Getting a 7 soon..But all is not roses...

[rca2000]

I will FINALLY be getting a CTC-7 (early production, w 5U4 tubes) Color set soon. And THIS one is not 500 ,100 or even 50 miles away, but about 10 MILES away!! I saw it today, and the cabinet is "fair" with some wear near the front. All knobs present and safety glass intact, as is the chassis.

BUT... Sometime during its tenure in the garage it is in..the BASE of the tube got smashed...now, all that is left are wires. I did not really mess with them much, as I did NOT want any to break off, but I am fearful that some may already have done so. Other than that--the tip appears to be intact, so the vacuum may be good. The owner said it DID have a picture a few years ago.

nonetheless--it is going to be "kinda" free. I will also get a couple of round BW sets and I got a late '60s metal table model Zenith BW too. All I have to do is try and fix a "bug eye" zenith, and trade a truetone radio I have, the guy wanted. All in all--not a bad deal.

But the crt in the 7 scares me. If any leads are missing--game over I guess. But I'll face that when I get it. It will be the oldest color set I have.

BTW--I have not ben around much lately-- been working a lot, and working some on a little "project" I came up with. So, not too much time to surf or chat--but this wekend is a bit of a respite.

[Sandy G]

Keepin' fingers crossed...

[fsjonsey]

Originally Posted by rca2000

I will FINALLY be getting a CTC-7 (early production, w 5U4 tubes) Color set soon. And THIS one is not 500 ,100 or even 50 miles away, but about 10 MILES away!! I saw it today, and the cabinet is "fair" with some wear near the front. All knobs present and safety glass intact, as is the chassis.

BUT... Sometime during its tenure in the garage it is in..the BASE of the tube got smashed...now, all that is left are wires. I did not really mess with them much, as I did NOT want any to break off, but I am fearful that some may already have done so. Other than that--the tip appears to be intact, so the vacuum may be good. The owner said it DID have a picture a few years ago.

nonetheless--it is going to be "kinda" free. I will also get a couple of round BW sets and I got a late '60s metal table model Zenith BW too. All I have to do is try and fix a "bug eye" zenith, and trade a truetone radio I have, the guy wanted. All in all--not a bad deal.

But the crt in the 7 scares me. If any leads are missing--game over I guess. But I'll face that when I get it. It will be the oldest color set I have.

BTW--I have not ben around much lately-- been working a lot, and working some on a little "project" I came up with. So, not too much time to surf or chat--but this wekend is a bit of a respite.

The Bugeye Zeniths are built like tanks. All mine needed was a recap and a 12ax4.

[Cory]

Post some pics of the tube base when you get it. There are some tricks I've read in the old-school books about handling such a thing-
1. Sweating pins to remove the base cap completely.
2. Carefully filing the glass near broken leads to expose just enough to solder stiff wire to.
3. Straighten all leads and blow the solder out of the base cap pins.
4. Then dab glue on the back of the crt and carefully replace the cap, guiding the leads through the pins.

Of course these were for b&w crts, many more leads on yours!

[andy]

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[fujifrontier]

you can file glass? i thought it would break.

[John Folsom]

Andy is on the right track. I have used silver filled exoxy to repair broken wires on a 15GP22 CRT. They were low current signal pins. Don'k know how much luck you would have with fialment wires, but it might be worth a try. Not as scary as filing glass down and attempting to solder. And if it does not work, you can remove it and try the other approach. The only down side: the silver filled epoxy is expensive and does not haave a long shelf life.

The forst photo shows the CRT with the 4 pins broken off flush with the glass (pins 13, 17, 18 and 19). The idea is to build a little cup around each broken off wire into which an extension wire will be inserted and then back filled with the silver epoxy, as illustrated in the second and thrid photos. Very flexible super-fine multi strnded wire was used for the extensions, so the wires would not trnasfer any mechanical loads from the CRT base once the base was installed.