Today's Roundie CRT Story

[bgadow]

I'll make this story as long as possible

After I graduated high school in '90 I found I didn't like college & couldn't find a job, but I could find lots of free tv sets. I filled every outbuilding (and many of the rooms) at my mother's house. Eventually the buildings started falling down & mom said the stuff had to go. Had to say goodbye to some great tube color sets.

Now, mom is preparing to sell her home so I was thinking the other day of things I needed to get out of there, & I reminded myself of an old tv sitting in the woods out back. It was an Admiral color roundie that I brought home from the dump. The finish on the cabinet was shot, the tuner had a broken gear, all the knobs were gone, had worst cataracts I'd seen-other than that, I fine piece of equipment!

The set actually worked (not well) but when the building came down it just got set out back. I did pull the tubes but that was it. So after reading through this forum lately I got to thinking: could that crt be any good? I really had to check. I went back there after work today & found that the tube was still intact. The set had been left face down & the cabinet had totally disappeared into the landscape! Not a trace! I carefully disconnected the chassis & then lifted the crt, still bolted to the bezel plate, out of the weeds & into my truck.

First, this tube is way beyond cataracts! Gruesome looking! I've never pulled the "lens" off of one, but this one has to be easy. Looks like jelly behind the screen. So I carried it home, removed it from the mounts, cleaned it up. Not much left of the label except that its an RCA. I had left my good tester/rejuvenator at work but I couldn't wait to test it so dug out my tired (& basic) old Sencore. I'm a little iffy on some of the adjustments on this, but it started out looking good. Red gun-decent emission. Blue gun-decent emission. Green gun-nothing. I looked carefully-drats! Only two are lit

I figure I'll try the trick of heating the filament pins up real good & see if that "wakes up" the connection. They say 2 out of 3 ain't bad but I'm not too sure about it in this case!