Found a Capehart

[RetroHacker]

This was a trash find - I was tipped off by someone on the local FreeCycle list - the post was "Spotted: 1940's console television" or something like that. So, of course, I raced over there, and sure enough, it was near the intersection, just like they had described. It was in decent shape, no knobs - and when I went to lift it, the chassis was loose in the cabinet, which made it a lot easier to move... I managed to get the set in my Toyota Camry - I had the chassis in the front seat, and the cabinet standing in the trunk, with cardboard to pad it from the trunk lid and the frame of the trunk, and tied down with old telephone wire I had in the car. Anyway, there's no workspace at the house right now, so I stashed the set in my storage locker. I took some pictures though, thought you guys would like to see it. On the back of the cabinet, the sticker says it's a model 332, but someone crossed out the 2 and wrote in a 3 with a pencil, and the chassis is marked with pencil as being a Capehart 333. Perhaps an upgrade or circuit change, or someone swapped chassis at some point? The chassis is pretty dirty, and there is a little rust. The picture tube base is cracked, but the tube appears to still have vaccuum. I'm not sure what kind of picture tube is in here, it's not labeled, and the tube chart says to only replace with a Farnsworth 170-AR. The cabinet is in decent shape, a few good scars on the top, and some of the veneer is coming loose, but it's real wood, and in overall pretty good shape. The front escucion thing the goes over some of the picture controls is missing, as are the knobs, but I'll worry about those when I have time to work on the set. Overall, a pretty good score for the side of the road.

-Ian

Hacker, my experience has been that there's not a whole lot of interest in Capeharts. I have my family's original set, a Capehart 325-F (appx 1951), put a new CRT in it back in the early 70's thinking I'd use it in my bedroom when I still lived at home, but the set had more problems than a new CRT resolved and running it with a shrunken picture only created an uneven burn-in on the new CRT so I abandoned the project. My expertise didn't go much beyond changing out tubes then, and it still doesn't now. The set needs a re-cap at the very least but I have no place to put it once it's brought back to working condition so for now it just sits. Debating on whether it would be easier to sell (if I decide to) in working condition with a recap, or as is. I did put up a post looking for knobs and got a guy who found some for me so you may get lucky with knobs for your set too.

[kbmuri]

Great catch on the Capehart 333. The picture tube number you're wondering about is 17BP4, still occasionally available on eBay or thru antique electronics dealers. Your set was sold in 1950, and was called the "Blue Ridge" model. There isn't a Sams schematic sheet for it, but the schematic for the 325-F is pretty close. Look for Sams sheet 112, Folder 3 (11/1950). Capehart-Farnsworth put out a set of service documents for it that's more useful, but really hard to come by. Here is a photo of my 333, as I found it. It's currently in pieces, under repair. Until now I thought it was the only one left. Despite the "lack of interest" (some perceive) in Capehart sets, you should give your set the attention it deserves. It's certainly an unusual item practically nobody else will have. I found mine 5 years ago, yours is the only other identical one I've come across.

[wa2ise]

Originally Posted by rp2813

Hacker, my experience has been that there's not a whole lot of interest in Capeharts. I have my family's original set, a Capehart 325-F (appx 1951), put a new CRT in it back in the early 70's thinking I'd use it in my bedroom when I still lived at home, but the set had more problems than a new CRT resolved and running it with a shrunken picture only created an uneven burn-in on the new CRT so I abandoned the project.

You might be able to remove the B&W CRT burn in by running the CRT with a full white raster for about 100 hours or so. Brand new phosper will dim about 10% in the first 100 hours or so if use, and then stay about level for the next several thousand hours. The idea here is to get the unused phosper (that which was outside the shrunken picture area) past the 100 hour use to get it about the same light emitting level as the burnt in area.

Thanks for the advice on the burn-in issue. I can tell you right now that this set didn't run for anywhere near 100 hours after the new CRT. It only took it a few minutes for the pic to go all distorted so it wasn't worth watching for any length of time that way.

If I had the room, I'd have this set fixed (I know of local guy who would do it) because I know it would give a great pic and sound once it's working right. I've only seen one other 325-F and that was on eBay within the last several months. Don't know if it sold, or if it did, for how much.

Also, the set needed both the on/off and channel knobs and one guy was able to find them for me. Found that on the channel knob, the numbers only go around it half way, the other half of the knob is blank, as if once you hit channel 13, you have to go backwards instead of continuing in the same rotational direction to channel 2. This is apparently how Capehart designed some of their sets, as even the owner's manual for the 325-F set shows that kind of configuration on the knob, but the actual (and original) tuner on this set rotates all the way around and calls for a knob that has the channel numbers evenly placed around the entire knob, not just on one side of it. If anybody knows where I can find the right selector knob for this set, please let me know: [email protected]

If I do decide to restore the set the tuner will likely stay on channel 3 or 4 so it can be run by cable converter, so the knob issue wouldn't be the end of the world, but it would be nice to have the right one if it can be found. No small task.

[kbmuri]

Here's a shot of my 325 with a fresh set of orange drops and power caps. A few resistors are still out of tolerance, but it's pretty close to power-on tests. Also, here are a couple of scans of the technical documents for this set. I have electronic copies of them available if anyone is interested.

Hacker, looking at your photos I see the ten-watt voltage-divider (resistor) mounted to the chassis of your set (very bottom of your photo) is broken. You'll need to replace that before you even think about applying power. Catastrophe otherwise. Besides that, the bottom of the chassis looks really clean and you should be able to restore it.

Finally, if either of you two feel like you are going to sell your sets rather than restore them, give me a heads up. Thanks.

KB, just wondering, in your experience with TV restoration, how does Capehart compare with other makes for overall quality of picture and sound? Is it noticeably superior? These sets weren't cheap when new. It's hard for me to judge picture quality on an old BW set. I've become so used to watching bright and clear color resolution on the modern sets around my house, I no longer remember what a B&W set should look like at optimum performance. I have a recapped Admiral 20X12 set that's hooked up to cable with a converter tuner and has high contrast on some stations and low on others (this may be an AGC/DC restoration issue) and when it's tuned to a high contrast station you can't see a lot of detail because objects show up as solid black. I keep controls adjusted to some middle ground so the low contrast stations don't show up with thin diagonal lines, which to me is more annoying than high contrast. Is this typical of early TV behavior or would a Capehart with AGC give steady resolution on all channels? I'm trying to decide if I'll ever want to restore the 325F, and knowing whether it would be watchable and that I wouldn't have to be fiddling with the adjusting knobs all the time would help me with this decision. I've gotta make my case with a spouse who likely doesn't want a hulking cabinet with obsolete entertainment taking up valuable space in the house, so would like to get your opinion on Capehart vs other makes.

[7"estatdef]

Hey Rp you may want to give this a try to cure the retrace lines.
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.a...e39.0207011623.

Worked fine on my 20X12
Terry

Thanks Terry,

I printed out some DC restoration info on this set a while back that apparently indicated Admiral put out a service bulletin of some kind on how to resolve the retrace line issue. I'm assuming from what I've read here that retrace lines are the somewhat faint diagonal lines, on my 10" screen there are probably 3 or 4 of them appearing with quite a bit of space in between them, and not some other type of line phenomenon. They generally appear during dark screen periods between scenes or commercials.

I'm going to print up the info off of the link you provided and save that also, as I intend to take this set to the guy who recapped it at some point, and have him make the necessary fixes to get rid of the lines.

Thanks again for that link--I didn't know about that group.

Ralph

[Whirled One]

Originally Posted by rp2813

KB, just wondering, in your experience with TV restoration, how does Capehart compare with other makes for overall quality of picture and sound? Is it noticeably superior? These sets weren't cheap when new.

I dunno about their TV sets, but Capehart was primarily known for their line of console phonos and radio/phono combinations in the 1930's and 40's. Their biggest claim-to-fame was an amazingly elaborate record changer that could automatically play both sides of each record in a stack-- in sequence-- and still even intermix record sizes automatically. I've seen one of these changers in action once; it's a facinating Rube Goldberg device. The thing was pretty much done in by the introduction of the LP, though, since the original mechanism was designed for 78's only, and while Capehart did eventually adapt it for LP's, the convenience/desire for such an elaborate record changer wasn't as high for LP's than it was for 78's.

[Phil Nelson]

Originally Posted by Whirled One

I dunno about their TV sets, but Capehart was primarily known for their line of console phonos and radio/phono combinations in the 1930's and 40's.

High-end Capehart radios were high quality and quite expensive. I believe the postwar Panamuse had 25 tubes.

[bgadow]

I have a preware Panamuse, a little rough but worth saving. Quite a set, HEAVY, I haven't been able to find much out about it. A project for another day. I should look at the record changer-never really payed much attention to it. I have it sitting between a pair of nice Stromberg-Carlson's and it looks right at home.

At some point Capehart & Farnsworth went together and slowly the quality level drifted downward. This trait was not unique to that company. The TV business became very competitive and by the early fifties there was not much of a market for "overbuilt" sets. This is illustrated by the late fifties Scott in the other thread; the same thing happened with DuMont-in 1950 they were real tanks with a unique design; by 1960 they were rebadged Emersons. By the mid-70s all those names were showing up on cheap stereos like you would buy at Kmart. I have a number of service manuals somewhere for Capehart am/fm/8tracks.

[Jeffhs]

My great-aunts had a Capehart 16" round-tube console TV in the 1950s. When they got a new Motorola portable b&w set in the early sixties, they gave me the Capehart, which I had in my bedroom for several years when I was a kid. The set worked well, IIRC, even in the near-fringe TV reception area I lived in at the time, but something has always puzzled me about its power cord. I remember it was about ten feet(!) long and had a circuit in a small metal box right in the middle of it (the circuit in the box was in series with the cord); the box ordinarily sat in the base of the console cabinet. I had almost forgotten about that until I spotted this Capehart TV thread; now I'm starting to wonder again, almost 40 years later. An interference filter, perhaps?

I kept the cabinet for years after the TV went West and made a storage cabinet of it--this was several years before I ever got interested in collecting old TVs and long before there was any such thing as the Internet or AK. Had I gotten this set later on, say in the late sixties or early 1970s (before I moved the first time), I no doubt would have tried to repair the Capehart chassis.

[kbmuri]

Jeffhs,

I would hazard a guess that the box in-line with the power cord was a voltage-boosting transformer/regulator. TVs like your old Capehart performed pretty poorly to rural power service of the day, which tended to be a little low by the time it made it all the way out to the farm. The delivery/setup guy would have installed the booster to gain a little voltage (at the sacrifice of drawing a little more current) to make the TV perform like it did in the showroom.

This is just a hunch, though, without a more thorough description.

RP,

Spousal negotiations notwithstanding, I think you'll find the Capehart 325's picture to be as good as any set of the day. None of them will be a 42-inch plasma HDTV, but if you want the nostalgia of a quality B/W set, you've got a solid performer. I wouldn't expect any difference in contrast between stations, if it's restored well. Your Admiral's trouble does sound a little like AGC, but I've read that some of the cheaper early sets just did that. I have some reference material I'll post (if I can find it) that might help.

Everyone else,

Capehart made the finest equipment imagineable in the '30s and '40s. So did Farnsworth, although Farnsworth had more of an eye for the common-man's budget. It wasn't 'til they both merged with ITT that they started putting out garbage. I think that was around 1960. The Capehart TVs of circa 1950 are pretty top-of-the-line items. IMHO.

Oh, if anybody has a Capehart roundie or knows of one for sale, post it here please. Thanks. Sorry, Jeff, to hear you had one and lost track of it.

Well KB, I've seen a few posts that indicate you are a real Capehart fan. The 325-F I've got might be up for grabs at some point if I decide not to have it restored. It's not a roundie but I get the impression you might be able to come up with an interested party for it. Not ready to part with it just yet, but wanted you to know it's in California. Don't know where you are, but I think this set is one that would be prohibitively expensive to ship and have seen too many horror stories about damage so it would probably have to be picked up. Since it was my family's first TV, there's some sentimental value and that's why I'm still not ready to let it go. You can e-mail me directly if you want to discuss more: [email protected].
Thanks,
Ralph