I know, this is odd for me to be posting on this side of "town". I don't even own a roundie of my own.

But my friend, her roundie, an RCA CTC-9, has a little too much horizontal deflection.. It would appear the horizontal size is quite a bit too large, making people look fat.. It's a TV that has been handed down from her parents, it has NOT been touched as far as I know..

I haven't seen it yet, so I'm going off the text I received.. She uses it once in a while, but last week it was fine, today it's h-size is about 20% larger than what it usually is.

Is there a simple POT for this? Or should I be looking at something else?

If you look at the yoke, you can move a wire from the center to I think left side to either reduce or enlarge the width. I think it's labeled on the yoke or in the sams.

Interesting, it's that easy? I thought it'd be harder with these old TV's..

Try that first. Maybe that easy. The newer RCA sets don't have that feature.. On the top where the blue and red wires reside, you will see a center pin to change the size. Hopefully that's all. If she is using a digital converter box, It may be set to the wrong aspect

Nah she's using our local cable companies analog VHF stations to pickup 2-13 channels on the tuner, so no scaling or aspect modifications should be involved.

Besides, I would think that if there was aspect modifications involved, it'd only be vertical size, not the horizontal size.

This part of the CTC-9 schematic mentions the width adjustment.

Phil Nelson

http://antiqueradio.org/art/temp/CTC-9YokeSchematic.jpg

...last week it was fine, today it's h-size is about 20% larger than what it usually is.


Has someone been in there jackin with wires? Sounds like to me something failed (or is failing). If one day it was fine, and another day it wasn't, seems like moving a wire from one point to another is not the answer.

The TV hasn't been opened up, as far as I know.

She told me this morning that she notices a louder hum coming from the speaker too.

The TV hasn't been opened up, as far as I know.

She told me this morning that she notices a louder hum coming from the speaker too.

No more plugging it in and turning it on. It sounds as though it is getting ready to release the Factory Installed Smoke which may come from parts that are, shall we say, "Expensive and hard to find?"

Seriously, I would not operate it again until it has been checked...

Crap. Ok, I'll have her unplug it. I'll need to see if I can over to her house later this week and get some pictures and examine it.

Filter caps! check 'em.. Bet you are getting too much horiz deflection from a cap incresing substantually in value. The hum is another tell tale. The flyback is most likely under alot of stress, the hum through the speaker is a 60hz hum passing the liltering ability of the capacitors in the power supply.

The hum maybe intercarrier buzz simply be due to the sound demodulator adjustment.

I would like to see a TV screen photograph of what is being discussed before jumping to a conclusion. It seems these days most viewers (not me!!) are content watching anamorphically stretched 4x3 on 16x9 displays. Who is to say that the source of video to the set is not due to a setting from a set top box and has nothing to do with the set's circuitry at all?

Who is to say that the source of video to the set is not due to a setting from a set top box and has nothing to do with the set's circuitry at all?

He did mention that they are using local cable that picks up on 2-13 on the dial.

I would guess a cap is failing.... especially if this set has not been serviced in the past 20+ years.

Well, I was going to have her get a screen shot, so she plugged it in to get a shot, and well, it's not possible now..

She turned it on, let it warm up, went to grab her phone to snap a pic, and the picture went wider, started to loose vertical deflection, and then the picture faded out.. She has it permanently unplugged now.

This Friday I'm going to go take a look at the caps..

I asked if there was a service sticker, and she sees one service sticker from '71, and that it was a CRT replacement..

40 years is a long time between services. I vote caps also. There maybe something else wrong now.

Yea, I'm starting to think so too..

I asked her if it smells at all of anything burning, no smell.. So that's good..

I just had 3 tubes in my CTC9 fail... that was strange. But I would still think caps on this one... however you never know.

blooming and loss of pic, smells like HV trouble to me.

is audio still there? if so then:

check the HV 1st with a HV prob, if not there sub in new HOT/Damper/HV reg/HV rectifier. Check the cathode current of the HOT.

If no audio then you prob have a B+ issue, maybe a blown fuse (bad filter caps shorted).

If you have HV audio and still no pic, check the video out tube.

She thinks she had sound still, with the same amount of hum. I'm not having her plug it in again until I get there this weekend to check it out.

And I NEVER say this....but

That set needs a complete recap including all the orange and red drops. I have a ctc9 and all the caps are bad, didn't you restore one Dave that alll the 200 volt red drops were bad too?

You. Can keep running it and it will keep degrading. Its not like a late 60s set you can change a few parts on and put into service

Ok. I'll stop by our local electronics surplus store and see if I can find all these parts to replace them.. Is there a parts list?

LOL! Surplus store?
How about getting an order together of good caps, not the yellow china ones or some 40 year old crap
Replace the one at a time and test the new ones as you install.

This set is worth doing right. Quality parts and tlc

My surplus store is Sky Craft.. They do actually have good parts, like Nichicon caps and stuff.. They are just in boxes and you have to find them yourself, not sorted well.

Not my pic: http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2107/2162376565_a288890516.jpg

It's a dream place. They have almost everything. That's where I got my tektronix scope with frequency counter and DVM.

Resistors are ok at skyjunk (I like to buy carbon comps there but need to test), but if you are buying caps, you need to be careful, you have no idea how old they are. You are better off buying caps from mouser, get radial lead caps for filters, there are new narrow ones that fit inside cans better, and get good quality film caps. the ones that generally are problems are the old 200v rated film caps and the HV caps in the sweep circuits. the high quality caps like good orange drops that skyjunk does have tend to be over priced.

I see you are local, if you want you can bring it to my place and I will take a look at it. PM me if interested.

Ok. I'll think about it. Probably will just bring it over.

As someone who used to live near enough to shop at Sky Craft I can say the following.
It is not always easy to find caps with the proper rating for tube gear, and when they do have caps with the right rating they are not always good let alone suitable for TV.

I recapped my first(successfully repaired)TV set using their caps and though it was not too bad in the beginning now over four years later it has gotten so unstable that I'm considering recaping it again!

Shoot I hope the caps I bought for my lcd don't go bad.

Sorry I didn't get to posting about this.

This TV was definitely serviced much later in it's life than the original sticker.. The parts inside looked far too new to be early 80's. I was able to find however what was happening, some of the wires inside were getting chewed on by some rodents, which is odd, because she keeps a very clean house, but, it IS near Lee Road here in Orlando, which are some older houses. So I strung new wires, and it's all set, raster is normal now, and the hum is gone in the speakers.. The bottom of the cabinet was missing a grille to cover the vents.. So I laid a new one for her..

All set.. Sorry, no pictures, my iPhones battery died well before I even got to her house (I left the stupid Tom Tom app running by accident).

It's convergence is crap though.. Only the VERY center is ok, but the rest, not good.. It's apparently been like this.. So I'm gonna have to learn how to converge these sets then.

EDIT: Oh, and I was surprised, I never knew the CTC-9 had a PCB in it.. I thought all these roundies were point to point wiring.. It had that too, but was surprised to even see a form of a circuit board.

Rca started using PC boards with the CTC 4, The IF section was the only board in that one. From the CTC 5 on had several. Zenith, however, used point to point in everything up until the '70s. A few others did too but most sets had boards in them.
Glad to hear it's working again.

Damnit, this morning got the text: Picture is fine, hum is back..

She's going to record the sound and send it to me..

Probably still gonna need a cap job..

If the hum is present when the volume is all the way down and/or there is a slow crawling slight bend in the picture, that is a sure sign that the filter caps are bad. I would highly recommend replacing them no matter what it is doing, they are way past their expected lifetime. A dead short in one can blow the power transformer. These caps can also explode. I restored a '65 Zenith roundie that had one explode, it took over 6 hours to remove all the black goo off of everything. Luckily, the transformer and other parts were not damaged.

Well the caps looked like they were replaced in the 90's, because they didn't look old at all, and were a matter of fact, very clean and new looking, just with some dust buildup.

Besides, as long as my old capacitor tester (2-tube tester) was working, it checked out fine..

The hum is volume controlled. Basically, at all the way down, no hum is heard, at a mid-position the hum is there, at all the way up, the hum goes away.. It's weird..

Here's an audio clip I was sent.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/zj9cr61zd17x2af/noise3.mp3

That's basically it..

That is completely normal. Nothing to worry about. Intercarrier Buzz

agreed buzz not hum, no problems there. Prob worse with modern programming.

Yep. you can try fine tuning the tuner and see is the sound gets better. Zenith's had an adjustment called Buzz. I dont know if RCA had some adjustmernt for this. Theres a slight possibility that the sound could get a bit better if you check the life of the tubes in the IF circuits if you have a weak one.

I checked, no buzz control on the cathode of the detector tube.

Buzz, humm, aren't they the same thing?

Either way, ok, good to know it's normal.

no, hum is sine, buzz is not.

If there was hum, it would be rather loud possibly overpowering the audio. It would be very obvious from the next room. What you have is completely normal and may not be able to be adjusted out. You can spend hours trying to adjust things but it will never be perfect. It's kind of like convergence trying to get that last bit out. The audio quality sounded pretty good to me. Even some newer sets will have some buzz if you listen close enough.

Just heard that clip again on a real computer and not my iPhone. Yes that's completely normal. I get that especially when I play a VHS tape on the ctc-9 I have (before the CRT met uncertain doom). It's just the way the subcarriers demod the signal. Think a lot was to to with the power of the transmission signal or something. I even have that sound on my 50" pioneer plasma if I play a VHS.

Okay good I'll just let her know to quit her yappin then, lol

Sometimes a SLIGHT tweak of the AGC will help take away some of the buzz too. Glad to hear it's only intercarrier.

The one thing you should prob do is check the fuse its on the side of the chassis (very top, as its sideways mounted) and make sure it has the correct fuse. Its not uncommon for some one to put in the wrong fuse which could cause a meltdown if something goes wroing. Its an odd ball shape, you may have to order one special if its the wrong value, but they can be gotten.

I found 30 amp fuses in old Fisher tube gear. A lot of times they have shorted caps and they blow the 3 amp fuse so they intall a 30A to watch it release it's magic smoke.

I wanted to post an update: The TV is still working fine.