Picked up the Hoffman 613

[Eric H]

They must have made a million of these things! and they are well built.

Anyway, I pulled the chassis tonight to find out why it wouldn't power up, it was simply a bad fuse underneath the chassis, not sure if it's factory or added but it looked fairly high amps and it was corroded or overheated rather than actually blown, jumped it and a wirewound resistor to the 6BG6 and brought it up on the variac.

The tubes light, nothing smoked, it drew about an amp and had a little scratching in the speaker when the volume was turned, but nothing else, no oscillator noise, either horizontal or vertical, just dead quiet.

Vacuumed out the dirt and dead spiders (and one live one) and buttoned it back up, lost a small knob in the process, may have sucked it into the Vac cleaner but couldn't feel it in the bag, maybe the Cat took off with it, oh well, I probably have a spare.

I guess the green screen cover didn't dim the picture enough because someone put a fairly dark tinted piece of plastic between the CRT and the glass, they must have run it with the brightness cranked to be able to see it!

Rechecked the CRT to see if it's still checking good, and it is, very good.

There were also a couple of Pre-War era Halsam brand Checker pieces inside the cabinet under the screen area, some kid probably dropped them in through the missing dial glass.