Starting on a 56 Philco Transitone

[Eric H]

I found the 5AM8 tube has a severe short in it, not sure this is causing the issue but it can't be good.

[Eric H]

I found a good 5AM8 and swapped it but it made no difference in the sound, it did improve the video a bit.

After a little more investigating I realized the main board was extremely sensitive to being touched, and contact with it caused lots of static in the speaker.
I was under the impression it was just the sloppy tube sockets but on closer inspection I discovered I could make the sound get better or quit completely by wiggling the Sound discriminator can.

I pulled the board back again and took another look, this is one of the crappiest quality PC boards I've seen, it's got some kind of Lacquer or Varnish slopped all over it, either to protect it from corrosion or to keep the traces from falling off, not sure which but it makes inspecting it really difficult and soldering it is a messy operation.

I didn't see anything specific wrong, other than some loose traces where I had replaced the Caps earlier, I found one I wasn't sure if it was actually intact so I reinforced it with some wire and soldered it, I also soldered all the coil cans and tube sockets.
After I put it back together and fired it up it came on at full volume! The sound is really strong now and it's pretty solid when I tap on the board.

Here's a picture finally of the set working, this is with the old tired Philco CRT, it looks quite good actually.

The black space top and bottom is because it's a letterboxed movie.

[Eric H]

Getting nowhere with the sound problem on this set, well maybe I know what the problem is now.

It was still intermittent, resoldered more connections on the board, added some fine wire to any foils around the detector can that looked suspect but still the same problem.
I finally decided the problem must be inside the can itself so I removed it from the board and had a look at the connections going to the lugs.

There was one that looked very suspect, I heated them all and added a dab of solder and reinstalled the coil, now it's even worse, I can't get it to work no matter how I tap on the can though I can still get some static by tapping it.

I figure I either finished it off altogether by soldering on it or possibly this can has some Silver Mica disease, assuming it has the Caps built into it, either way I want to try another one, I don't want to mess with this one because I don't know how much more messing about the board can stand.

The Philco number is a 32-4689 the Miller number is supposed to be a 6209-P2.
Anyone happen to have one of those laying around?

Note the close proximity of this can to the uninsulated HV connector, if you get your finger in between the can and the connector it makes the gap small enough to jump to your finger and then to the can.
This set has nice strong HV that's for sure.

[Eric H]

The problem seems to be solved.
I took it apart one more time and was removing the solder in preparation of removing the can again, when I got to one leg the Foil came loose about a half inch from the leg.
I had added a wire to this foil before but it was broken just past where the wire ended, this time I ran it to the next connection point and now it seems solid with very good sound and picture!

I posted a short (but 6 meg) video here if anyone cares to see it: http://vintagetvsets.com/videos/philcotransitone.mp4

[Glenz75]

Looking good!