Here is the '61 CTC11 Wakely from Racine WI

[zenithfan1]

I adjusted the HOT cathode current tonight, the best I could get was 209mA. Not the best but better than the 218 that it was. I'll have to do some more checking as to why it won't come down a bit more. I also noticed the 6BK4 glowing brighter than I've ever seen before. What causes that?? My other CTC11 does it too but none of my other sets.

[miniman82]

What is HV set at? If the regulator is glowing, there may be something awry with the grid bias circuit causing it to draw too much current. You can check by putting a current meter set to 0-1ma in the cathode circuit; with brightness at minimum you should have .8-1ma on the meter, and HV should be whatever the manual says. Usually around 23kv. If the regulator circuit checks out, roll 6BK4's you might have a bad one. There are more rugged versions on the streets, I have a 6BK4C from Tandy that looks like it has way heavier plate structure. But since I run most of my regs at minimum all the time, I never have this problem.

[zenithfan1]

Originally Posted by miniman82

What is HV set at? If the regulator is glowing, there may be something awry with the grid bias circuit causing it to draw too much current. You can check by putting a current meter set to 0-1ma in the cathode circuit; with brightness at minimum you should have .8-1ma on the meter, and HV should be whatever the manual says. Usually around 23kv. If the regulator circuit checks out, roll 6BK4's you might have a bad one. There are more rugged versions on the streets, I have a 6BK4C from Tandy that looks like it has way heavier plate structure. But since I run most of my regs at minimum all the time, I never have this problem.

Thanks for the tips Nick. I have the HV set at 24Kv like the manual says. I wanted to check the regulator current the other night when I set the HOT current but the 9V in my meter died I'll look into it tonight since I've replaced the battery. I'll bet some resistors are bad in that circuit. I'll check those too and report back. The 6BK4 is the original one but I tried two others with the same result so something is up with the chassis....

[zenithfan1]

I plan on taking the chassis out tonight and looking at it, is there anything else I should check while I'm in there? Any known trouble spots in the CTC11 horizontal circuit? Everything else is working fine. Thanks!!

[Glenz75]

That is one fantastic looking picture and the set itself looks nice too. You guys have got it so good having tube colour sets in abundance over there. What's sad is that I have never seen a colour tv with tubes in it apart from the CRT itself. All our native colour tvs were solid state. Someday I Hope to visit the USA and would love to see some colour roundies in flesh
Cheers Glen

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by zenithfan1

I plan on taking the chassis out tonight and looking at it, is there anything else I should check while I'm in there? Any known trouble spots in the CTC11 horizontal circuit? Everything else is working fine. Thanks!!

While you have the chassis out, I would replace any remaining "brown drops" on the horizontal board. My CTC-11s worked "purty good" with the old caps in place, but they worked better after I got rid of the old "drops" on both of the sweep boards. Those caps don't seem to fail catastrophically like papers, but they are not immortal. Same deal, only more so, with my CTC-7; it couldn't make a coherent picture at all with the old dipped caps in place.

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

[DaveWM]

I too had a CTC-7 loaded with brown drops, At 1st I was glad they were not papers like the CTC-5 I had just finished. I ended up replacing nearly every single one of the brown drops, In my case they were leaky just like the papers. Something odd with those brown drops, some seem to fall into two failure modes, leaking (not often) and lossy (often).

[Electronic M]

I found some shorted Sprague orange drops in my Zenith roundy so I don't trust that type as much as I used to either.

[zenithfan1]

There were brown drops in the set, they are all gone after I recapped it. Projects are on hold for a bit, I'll post more when I get back to it again. Prolly a month at least.....