Zenith Video Issues

[Tubejunke]

My 64 Zenith from the get-go of bringing it home had intermittent color, but produced a beautiful black and white picture. That's in another thread, so I'm leaving that alone.

Anyway, my sets video display had deteriorated to the point of not being really view-able. The picture is not sharp at all and sometimes looks almost negative with what I call worms running through the lighter shades. Just before the problem began, oddly enough I had a VCR/DVD combo connected to it and the picture was great AND the color was back. Then next time I tried it I had basically what I have described only worse. Sometimes the picture would start to fade to black as if there were high voltage issues, but I could turn to an unused channel and have a perfect snowy raster. I started thinking perhaps something with AGC, but the tube tested well and the control pot works. For the record the sound is perfect.

I know that like most all old electronics it boils down to caps, drifted resistors and bad tubes, Check voltages, resistances, waveforms; the whole 9. I guess the beauty of VK is that sometimes we luck out and there is someone familiar with a given problem or a given set who can point us in the right direction. I have been helped and helped out others; that's why I love this site. Lord knows we don't all have a bench with all the nice lab equipment. Some of us don't even have a tube tester, but they keep trying and that's what counts,

Keep the dream alive and the filaments lit!