered down and reinstalled them all, except for the 5U4, 1B3, and the CRT. Then powered the set up again, and found 2 tubes that wouldn't light. The 6K6 vertical output tube, and one of the 6AG5s in the IF strip. Wiggling the 6K6 in the socket found a loose socket contact, which will need tightening or replacement. The 6AG5 is just plain open (maybe why the set was retired years ago?). Let the set cook with the filaments on for about an hour, and the transformer barely gets warm. So far, so good.

So over the weekend, I need to fish around in the junkbox for a 6AG5, and look into the 6K6 socket issue. Next up will be pulling the HOT back out, putting in the 5U4, and bringing the B+ up slowly to see what happens....