Philco 48-2500 Restoration Blog

[Eric H]

Since this is probably going to be a long drawn out affair I thought I'd start a thread where I can post some notes and pictures on the progress of this set.

As many of you probably know I bought it on eBay for $37.00 and picked it up near Garden Grove CA in Orange County.

It came with a "Certificate of Authenticity" from The Hollywood Entertainment Museum", this means absolutely nothing except it was owned by them at one time for some purpose, maybe it was in a display, maybe not.

I wish it had been owned by Humphrey Bogart but then I probably wouldn't have gotten it so cheap.

The cabinet is somewhat rough, some Veneer will probably have to be replaced to get rid of some of the defects, it's all flat surfaces so if matching veneer can be found it shouldn't be too hard to do.

Looking through the lid I could see a lot of tubes were missing, I thought the seller had perhaps kept them for himself but when I pulled the back off I found a little surprise.

There is a narrow door on the right side (from rear) to access the chassis bolts, when I opened it there was a small box taped shut and labeled "Tubes out of Philco 2500" inside were all the missing tubes!

The first thing I did after removing the chassis was take apart the projection barrel and look at the concave mirror, it's not perfect, it has some scratches and a few spots of corrosion but overall it's still highly reflective and should work fine for the time being.

The trapezoidal mirror that reflects the picture on to the screen however is pretty much shot.

The chassis is in really good condition, very clean and rust free for the most part.

The CRT looks like it has a million miles on it, the Phosphor has turned dark brown in the area where the picture is scanned, it's trapezoidal in shape because it's scanned in that shape, it's reflected off center on the concave mirror to a trapezoidal mirror in the cabinet and comes out on the screen in a rectangle.
The setup procedure for the optics looks like it could take the better part of a day to complete!

Here are some pics of the CRT , the one on the right is from this set, the center tube is from a previous 2500 I owned but scrapped, the tube on the left is I hope, NOS or near to it, it has no burn at all so it either is very low hours or possibly defective.

the two tubes that I know came out of sets have similar inspection markings on them, some numbers and the letters OK with a squiggly underline, the "New" tube doesn't have these markings so I'm hoping it's a later replacement tube.


This is a long post, if anyone's still reading at this point I will post more pictures in the future.

The cabinet is at my work, the chassis is in the back of my truck here at home. Capacitors have been ordered but I have other projects in front of it.

I planned to work on it during my lunch hour at work but I'm off till at least this Thursday due to ripping a muscle or tendon in my arm this past Wednesday.