TrueTone Roundie

[Electronic M]

Nearly all sets including budget sets between 1953 and 1964 had UHF tuners as an order-able option. If your region had any early UHF stations it could be pre-64, if not then assume post 64.

I use photobucket to host my pictures for a few reasons. It may work better for you.

On a set like that I'd pull out the Horizontal and vertical output tubes, variac it slowly from 20 volts AC input to 90 (step it up in 5V increments and wait 5-15 min between steps). Feel the lytics as you do that, and if they get warm, it smokes, pops, any tubes red plate or don't light power off immediately, consult us, and replace parts before next power up....If those problems don't manifest I'd pop the output tubes back in and power it up at full line voltage and see what happens. If you have raster and sound, then it should be a fairly manageable resto, otherwise get some radio and monochrome TV experience before tackling it.

As for color controls there are 4 types on most sets. Two are user controls, 2 are service adjustments. The user controls are color level (varies the amount of color from black and white to cartoonishly over-saturated, adjust for just enough color to be pleasing), Hue/Tint (shifts the color of all received colors, adjust using SMPTE color bar pattern or a commercial with known colors for proper yellow) there should be only one color and only one hue/tint knob.

The service controls should be on the back. There should be three G2/screen knobs one for each electron gun (they are adjusted using a specific procedure I can explain to you, so that the blacks on screen are not tinted RGB or some combination there of), the drive (may have another name) controls (2 if RCA, 3 on some other brands) are used to make the whites white( same general concept as the G2 knobs). Purity and convergence (a few paragraphs description in and of them selves) will need to be correct before the color service controls can be properly adjusted.

I've worked on a ton of color sets and don't mind discussing what is what so if you want me to expand on anything or pick my brains just ask. Searching the forums for some of the stuff I mentioned will also yield some great info. Part of my jump from radio restos to TV was reading these forums to expand my knowledge of real world issues and methods of solving them.