Quote:
|
Originally Posted by jstout66
Check out this combo. Seller says set let out sparks tho when plugged in. If memory serves this set is a CTC-24 or 25. I hated the tuner design on these sets. RCA only used it for this chassis. To tune, you push in the channel select knob. They were glitchy and you always had to fine tune them when changing stations.
|
When I was in junior high in the early '70s, my school had several RCA b&w TVs with the same type of fine-tuning arrangement. I don't recall that these sets ever drifted off channel once fine tuned properly, but then again all this was 36 years ago or so, and the sets were only used on a couple stations (Cleveland only had two UHF stations at that time, and one of those was the NET [now PBS] affiliate--man, the reception was awful, especially in that area which was some 30 miles from the stations, and given the fact that the NET/PBS channel in Cleveland only had a 1-megawatt ERP transmitter at the time). I do remember those were big RCA table models, 21" IIRC, in heavy steel cabinets, on wheeled carts six feet high (more or less).
I don't know what it was, however, about the tuners in the CTC-24/25 chassis that caused them to drift off station as much as you say.
Granted, these were tube-type sets and were given to a bit of drift until the tubes warmed up, but for the tuners to drift so much that the fine tuning had to be reset after every channel change...that sounds like there was something actually wrong with the tuner itself. Didn't that model have AFC? I can't imagine an RCA TV of that vintage
not having some form of automatic fine tuning, unless the set we're discussing in this thread is a heck of a lot older than I think it is (I'm guessing late '60s or maybe early '70s; the front panel suggests the latter, to me anyway--I knew someone in my hometown 35 years ago whose family had a big console like that). If it had the push-fine-tune mechanism (which came out, IIRC,in the '70s), I would think it would have had to have some kind of AFC as well.
BTW, I like console TVs, but even if I had the room for it (and even if it were about 2500 miles closer to my home) I personally would steer clear of that RCA CTC24/25 on ebay as it probably has some serious power supply issues, or worse. If the set threw sparks as much as the seller says it did, there probably
is some problem with a rather large low-resistance short in the power supply; maybe the transformer is shorted or there are bad filter caps (as Chad mentioned), etc. If there were such a huge short in the chassis it should have kicked out the circuit breaker, long before anything had a chance to throw sparks. I suspect the set's present owner may have bypassed the breaker with a piece of wire. This, as we all know, is a one-way ticket to disaster if the TV has or develops any kind of low-resistance short; the power transformer could burn out or set the chassis on fire, if the house fuses/circuit breakers don't blow or open first.