Most complicated 50s Philco B&W

[earlyfilm]

Originally Posted by cbenham

Has anybody here had trouble with intermittent inter chassis connectors?
The service men at the TV shop where I apprenticed in the late1950s HATED the Philco 2 chassis sets because the connectors were always a problem.

Occasionally some, but not nearly as much trouble as the tube sockets, especially on the high temperature tubes.

I do remember problems of corroded connectors on the ground connections used between the chassis, and chassis to tuner grounds, but can not remember if those were Philcos or not. We were in a deep fringe area and these quickly degraded the signal.

If the set had been running in the typical not air conditioning home of the era for a couple of years, accidentally touching either a tube or connection could start a problem. While you were in the home, you were careful not to disturb any connectors. The absolute worst offenders were the tube sockets and line voltage compensating switches mounted on top of the power transformers, but most of those were found on sets other than Philco.

Since you mentioned "apprenticed" . . . . . .

Both shops where I worked, it was the apprentice who had the job of removing the chassis, cleaning it and testing the tubes, and providing a detailed list of which tubes that checked substandard for the service tech.

Part of the apprentice's cleaning included *brushing on contact cleaner on all connecting plugs and power handling tube pins inserting and removing them two or three times and then leaving them apart for 15 minutes to dry, before replacing them.

Cliff, maybe that is why you remembered this :-)

*"Brushing" because the much more expensive spray cleaner was only used on house calls.

James