Back when I joined AudioKarma, Ya'all wanted to see pics of my CTC9, so here they are :) I was in Nebraska over the weekend and grabbed a couple shots of it. I contemplated bringing it back to Minnesota with me, but didn't have enough room. Anyway, as you can see, before I got it, someone had tried to strip the cabinet and refinish it, and the top has some water damage and peeled veneer. The original speaker is missing, and I seem to recal that there's no HV present, although it's been a few years since i've messed with it, so I don't remember what the cause was. I have no idea how good the CRT is, but I was able to get it to produce a picture at one time. (quite an accomplishment because I would have been about 15 or 16 years old when I got this set and was working on it.) Judging by the looks of the cabinet, do you all think it is worth having it refinished and the top replaced, or is that quite expensive?

I feel as though its well worth it to preserve the beauty of these sets. If the water damage is not too severe, you may be able to sand away the water stain and simply restain the wood. This would require complete disassembly of the cabinet, but at least you could have the excuse to troubleshot everything while its apart :D

The top of the cabinet is shot. Major chipping of veneer along the edges, as well as warped and lifting areas. Mere sanding isn't going to replace all the chipped-off missing pieces.

If I had to restore the cabinet -- and I have fixed worse ones -- I would completely remove the top veneer layer and replace it, then refinish the entire cabinet in lacquer.

It's not rocket science, and the rest of the cabinet looks like an easy refinish (after you remove the chassis and picture tube and mask off the speaker grille, of course).

If you don't want to pay someone to do it, you can send me email via http://antiqueradio.org/contact.htm and I could give you more specific advice on how to do this sort of thing.

Regards,

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