The Dream is Alive: The CBS 205 Lives On

[mr_fixer]

WOW! that is a nice TV set! Beautiful Picture too!

[John Folsom]

The rebuild of the 19VP22 DOES bode well for the rebuild of the 15GP22. Scotty at Hawkeye is probably going to make the first attempt in the next 2-3 months. Now, the bad news. There is currently no one who is willing to rebuild the CRT gun once it is removed from the 15GP22. I current hold 2 15GP22 guns which were rebuilt (new haters and cathodes). But the company who performed this work, Southwest Vacuum Products, is no longer willing to do this (long story, not going to elaborate at this moment). I am searching for a way forward which would allow more than 2 attempts to rebuild a 15GP22. There will be discussions of this at the ETF, and more here later.

[Arkay]

Fantastic job! That is a gorgeous, historic set that you've obviously done an excellent job on.

It warms the heart to see something that old and rare be brought back to life and restored to such condition. Not many people on the planet would or could do that, but the world is better off for the existence of people who do such things. One more piece of history that is preserved for at least another generation. Bravo!

[Tomcomm]

Way ta go, John! A classic "do it the right way" original restoration. The main chassis component-side pix sure is pretty, all orange and blue. The wiring even looks mostly new. This is the first time I've had the opportunity of viewing the underside of a professionally restored early '50s CT, I'm impressed!

The Judy Garland screen-shot has great color shading and detail. I know from experience that cameras can't convey the qualities of the direct view. Do you intend making provisions for external composite video input directly into the 1st video amp? I'd like to see some screen-shots of the DVE test dvd that most of us surely have for comparisons. Congrats again.....Tom

[John Folsom]

Tomcomm,

I did spend some time on the bench running the set from a video amplifier feeding the grid of the 1st video amp. This produced a superb picture, with no noise or hash. I resorted to this because the front end of the set was performing terribly, with all kinds of noise and interference. I eventually figured out the poor front end performance was due to 1. a bad antenna balun, and 2. a crappy el-cheapo RF modulator. Once I found and replaced these two miscreants, the performance was better than I expected. So to make my life easier, I am not going to install a baseband video input and amplifier. It is good enough.

By the way, the CBS 205 design was most likely licensed from RCA, at least in part, as the IF/video/chroma/matrix sections are virtually identical to the RCA cT100. CBS designed their own tuner, defelction, HV and LV power supply, and convergence circuitry. But the color bandwidth is full I&Q. :-)

Here is a photo I took while the set was on the bench and driven at baseband at the 1st video amplifier grid. The exposure on the photo is not very good and I had not optimized the convergence but you get the idea.

[Sandy G]

I can only imagine that working on/playing with this set would be like taking a ride in the 1903 Wright "Flyer"...Or going for a spin w/Carl Benz or Gottlieb Daimler in their 1886 cars...Are there any other working examples around that we know of ?

[Steve D.]

John,

Delighted that this long term project turned out so well. A good job, well done. I'll look forward to viewing the documentary on the tube rebuild at the ETF. See you there.

-Steve D.

[classicradio]

Excellent work John! It gives me inspiration to get my RCA working!

That's quite the primitive looking CRT shield holder on the back. Or is it actually holding the CRT up as well?

[John Folsom]

Classicradio, The shield on the CRT serves to provide magnetic shielding and also serves to hold the CRT in place.

[sampson159]

beautiful,movie like color. great job!!!

[Pete Deksnis]

Great job John.

A pesky antenna balun; who would've thought.

Pete

[yagosaga]

John,

thank you very much for this long and excellent report about your CBS 205 project. This is a reading pleasure.

- Eckhard

[zenith2134]

Very impressive, that raster is beautiful! Wish I had that kind of know-how

[Josef]

Hi @ all!
John's restauration is a milestone. It shows what is possible and is absolutely state of the art. The colour balance is one of the best I have ever seen: thmbsp:
Congratulations Josef

[cbenham]

John, Congratulations!
Great looking pictures on this set. The set itself is very nice looking too, what a 'Television Set' should look like. All your photos really tell of the time you spent
making it work again.
Cliff