My Brand New CTC-7!

[Tim]

Caps in parallel add and have a voltage rating of the lowest voltage rated cap.

Caps in series cuts the value in half if the two caps are the same value. The voltage doubles if the caps are rated for the same voltage. Just to finish the thought, some recommend putting equalizing resistors across the series connected caps. This is not applicable to your current situation.

[SwizzyMan]

OK got the board recapped... I am extremely nervous to whether I broke any traces or made good solder joints. The damn wax everywhere made it very difficult to do things.

[SwizzyMan]

Got it back in... Horizontal is only a bit better and vertical isn't any different. And the picture signal still isn't great there is a lot of snow mixed in with the show being broadcasted and it is pretty hard to make out what is being shown in the show. Sound is crystal clear though.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by SwizzyMan

there is a lot of snow

Are you broadcasting a signal with your B-T modulator, or connecting your video source directly to the TV? You might want to connect directly, to simplify the equation while trying to obtain normal picture quality.

Did you ever clean the tube pins and sockets in the RF and IF sections? Have you tested those tubes recently? It's not unheard of for a tube to fail, even though it initially tested good.

Have you cleaned the tuner? (By cleaning, I don't mean spraying a gallon of WD-40 inside and working the channels a couple of times, which can soak phenolic parts and do more harm than good. I mean opening the tuner and cleaning the contacts with a Q-tip and DeOxit.)


Phil Nelson

[SwizzyMan]

Did Clean the tube sockets and tubes but not the tuner itself. Hooked the input directly to the RF out on the BT modulator and the picture is crystal clear.

[SwizzyMan]

OK I think I am ready to start the picture quality adjustments... What should I do first?

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by SwizzyMan

Hooked the input directly to the RF out on the BT modulator and the picture is crystal clear.

That answers your question about snowy picture. Quit using the modulator to broadcast and stick with a direct connection until your TV works normally.

As to which picture quality adjustment to do first . . . don't waste time on any of the color adjustments until you have a flawless black and white picture. No horizontal or vertical jitters or bending, no problems with vertical and horizontal linearity, and so on. Going back to mess with those things after you have spent hours on color adjustments may force you to do the color adjustments all over again.

The multi-step procedure for color adjustments is described in pages 28-38 of the RCA factory service manual:

http://antiqueradio.org/art/RCACTC-7...toryManual.pdf

You begin with purity. After that, you set the grayscale using the screen and background controls (the manual calls this "kinescope color temperature adjustment"), and so on. Do these procedures in the order laid out in the manual, and if you can't get the right result at any point, stop and find out why.

BEFORE doing all of that, you might want to look very carefully at your picture to judge whether those procedures are needed. It's quite difficult to get perfect convergence around the far edges (top, bottom, sides) of a roundie color picture. If yours already looks good, you might want to let sleeping dogs lie. Look for color fringing in the edge zones -- that's a sign of less than perfect convergence. If your TV looks nice and watchable already, maybe it doesn't need twiddling.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[SwizzyMan]

I would probably be satisfied with it now but I can't be sure since the color oscillator is running at the wrong frequency so I cant get any color.