[Adam]

I just found this site, and I am so happy to find out I am not the only man on earth who collects and restores old televisions. I started about seven years ago when apartment life no longer allowed the space for working on old cars. Since then I have recieved many an odd look when asking for tubes or 400 volt electrolitic capacitors in electronic stores, as well as from my friends who can't believe that I actually prefer to watch a black and white set. Here are some of the details of my older B&W sets.
- two 1959 magnavox consoles, The first was my great grandmother's set, the first tv I ever fixed. I had to replace most of the tubes and capacitors, and there was an unuasually large number of burnt out resistors in the horiz sync circuit. The AM/FM radio also works well, as well as the record player after I took parts from the other magnavox to make one good one. The CRT is a bit weak, and I am often tempted to swap CRT's in these sets as this one has the nicer cabinet while the other one has a newer CRT (I think it was replaced some time in the 70's). The second 59 magnavox console I got last summer. This set was completely workrd through sometime in the 70's (judging by the writing on the replacment tubes). It has a new CRT, vert output transformer, yoke, etc. It worked as I got it with the exception of a bad power cord and a loose wire on one of the speakers. The record player was broken, as I stated before, I now have a record player in it I took out of a 65 mag. color console I junked a while back. (It dosen't work that well either, I stink at repairing record players)
- A 1959 Olympic console set. This one was out in the rain a long time and the cabinet was really awful. I painted it green, which I have been regretting for some time. This set required a complete recapping as well as alot of new tubes.(I think someone tried to turn it on when it was all wet. But it works well now(except for the speakers which need replacing, water damage again). The AM radio works ok, the record player motor was completely fried, so I put an old Zenith cobramatic in it, which works except for the record changing.
- A 1959 Stetchel Carlson. This set took me over a year to finally fix. The power supply wasn't putting out enough juice to get enough vertical size even after I had changed the electrolitics and the two diodes (both of which were bad) so I had removed the two resistors in it first thing as I began working on it. Afterwards there was a 'wavyness' on the right side of the screen and it would not hold vert. sync for long. Convinsed this was actually in the vert. circuit I replaced every component in it. I finally got a scope, and when I looked at the power supply I could see that it wasn't completely filtered, so I put the resistors back in and found that to be the source of my problems. I still could not get enough vert. size though. The culprit turned out to be a 22k resistor inside the tuner connected to chassis ground which was supposed to be 220k. Somebody had messed around with the tuner, the fine tuning disks were bent, and the coil to which the antenna leads was broken in a couple of places. I did what I could with it, and the set works good now (the power output was still a little low so I just reduced the value of the resistor feeding power to the vertical a little to get full vertical size), except for some slight buzzing in the audio. At the moment I am attributing it to the messed-up tuner.
- A 1961 Zenith. This set has a 23" B&W tube with the outer glass glued to the CRT. This is a great set, these early Zeniths are really a pleasure to work on. This set had a burnt out resististor in a section of the power supply that seems to only feed the video output portion of the chassis, it took a few other resistors with it. But the only other problem with this set was a slightly weak horiz. oscillator tube. I recapped the sync circuits, as I planned to watch this set often and didn't want to keep having to take it apart.
- 1963 Admiral console (record player only, broken record player. aargh...)
Bad caps in the vertical were my only difficulty here, could use allignment upper vhf stations are just out of reach can get picture only with the fine tuning all the way to one side)
- 1956 Philco metal cabinet, the set I am currently working on. This set had weak IF tubes and bad tubes in the tuner. The electrolitics are bad, but I am having difficulty finding new ones as the only store in the area that carries them just closed. Anybody know of a good source for these somewhere around LA?
- sets with bad flybacks: 1958 Hoffman, 1956 Bendix
- sets I haven't started working on yet: 55 Westinghouse, 57 Emerson
I also have a number of late 60's early 70's B&W "portable" tube sets and hybrids, and some tube color sets
I hope somebody enjoyed reading about my televisions, I can look around to see if I have any pictures. Again, I am so happy to know there are other people as crazy about preserving old tv's as I am.