1939 RCA TRK12 scored

[Electronic M]

So a long time collecting goal of mine has been reached...I finally own a pre-war TV and it's exactly the model I had been shooting for. The TRK-12 is IMO a good "I only need to have one pre-war TV" set. It's most common of the pre-war US sets so it's most affordable/attainable and has the largest CRT of any of the ones with good production numbers and stylish ontop of that. So it's easy to see why I wanted it.

I was tipped off to this set (and Estes Auctions switching platforms) by a thread on ARF, and ended up winning it for $850. https://antiqueradios.com/forums/vie...p?f=3&t=427003

The following weekend (back on Saturday) me and my Dad drove out to pick it up. I got about 4 hours of sleep the night before partially from excitement partially from having to leave quite early to be there early enough to meet the auctioners schedule. By pure coincidence on the way the town we stopped for lunch at had a huge car show that I got a look at while eating. After dismantling the loose radio mask, CRT and TV PS chassis from the cabinet for transport I went over to a local friends place to buy a fully chrome cabinet Zenith CCII, drove for a couple of hours grabbed dinner and tagged teamed Dad into the drivers seat so I could check the CRT on the highway...The tube had bad base pin solder so I had to worry about an open heater until Sunday. Idid sort of expect a solder issue, but you never feel good about such an educated guess until you truly know.





Looking the set over it appears to be fairly complete. The left top prop is missing as are some of the pushbuttons for the radio. The ones I have are VERY shrunk as somewhat is the radio bezel.... Otherwise it's very complete. The cabinet is in interesting condition. The lacquer is still in really nice shape (ignoring a few scratches) to the point that it would be a Howard's job if it hadn't been stored by previous owners in a way that moisture has turned it into a glue and veneer job...The bottom chassis shelf has delaminated and warped to the point that I need to make a new one (seems doable), the top back board that the lid hinge connects to is popped out of it's joints with the sides, and just about all the front veneer on the left side of the grille has delaminated and is partially missing (this will be interesting to fix).

For those who have never seen a picture of a GE forecaster and a RCA TRK12 in the same room before.










On Sunday I managed to restore heater continuity by soldering the socket pins and achieved a poorly executed test. The 12AP4 is an unusual tube with a 2.5A 2.5V heater, and it's not in the setup chart of my B&K 466...That wasn't a big deal as 98% of CRTs are tested the same as a 10BP4 (ignoring heater settings) by the 466. What was a big deal is that my B&K has had an intermittent in its own heater circuit and those caused enough resistance to give me a high bad range emissions reading.... Enough to make me relieved it wasn't dead, but not to make me completely happy... However my sketchy beater DMM was telling me that the heater voltage was low, and on Monday I came back with my trusted fluke, flipped it to the base heater pins and adjusted the heater rheostat of the B&K to get exactly 2.5V at the CRT base (instead of the 1.8V my beater DMM earlier indicated). The results are NOS levels of emission. Part of me is skeptical (and worried about ion burn) because of the darkened G1 cup, but I'm just going to be happy until I can get the chassis working to know more accurately what it'll do.


I need to spruce up and off load some other sets first, but my priority will be to get the cabinet shored up and presentable, though I have half a mind to try the variac on the radio and if it goes well maybe the TV and that might happen first if I do it at all.