Admiral 30A12 restoration

[bandersen]

I now have five of these 30A1 series Admiral sets but have never actually seen one work as none of mine have been restored yet.
So I decided to try a slow, control power up. First I pull the rectifiers out, powered it up and all the filaments lit up


Next, I reinstalled the rectifiers, put a 150W bulb in series and slowly powered it up with a variac. Around 100 VAC I heard a hum out of the speaker.
I took the bulb out and increase to 115 VAC and thought I hard a little HV crackle but no glow in the CRT face. A little tweak of the fine tuning got me nice, loud clear sound


A little tweak of the ion trap magnet got me a very bright, crisp raster


It's trying hard to lock, but can't quite make it. I went around to the back and adjust the horizontal oscillator and finally, got a lock.
I then had to crank the height up all the way to get this image.

Oddly, I could get channels 2 and 6 to work, but not 3, 4 or 5. I hope it's just dirty contacts.

Not bad for 65 year old parts


Now I did smell all sorts of aromas emanating from the set - burning dust, ozone, hot wax and cooked resistor. So I ceased my testing,

A little later I pulled the chassis for a closer look.




One casualty found so far.




After a little cleaning, it's starting to look more respectable.