It's hard to believe that it's 20 years old

[radiotvnut]

I'm talking about the Thomson/RCA CTC17x series chassis that had the tuner ground issues. I think this chassis came out in '92; but, it seems like only yesterday. AFAIK, Thomson was the only one who used the "tuner on board" system and it's sad that it took them until the later production CTC203's to realize that a traditional seperate tuner module would be better.

I recently fixed a mid '60's RCA console stereo for an elderly gentleman and he asked me if I wanted an old RCA TV that lightning had struck. Hoping it would be close to the age of the stereo, I told him that I'd take it; but, it turned out to be a '93 RCA Colortrak using the CTC177 chassis.

It was indeed dead, due to an open 1.5megohm resistor in the power supply, along with a crumbled degaussing thermistor. When I put it all together, I had no reception with only snow on the screen; so, I gave the top tuner shield a good smack with my nutdriver and the picture popped in. I then pulled it back apart and resoldered the tuner. It was obvious that the tuner had been resoldered; but, I think it's common for them to redevelop bad solder connections. Finding one of these sets that hasn't had it's tuner soldered is almost as rare as finding a '94 Zenith console with a good CRT.

The set now works well and I'll be finding it a home, as I don't have room for it and it's too new for my collecting interest.

Here's a video I made of it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnQxGrd-nnA