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#1
03-09-2007, 09:10 PM
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Rare prewar Westinghouse restoration
About six months ago I had the opportunity to restore AK member Doug's RCA TT-5. Recently I finished his prewar Westinghouse which has a chassis identical to that of the TT-5. In fact, the front of the cabinet says RCA but all other labels identify it as a Westinghouse. I believe that this set is one of two known to exist.
This one was not in as good of condition as the TT-5. It had a tuner sub-assembly mounted under the chassis (seen in photo) and a switch mounted in place of the original on-off switch. The high voltage capacitor was missing but fortunately the original mounting bracket for it was under the chassis holding a much later capacitor. The focus shaft was broken off and the antenna terminal strip was replaced with a large coax connector. I removed the added-on tuner chassis and restuffed all the caps and electrolytics. I thought that the high voltage winding on the power transformer was open and was trying to make a modern high voltage module to work when I found that the original xformer was good after all. The CRT was open but I bought a bunch of 5BP4s from Apex Surplus in LA. They were caked with mud but when I cleaned them up they all turned out to be RCAs and all produced as bright as a picture that a 5BP4 can produce. The pictures are before and after shots of the chassis and the cabinet which has a pretty good original finish. The transformer is missing in the before picture because I removed it thinking that I would have to have it rewound. Steve 
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#2
03-09-2007, 09:23 PM
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What a beauty! Very, VERY nice!! Now that's a great piece of history!
__________________
Yamaha, Manley, ADS, McIntosh, Rega, B&O & Victor Talking Machine "...As worrying is interest paid on trouble, long before it's due..." - Steve Hackett - "Serpentine Song" 
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#4
03-10-2007, 06:34 AM
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That would be about like getting to work on Henry Ford's Quadricycle of 1893...Or the Benz "Patent Motorenwagen" of 1886.. or..well, y'all get the picture. Great job, wonderful story, & another piece of history brought back to life..THAT'S the best thing !
__________________
Benevolent Despot
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#8
03-10-2007, 08:43 PM
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Was this TT5 pre war TV designed for the old 441i system? or was it the normal B&W NTSC 525i system? And if it was 441 lines, did you modify the horizontal circuits some to get it from 13.2KHz to 15.75Khz?
And I heard that the sound on prewar sets was AM, not FM.
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#9
03-10-2007, 09:03 PM
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Pete:
The cabinet is in original condition. Overall it is very good. I did touch up a small bad spot on the top. wa2ise: It was designed for the 441 line system but the horizontal is broad enough to easily lock it in. Therefore, I did not have to modify it. Yes, the sound is AM. I am missing one channel on this set as a coil was removed to install that modification that I removed. It is best, however, to play these on channel 3 or 4 from a signal source as tuners are not that great. Steve
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#10
03-11-2007, 04:08 PM
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Wow, nice work. And what fun to get your hands on a set like that!
Probably a dumb question, but what was the add-on tuner assembly intended for? To change the tuning range? Phil Nelson
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