(worded to confuse you)Fixed my first tube TV yesterday. GE model 14T017

[Electronic M]

I probably ought to wait until April first to post this, but I'd forget before then....

To those thinking "But he has posted many of his restorations of tube TVs here before" you are right. This ain't the first tube TV I've restored, but it is the first one I ever owned, and it's been sound only until yesterday.

The history of this set: When I was 12 years old I moved to Florida from Chicago, and started attending the Florida Antique Wireless Group (FAWG). In the first year or so I saw this cool TV that looked like a 50's car. The person who had it said it was not for sale, and they were repairing it for someone....In several subsequent meets over the next year or so it kept coming back, and every time it was 'not for sale' or 'just purchased' or something until one time I inquired and it was $5 and came with (IIRC) a flyback tester, and they said something about it having a bad transformer....That day it became mine. It had great OTA sound reception but no raster. Tubes were good, and one lytic can and all the tubular caps had been changed (took me forever to discover that since the chassis removal process was tough to figure out). I struggled off and on for a couple of years until a move put me between houses and the place it was at I could no longer work much in. From roughly age 16 until the last 5 years I could not work on it due to it's storage, etc. Given this set was someones' dog, it was a pain to work on with it's dopey cabinet/chassis/PCB layout, and it drove me nuts many times I kept putting it off, or getting other projects in ahead of it. I've had the skill with dog sets, parts and partially working reference sets for about 4 years, and have been wanting to dig in to the now trio of GE 14T series portables for the last year. Recently I watched a youtube video by Shango66 (AKA CTC17 on VK) on a similar trio of those sets and decided it was time to dig in.


I began by tearing open my old nemesis and replacing the remaining original lytics. That got me tiny hints of HV, but no sign of raster. With nothing to replace (or so I thought) I decided to replace some caps in my red parts set (parts because the CRT is rather weak) to try to get it producing a raster for reference. Once it did I contemplated replacing the flyback, yoke and sweep board (when I was a teen I found the H osc coil open and made a slap shot repair to it that I had little to no confidence in) in the green one with the one in the red one....I made a discovery that made me hesitant to make the board swap The green 14T017 and the red 14T09 are different chassis revisions The handle knob layout and lack of a H hold pot on the red were clues, but the use of a 5AN8 as a H phase detector in the red instead of diodes like the green showed the difference clearly.
14T017 ----------------------------- 14T09


I also was able for the first time to compare drive waveforms to a working set, and that proved good drive in the green. After a sweep tube swap I decided to swap flys....No change, and with decent yoke resistance I had a decided to fool around before trying the yoke swap.....I cranked my variac to feed the set 140VAC and it began to produce a sweep on the test CRT. There was no vertical, and I noticed that pulling the vertical tube resulted in MUCH more HV before the series heaters began to cool from the resulting heater string open. The vertical tube was drawing current and loading down the PS and H sweep. My first suspect was a 60's 'Herald' brand 60's Japanese tubular capacitor that I think the previous tech that had it installed.

It was indeed leaky below 50V (read that totally SHOT) I replaced it and still nothing, I began testing the vertical parts and found nothing.....Then as I was tracing wiring in the vertical circuit I found that the wire that connected the V hold pot to the height pot had broke loose at the height pot and that had been hidden by the factory wire rats nest there. Reconnecting that gave me a full raster, and decent HV even with the line voltage backed down to normal. Feeding it a signal and readjusting holds and the stabilizing coil got me a good picture....Finally!


There is some neck shadow I need to correct and over the 2-3 hours it's been on the reception signal strength has been fading (probably a tube), but I'm happy just to see a picture on it after a decade of keeping it as paper weight.

Up next is the gray one I got from Wiscojim. It astonishingly works on it's original caps and seleniums, but lately has no reception and struggles to produce a raster. Here are some chassis shots.


I'll then debate the fate of the red one (receiver circuits) are dead, and the CRT would need a brightener to work (and probably would not last long that way)....I'm thinking of scrapping the red one. It's sockets while not exact matches for the bad IF tube sockets on my CTC-4 look like they would work.