I got this from the Radio club today for $20. It was left in the building when the club moved in 15 years ago, and they had it in the Annex. The Annex consists to two very large rooms filled to the roof with TV and radio stuff. I also got a B&K 445 CRT tester, which I used to test the tube in the set. When I tested the tube in the Annex, it tested 70%. I bring it home, clean all the tubes and tube sockets, and test the tube again. This time, it tested 80%. I leave the tube tester on it for about two minutes, and then walk away. When I come back twenty seconds later, the emissions had fallen to 20%. What gives?! I hope it's just the tube tester acting up. I'd really hate to have to find a new tube for this thing. The cabinet is in exquisite shape, too.

I briefly turned the set on to verify that the tube had not been destroyed by the B&K 445. It still produces a bright picture. The horizontal is running way too slow, the vertical - very screwed up, and the hum from the lytics has plenty of bass.

Here is the image.

I will go ahead and tell you now. It needs to be recap before you run it more than a minute. Those paper caps is just layers of wax paper and oil and when they blow they have been known to catch fire. Now that would be a good set to learn repairing and restorations on. I am not trying scare you , but I have had happen to me back in the day. I was learning myself and it scared the crap out of me.

Yes, yes. I know all about old wax caps. No need to preach to me. I only wanted to see if the tube had been ruined by that tester. This thing will be getting all new Sprague orange drops, or at the very least, those yellow polypropylene things. Although, I don't really like those.

Be forewarned....this set is probably one of RCAs worst sets. Even when restored they have lousy focus and picture quality. Most KCS 47 chassis sets are best used for displaying spider plants. Unreliable even when new.

Personally not a fan of those yellow caps....I get mine from mouser, or capacitor world.

Thanks for the warning, Kamakiri. The cabinet is in such nice shape (except for the top), I think refurbishing (not restoring) this set would be nice. And please feel free to change this thread's title to "1951 RCA KCS-47" instead of "1951 rca kcs-47." That is driving me crazy.

This was not the best RCA by a long shot, but if you're up to the challenge it's still a good candidate for restoration.

Be forewarned....this set is probably one of RCAs worst sets. Even when restored they have lousy focus and picture quality. Most KCS 47 chassis sets are best used for displaying spider plants. Unreliable even when new.

Personally not a fan of those yellow caps....I get mine from mouser, or capacitor world.

Agreed...RCA made many fine tv sets, sadly the KCS 47 is not one of thier better efforts. :thumbsdn:

Out of curiosity, what do people dislike about the yellow caps?

jr

I have not taken the chassis out yet, so I really don't have any idea what I'm up against. I have recapped a few radios, so unless there is no rotten rubber wiring or unobtanium parts, I think I can handle it.

I have not taken the chassis out yet, so I really don't have any idea what I'm up against. I have recapped a few radios, so unless there is no rotten rubber wiring or unobtanium parts, I think I can handle it.

The most important and expensive parts appear to be OK, the flyback, yoke and CRT. And since the cabinet is in good condition, what do you have to loose but a few bucks for capacitors? Go for it!

Thanks for the encouragement, kvflyer. I'll probably take this TV back to the club this weekend and begin working on it. I just need to find a schematic.

Out of curiosity, what do people dislike about the yellow caps?


Most likely because they're shinny bright yellow. :) Ironically they're cosmetically and construction wise about the closest thing to the original types used. I've removed thousands of old paper caps that were apparently originally yellow, except that they've darkened over the years from heat and dirt.

Thanks for the encouragement, kvflyer. I'll probably take this TV back to the club this weekend and begin working on it. I just need to find a schematic.

Schematic is a free download from the ETF archives.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/RCA-6T71-Sams-113-7.pdf

Thanks. I printed it out on my mother's printer, but right when I got to the schematic parts, the ink ran out.

Out of curiosity, what do people dislike about the yellow caps?

jr


I'm wondering the same thing. I've been using the yellow caps for several years now, and have yet to run across a bad one. Naturally, I would prefer Sprague orange drops, but the yellow capacitors cost SO much less!

For a 1951, the chassis looks clean and rust free. That's a plus for sure. Except for the top, it looks like it's a good candidate to restore and re-cap. Some scratch polish or some stain should take care of that. I don't see why it wouldn't be as good as any set of that era. I don't think any CRT set with magnetic focus looks as bright and sharp as those using the "newer" electro-static focus. Looks to be an easy set to work on and re-cap. Orange drops are good capacitors and I understand the yellow ones work well also. However orange drop caps are on the more expensive side. I use capacitors from capacitorworld dot net and have had very good luck using them. BTW they are brownish/red in color not yellow. I wouldn't worry a whole lot about the variance in the readings on the B&K CRT tester. The tester is probably working fine. The tube should "wake up" fine once you are able to get the set recapped and going again.

I took the chassis out of the set so I can begin work on it tomorrow. Holy moly at all those caps...

I had a chassis from around the same period, but it had a 19" metal CRT in it. No matter what I did it was just unstable on the horizontal oscillator, seemed like crappy build quality anyway.

I'm pretty sure that's the same model TV that was in Doc's living room that started playing Howdy Doody in Back to the Future Part II

We made a little bit of progress on my RCA KCS-47 today at the radio club. I meticulously checked each individual tube with a military tube tester, and after two hours, replaced all the weak ones. Amazingly, the 6BG6 tested perfect. We also replaced a 180 pF capacitor in the horizontal circuit with a silver mica. My friend who knows these things won't be there to help me next weekend, so I'm just going to change the lytics out.

The KCS-47 has now been 100% recapped. It's been that way since New Years, but I haven't been able to work on the set at all because of all the junk everywhere. I put the chassis back in, got a converter box, and this is the image I saw. It also has intermittent video, where sometimes, it won't diplay an image at all. Just a grey screen with retrace lines.

We tried to tell you ;)

Good effort so far though!

We tried to tell you ;)

Good effort so far though!

If that's the image a KCS-47 produces, what's the point of buying it in 1951?:scratch2:

If that's the image a KCS-47 produces, what's the point of buying it in 1951?:scratch2:

That image was probably taken from a set which was far from being in peak operating condition, with leaky or open capacitors and such; however, some people will watch their TVs with absolutely terrible pictures (oversaturated colors, too bright, shrunken ...), and won't mind it a bit, as long as they can see their favorite shows. (I knew a family some years ago who was like that.) Don't forget, television was still a novelty in the early 1950s. The state of the art was nowhere near as advanced in 1951 as it is today; everyone had to make do with what was available at the time. This means that even when the set was in perfect (!) working order, it still did not produce that great a picture by today's standards; however, given the state of the TV art in the 1950s, the picture may have been regarded as very good.

The KCS-47 chassis can produce excellent pictures (given a decent signal), and it probably did when it was new. I used to watch one years ago (long before DTV); it had a great picture on all three (at the time, 1970s) Cleveland VHF television stations and using rabbit ears as an antenna.

Remember that VHF television stations in the 1950s did not have much power (this was long before the age of super-power UHF stations with signals in the megawatt range). Most folks used outdoor antennas to get the signals, although if you were close to the towers (within twenty miles or so), you could probably get by with rabbit ears. I had an aunt who lived in Independence, Ohio, which is quite close to Cleveland's TV towers; she could get every Cleveland station in color just by using a short length of wire on one of the antenna terminals. My grandmother, who lived in the city of Cleveland near the suburb of Shaker Heights, got excellent reception of all three network stations on her '51 GE 16" console, using only rabbit ears, in the 1950s until she got a color set in 1969. Even then, she was getting excellent color reception, even on the PBS affiliate (then NET), with just an indoor antenna.

Of course, these days, with almost all TV being on cable and/or streaming video, the reception issue is fast becoming a moot point. As I read in an issue of TV Technology a few minutes ago, before starting to write this, the FCC wants to eliminate broadcast TV altogether, since so many folks are watching TV via the Internet and other platforms which do not rely on RF signals.

The day may come when there will no longer be any such thing as over-the-air television. I think that day may come sooner rather than later, given the popularity of streaming video over the Internet. I personally do not watch OTA TV anymore, since getting a Roku player over a year ago (I upgraded mine late last year, and still have my first one). I hooked up the little box to my 19" flat screen and did not look back. The only reason I have a cable account with Spectrum (formerly Time Warner) at all these days is so the Roku Spectrum TV app will receive local channels. No cable account (the cable need not, however, be physically connected to the television), no local TV. That's just the way it is and has always been with this cable operator. I think (in fact, I am almost certain) they are doing it this way to be able to pay for the privilege of carrying local TV signals (in any area served by Spectrum, not just northeast Ohio) through the Spectrum app. They could never get away with it otherwise.

We tried to tell you ;)

Good effort so far though!
Someone on ARF (Bill Cahill?) had something like a 15 page thread on their repairs on one...Every time they had it working decent something new would blow or burn...I don't think you could give me one of those sets.

It seems like RCA's sets from about 1949 to 51 or 52 were pretty crappy build quality and not well designed. The KCS-49 being a great example of this. Things started picking up though when RCA got into color sets I believe.

First, monochrome television had reached an incredibly high standard by 1951. Hell, by 1939 even. Anyone who has watched a TRK-9 knows that even some prewar sets were capable of a brilliant, bright, contrasty, B/W picture on par with a postwar standard of excellence: the 630TS.

RCA experimented with some chintzy designs in the 1950 and 1951 model years; ultimately the bean counters run the show. The KCS-47 chassis was all about cost cutting. That said, RCA did have some quality designs in the same period: the RCA 9TC275 had a fine chassis (number escapes me at the moment), and the KCS-66 sets are a veritable gold standard. Monochrome television was a mature technology in 1951; RCA was just trying to move a greater volume of sets at a lower cost. It's simple economics.

Look at the devolution of RCA BC band radios. The Radiola 60 was a fairly high quality radio: RF amplification, extremely sensitive when properly aligned. It can recieve anything right down into the atmospheric noise. It wasn't perfect, it had a low IF frequency thus it had image issues, but it's otherwise a great set.

Now look at the typical AA5, of which RCA built millions. No RF amp, noisy converters, a single stage of IF amplification. The only advantage over the Radiola 60 is the higher IF frequency.

Why the devolution? Cost cutting. Fewer tubes, newer tube types, smaller radios in cheaper cabinets. Follow the almighty dollar...

First, monochrome television had reached an incredibly high standard by 1951. Hell, by 1939 even. Anyone who has watched a TRK-9 knows that even some prewar sets were capable of a brilliant, bright, contrasty, B/W picture on par with a postwar standard of excellence: the 630TS.

RCA experimented with some chintzy designs in the 1950 and 1951 model years; ultimately the bean counters run the show. The KCS-47 chassis was all about cost cutting. That said, RCA did have some quality designs in the same period: the RCA 9TC275 had a fine chassis (number escapes me at the moment), and the KCS-66 sets are a veritable gold standard. Monochrome television was a mature technology in 1951; RCA was just trying to move a greater volume of sets at a lower cost. It's simple economics.

Look at the devolution of RCA BC band radios. The Radiola 60 was a fairly high quality radio: RF amplification, extremely sensitive when properly aligned. It can recieve anything right down into the atmospheric noise. It wasn't perfect, it had a low IF frequency thus it had image issues, but it's otherwise a great set.

Now look at the typical AA5, of which RCA built millions. No RF amp, noisy converters, a single stage of IF amplification. The only advantage over the Radiola 60 is the higher IF frequency.

Why the devolution? Cost cutting. Fewer tubes, newer tube types, smaller radios in cheaper cabinets. Follow the almighty dollar...

Probably bean counters saying "build'em cheap and quick and get them out the door" before color came into being. They had such high hopes for color in the 50's. Then there was the General's edict to flood the market with as many monochrome sets as they could before CBS got a foothold with their sequential color...

From the picture, this set looks exactly like mine. Does this mean mine has a shit chassis too? sadface:(

Honestly I have no experience with these old tvs yet, but mine looked like an electronically-well-made set. But what do I know?

Someone on ARF (Bill Cahill?) had something like a 15 page thread on their repairs on one...Every time they had it working decent something new would blow or burn...I don't think you could give me one of those sets.

This one?

http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=73266&

How about a KCS45... same garbage??

Years ago, I packed home a 2T51 12 inch set in a bakelite cabinet, and repaired it by replacing a few tubes and a few caps. It was never very stable, so it became a "shelf queen", with the thought that sometime I would perhaps give it a full recap/rebuild.

Now 20+ years later, I am considering working on the set again, but from the above comments about the KCS47, l am wondering if that might just be a waste of time.

Cute little set, however:

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1950-RCA-2T51-12in.jpg

What say the experts?:scratch2:

jr

I also have one of those 2T51 that I've never restored. I can't imagine it would be too difficult to revert some of the circuitry to an earlier more stable design. Apparently the sync circuit is a weak link? I guess I'll get mine operational as a video monitor first and proceed from there.

This one?

http://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=73266&

Think so.