There are a couple of different opinions out there as to whether or not an old TV chassis should be totally recapped. I personally think/thought you should, and have been practicing what I preach for years. But I recently opened up a 1958 RCA and was surprised to see that most of the original caps were orange drops. So, for the first time, I'm tempted to leave them alone and hope for the best (I'm still going to put in new electrolytics).

So, what I'm wondering about is: Will these "old" orange drops be reliable?

:scratch2:

Orange drops (and equivalents) do go bad, but rarely. I would not replace one unless there was a problem.

I have learned to do wholesale recapping. Every time that I didn't it resulted in lingering problems. If there is a circuit you can get away with it, it would be the audio. You will not get a vertical circuit to work reliably without new caps, that is my experience. If you have the chassis out you might as well change them. If you really wanted to learn diagnostics you could replace caps one by one and see what changes are brought about.

On a rare piece restuffing is probably the best practice; I don't own a TV that I consider that rare.

In the end each restorer has to decide which is more important, keeping the set all-original or having the set work like it did when it was new. Compare it to an old car from the fifties: would you replace the tires? a worn-out clutch? Would you insist on NOS spark plugs, filters, hoses, belts?

"Would you insist on NOS spark plugs, filters, hoses, belts?"

A good analogy. Better than you think. NOS Spark Plugs are probably fine, filters, perhaps...

But, 50 year old rubber (aka hoses & belts)? No Way. New is better and safer.

Same with 50 year old NOS Electrolytics. Install them, and You're Rolling the Dice...

LJB:smoke:

It's paper caps mainly that have to be replaced due to age. The paper rots. Orange drops are mylar. I would only replace bad orange drops.

Eletrolytics also have age issues, however you're more likely to get away with old electrolytic caps than paper ones in my opinoin. Bear in mind vintage electrolytics were not terribly good in the first place. I would just replace them.

John

Thanks, everyone, for your replies so far. I guess I'm in agreement with blue_lateral in that the orange drops should only be replaced if they're bad. I've always assumed that the reason to replace old wax/paper caps and old electrolytics is that, due to the way in which they were made, they were inferior and simply didn't last. In contrast, some of the newer capacitors (orange drops, polyesters, etc.) are superior in fabrication and have a much longer shelf life.

Dave

In my youth I have pulled many old sets out of barns, and have made them work, replacing stuff almost strictly on a "need-to-do" basis, owing to the limited funds usually associated with being young. This "low budget" condition constrained me to a "minimalist" approach to restoration, and gave me many hours of troubleshooting experience that I would not have had given the ability to merely "shotgun" the entire chassis in capacitor replacement. I usually found that a set that really misbehaved on plug-in and play attempt would respond well to a 'lytic overhaul.

I restored operation to an amazingly massive Crosley console in this way. It had 4 pix IF stages, and had an amazingly bright and sharp picture. I took this set out of the top floor here in pieces many years later. It came in though my upstairs bedroom window, as the stairwell would not admit such a large piece of furniture.

Back then I did salvage an old Westinghouse table model set that had been in a cellar, and apparently had been very dirtily flooded. The set had no back on it, and the entire chassis was caked in mud of about 2-3 inches, with nothing but the tops of most of the tubes showing above the cake of mud. I got the set for zilch from an antique shop nearby here about 35 years ago, and brought it home in my station wagon. I dropped the set out of the back of the car, rinsed out the innards of the telly with a jet nozzle on a garden hose--tubes flying out of their sockets and ricocheting around everywhere. I then let the set dry in the sun for a couple of days of good hayin' weather as I toiled in the fields here. I then refit all the tubes, renewing ones that were obviously broken or with white "getter" marks on them. I spritzed all sockets, pots and controls with tuner lube. Other than that I did nothing else to this set except to give it power with an extension cord out there in the driveway. It did nothing exciting--except to warm up and show a raster of healthy snow and a roar of same from the speaker. I put a finger on the antenna terminal screws, and got a picture from local WFSB channel 3 from Hartford here.

That set served my little bro very well as a bedroom telly for at least 3 years before we found somthing smaller. His only complaint was that this beast was so very big, and he wanted a set that was smaller. But the 21" "silverama" replacement CRT in this set gave out a sharp and bright picture, and the set gave zero trouble as long as we used it. I simply threw it out after we had no use for it, as there was no demand for such mdse at the time. :(

I don't necessarily condone trying to operate an antique set without preemptive recapping. I only bring this up only to illustrate that half the thrill in finding any antique for me was always seeing what it would do just as it was. I realise that a lot of damage could occur needlessly from such approach. The thing was that back then I had no money to speak of as a kid. At the same time I had a degree of courage that made me plug in things that perhaps I shouldn't. While I may have had a few exciting episodes that caused me to yank the plug really quickly I had a lot of successful encounters in just plugging in and firing up just the same. My life was all the richer for the experience I gained from being "Dangerous Dave."

:o

I will add that when I started collecting radios/tv sets as a kid I always rushed home with my new find and quickly plugged it in to see if it worked. There was nobody back then to tell me any different, and I really didn't have an catastrophies out of it. Some sets didn't do much of anything, some worked quite well. I don't recall ever having one that had a dead short or something that caused dramatic results. Maybe the worst thing was on some radios that had black beauties-those things can go off like a shot, though it never hurt anything in my case, just scared me. (had one am/fm Zenith that would go off about once every 5 minutes! would keep playing, though) If a set didn't work back then it wasn't a whole lot of good to me as I had no repair ablities save for replacing tubes. I knew nothing about caps, and couldn't solder worth a darn anyway. Even later, when I figured out about recapping, I tended to do dumb things like install used caps out of 70s TV sets. The first old TV I ever had is a '54 RCA console that worked fine when I got it, and I put many hours on it through the 80s. The only defect was a stretched vertical (conehead syndrome!) which I couldn't adjust out. I eventually attempted a recap with a mix of new and used caps and when I was done the set didn't work at all. That has been almost 20 years ago, and I really need to redo that thing one of these days.

The more sets I restore, the more I am firmly in the "replace 'em all" camp for electrolytics, paper and Black Beauties. Yes, you may get a set to work with a mix of old and new caps . . . for a while. After you have hauled some of those sets back onto the workbench for a second or third time, the lesson starts to sink in.

In my case, the big "defining moment" was when I burned up an expensive and hard to find power transformer, by trying it on the workbench one time too many with the old electrolytics in place.

Some people claim they can "reform" electrolytics to make them like new. I have tried that a few times, with poor results. If you would like to play a half-restored TV with ticking time bombs waiting to blow inside . . . it's your TV. I would rather be able to turn it on without crossing my fingers and watching for smoke.

Older orange-drop types (I have also seen maroon ones) seem to be a lot more reliable. Same with mica caps, although some of the 60-year old micas are starting to show their age. I had to replace a few micas in my RCA 630TS. For these, I replace only if I have a specific reason to think that one is bad.

From what I have read, moisture is what dooms old paper & Black Beauty type caps. Water vapor eventually gets through the wax or plastic coating, and the paper does the rest. This is true whether the cap looks like new, or melty or cracked. I have tested a lot of beautiful-looking paper & plastic caps after removal, and they were 99% garbage.

Modern caps have much better coatings, and they don't use paper inside -- for obvious reasons!

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

The first set I ever repaired was my '59 Magnavox combo, and for a while after I fixed it it was my only working set, but nearly every weekend when I sat down to watch tv, I found I had to pull the chassis to replace more caps. Eventually I had replaced nearly all of the paper caps, and a few electrolytics over a period of a few months (it worked like that for a few years until I gave it a full recap when I swapped the picture tube last year) Now I just like to do a full recap (paper and electrolytics) at the beginning.

With late 60s and 70s sets (when there were few if any paper caps anyway, and the electroyltics are usually ok), I usually just try them out, and only replace parts as needed (my '70 23" Zenith b/w is still running on the original electrolytics, and works great). The mid-50s to mid-60s sets, I often start them up slow, just to see what's going on, they often work as is (the electrolytics in sets from this era often seem to last), but if I'm planning on using it a lot they get the recap (both paper and electrolytic caps) anyway. But as for the 40s and early 50s sets, the paper and electrolytic caps get replaced, and also any resistors in the sweep circuits that test bad, before I even start them up. (In these old sets, not only are most of the paper caps are bad, but so are most of the electrolytics, there's a good chance the power supply filter caps are shorted)

I haven't been replacing old orange drops, or any mylar caps, unless they're bad (and I don't think I've ever found a bad one). Same with the micas and ceramics, although I have also found some bad micas lately, they were turning up in the horiz sweep circuit of my '54 Westinghouse, and I sometimes find a bad ceramic cap too.

As for the old radios, I recap them like the tv's , but I often use them before I get around to it (unlike the tv's they often work as-is), lately I've been using this 1935 Truetone at my desk, and it's still got all original caps, it works ok.

I just picked up a DuMont RA-105B7 "Sussex" 15" Console that "works." That is, I plugged it in for a minute and the Tube lit up. I did this at the Sellers home because he assured me it "works", and, I wanted to see for myself.

That's the last time I power it up until I do a full recap, etc. No way I'm going to risk a working Flyback Transformer and 15" CRT, etc.

Any suggestions on DuMont's are appreciated. Can't wait to work on Her...

LJB:smoke: