Show us your vintage B&W sets!

[gadget73]

finally I can make a legit post here. My first oldie, a 1954 Philco 54-8486 that I found on the side of the road tonight. These are pics from a short time ago after it spent a couple hours on the poor man variac.

Side note, in spite of the "UHF" badge on the front, it doesn't actually have UHF. There is a tag on the inside that says the set was designed to allow the install of the optional UHF converter.

This is totally as-found condition, the controls aren't even cleaned. The pics are bad because its my cell phone, the memory card in the digicam seems to have died or something. The vertical hold is a bit unstable, but I'm hoping once I get some DeOxit ordered and applied to the controls that will stabilize. The linearity control on the back seems to do nothing, and the height is wonky, maybe dirty controls or something else. I have no real experience working on TV sets so this will be a learning experience for me. This thing has been apart before. There is a service tag inside, but its quite old. Looks like at least one replacement tube, and I think someone has been into the HV cage. Theres a missing screw there. 4 of the screws on the back were also gone, and the tuner chassis (its a 2 chassis design, one side appears to be tuner, the other side video) seems like its not bolted down firmly. Wiggling the tuner knob moved the whole thing around. Apparently whatever tech fooled with it wasn't very good about putting all the parts back inside.

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by gadget73

Side note, in spite of the "UHF" badge on the front, it doesn't actually have UHF. There is a tag on the inside that says the set was designed to allow the install of the optional UHF converter.

This is totally as-found condition, the controls aren't even cleaned. The pics are bad because its my cell phone, the memory card in the digicam seems to have died or something. The vertical hold is a bit unstable, but I'm hoping once I get some DeOxit ordered and applied to the controls that will stabilize. The linearity control on the back seems to do nothing, and the height is wonky, maybe dirty controls or something else. I have no real experience working on TV sets so this will be a learning experience for me. This thing has been apart before. There is a service tag inside, but its quite old. Looks like at least one replacement tube, and I think someone has been into the HV cage. Theres a missing screw there. 4 of the screws on the back were also gone, and the tuner chassis (its a 2 chassis design, one side appears to be tuner, the other side video) seems like its not bolted down firmly. Wiggling the tuner knob moved the whole thing around. Apparently whatever tech fooled with it wasn't very good about putting all the parts back inside.

That "UHF" badge probably covers a hole into which the optional UHF tuner fits. Many TVs of 1950s-early sixties (before 1964) vintage were set up this way so that if/when UHF stations came to the area, the set could be retrofitted with a UHF tuner, which was available as optional equipment; however, there were special cases as I mention below. The all-channel reception law went into effect April 30, 1964; it mandated that all televisions manufactured for sale in the U.S. must be equipped with UHF as well as VHF tuners, regardless of whether or not the area in which the set was sold and/or used had UHF stations.

Note also that some areas of the country had only UHF television stations even as far back as the 1950s, so sets marketed in these cities were factory-equipped with UHF tuners; one area I know of right off the bat is Youngstown, Ohio, near Pittsburgh and about 60 miles (more or less) from Cleveland. Youngstown has had only UHF stations from the beginning, so all new TVs in that area were set up for all-channel reception; those sets that were not so equipped (owned by people who had moved to the area from a VHF-only locality, for example) used external UHF converters which converted UHF television signals to one of two VHF channels, either 5 or 6 (some very early converters used channels 2 or 3, but as a general rule the downconversion was either to 5 or 6). To receive UHF stations from the converter, the television's VHF tuner was set on whichever station was not used for local broadcasting and all UHF channel tuning was done at the converter. These converters worked as well as the state of the art at the time allowed, but the early units with tubes (for example, the Blonder-Tongue BTU-99 from the '50s, which was one of the first UHF converters marketed for home use) were known for drifting and other problems attendant to tube-type RF tuning systems.

UHF channel tuning was critical on all converters because the units tuned in channels exactly like a radio, with a continuously variable tuning control. This was changed in the mid-'70s when a new law, requiring that UHF tuning shall be comparable to VHF, went into effect; the industry responded by building TVs with detented UHF tuners as well as VHF. This was later updated when electronic varactor tuners became available; most sets of '80s vintage had these tuners, which covered the standard channels 2 through 13 and, for UHF, there were six positions (actually six independent tuners) after channel 13 (marked U1 through U6) which were independently tunable to the UHF stations in the viewer's local area. This tuning system was eventually superseded by quartz-synthesized all-channel electronic tuners, the type now used in all TVs manufactured since about 1990.

I find it difficult to believe that the linearity control on your Philco TV isn't doing anything. If it were in fact defective, you would have no vertical sweep (a bright white horizontal line across the center of the CRT screen). My best guess is the control is probably incredibly dirty, so much so that the wiper contact inside the control is not contacting the carbon resistance element. I'd try cleaning the control first, before doing anything drastic; in fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea as well to clean the other controls while you are at it. It sounds to me like this TV has been sitting in someone's basement, attic, garage, etc., unused, for decades; under these conditions the controls can become very noisy and intermittent, not to mention fixed capacitors/resistors changing value and deteriorating over time. Many times old B&W TVs were simply relegated to an attic or basement and forgotten when the owner got a new color set; this may well be what happened to your Philco.

The picture on your set doesn't look too bad. There is some vertical foldover at the bottom the picture as shown in one of the thumbnails, but that may well be due to a weak vertical oscillator or output tube or misadjusted vertical height/linearity controls. Again, I'd readjust the controls and replace the tube before going into the vertical circuits. Remember, in tube-type equipment, defective tubes are responsible for some eighty percent of all problems.

One more thing. I'd fasten down those two loose chassis before you lose a connection on them, or worse. I seriously doubt that any real television service person would leave things so loose (after having had the chassis out of the cabinet for repairs) as the tuner and video chassis seem to be in that Philco. Sounds to me as if the set's former owner may have been trying to repair the set and lost or misplaced the screws that hold the tuner, etc. in place. Hardly the mark of any professional television technician, but then again some people will do anything just to get the TV working again--or at least to get some sort of picture back, even if it is terribly flawed. I have rescued old TVs from the trash that basically worked, but the pictures looked awful. However, with a bit of adjustment and perhaps (more often than not, actually) a new tube or two, these sets worked every bit as well as they probably did when they were new. My pride and joy in the late '60s was a 23" Zenith b&w console TV I had rescued from a curb in my old neighborhood. The tubes (all but the HV rectifier and CRT) were missing, but once I replaced the tubes the set worked like a champ, and continued to work flawlessly (that razor-sharp Zenith picture and the best sound I have ever heard in any TV before or certainly since then) until I moved in the early '70s. I had to get rid of that set then, and it was difficult, as I had put so much work into it (new tubes, adjustments, etc.) and it was working so well.