#1
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Final ColorTrak2000 model...
I've had a 31" ColorTrak 2000 since it was new
in 1990. It had a failure in the potentiometer for the green drive while still under warranty and was repaired for free. The set was sold as a 'monitor', so there is absolutely no compensation for signal strength variability from different sources. LaserDiscs always looked washed out compared to over the air or cable signals, but then DVDs came along and gave the set a whole new gamut of color and dynamic range. The set was built in Canada. It was already under Thompson labeling, but I think was leftover from previous ownership. It was the last year before RCA came out with 'ProScan' as their flagship. The set has excellent color-rendering capability and will be great to run with the new HDTV signals, when converter boxes become available. It does have a problem that has baffled techies over the years. In humid weather, it will shut down and go into oscillation of startup and shutdown without becoming useable again. Sounds like a major defect, but I found the source of the problem after years of study on the interned and my own non-technical observations. There is a tall, rectangular white ceramic resistor in the high voltage section which can be pushe with a wooden dowel to re-set the TV to normal. It works every time, though sometimes bearing repeating 2 or rarely 3 or 4 times to get weeks and weeks of use once again. I keep the back cover loosely attached so that I can open and poke when needed. It's something about the circuit board, I know,and it's something that would condemn most of these sets to the ash heap of history. But the picture is so clear and focused and wide-spectrum in color. What a shame, eh? Does anyone know the specs on the final ColorTrak2000? I think it was the last year before Invar masks, so it's not overly bright. It has lots of useless digitial effects built into it and the large remote control. A real curiosity! |
#2
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The first thing I would try is to re-solder that resistor to the board and check connections on and re-solder the other connections in that area.
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#3
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I don't think yours is the final Colortrak 2000 model. I had a Colortrak 2000 from 1991.
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#4
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And I have a ColorTrak from 1992. Great set.
__________________
Good headphones make good neighbors. |
#5
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Quote:
I won't argue that. The store was giving these away at half price the year I got it and then they came out with ProScan. It's great with a good signal, but absolute crap with VCR tape or weak over the air. Even LaserDisc through a top of the line Pioneer seemed weak. But DVDs are sharp and bright with great contrast and no color bleed. It seems that RCA had mastered the color gamut pretty well (still weak in turquoise) but didn't delve into the world of compensation for various defects in signals. On the other hand, I bought a little JVC 19" the same year and every source shown on it was saturated and razor sharp and high contrast. I bought a 32" JVC flat tube a couple of years ago, and they've continued that tradition into the present day. There is a lot of voodoo science in making all sources look acceptable on a phosphor screen. RCA gave up too early... But I love the old ColorTrak2000 for DVDs and will look forward to a new life for it with the HDTV converters, when available. Anybody have any thoughts on verrtical compression on older sets? I'm thinking of installing a switch to have a second potentiometer in the vertical size circuit. The 32" JVC has this feature and it makes a picture as sharp as PAL or even French SECAM. |
Audiokarma |
#6
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The '2000' went away.
The ColorTrak line stuck around, but RCA gave up the flagship under its own name and signed it ProScan instead. At least, that's how I saw the marketing. I think ColorTrak is STILL around in the RCA line, but the early 90s ended the 2000, which had begun back in the mid 60s... |
#7
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Quote:
I don't think it's that actual ceramic resistor that is the culprit, though. From what I've read over the years, there is some mysterious crack in the circuit board that causes the problem. It's also got the other problem of a poorly-shielded tuner that so many have mentioned. The lefthand side of the picture is washed out in solid black scenes on some channels more than on others. That is supposed to be a soldering issue, too, but I ignore it, since I only watch over-the-air occasionally and can use the tuner of the VCR anyway. HDTV converters will make it obsolete next year, also. I have NOT had the digital memory problems that others have mentioned -- the EEPROM, I think it's called. The only digital anomaly I get is when the set has to be poked with a stick, the picture comes on all weird and the 'Off' button for digital special effects clears that up. In other words, the re-set puts the set into digital effects mode. I still don't quite understand why they spent money on that stuff at the expense of some better signal processing. The color decoding circuits are top notch, though. Great color fidelity. |
#8
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My degausser died on the venerable ColorTrak2000 31" monitor.
It made a crackling sound and the picture came on with a bright magenta frame around a bright green oval in the middle of the screen. I was afraid the picture tube had gone bad, but I managed to get normal color back in the center of the tube. The degausser still works, but without the surge at the beginning, so it is worse than useless. I've got a bulk demagnetizer around somewhere to try on it. The screen is too big for little electric motors around the house to do much good. I see degaussers on ebay. I hate to lose this nice set, since it works beautifully with the DTV converter box. Really nice, subtle colors, especially flesh tones. You don't get that kind of subtlety in the new sets... |
#9
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Your degaussing issue:
It's probably due to a defective thermistor in the degaussing circuit. RCA thermistors from the '90's are bad about falling apart. I've seen many where the leads would break loose from the body and barely be making contact. I've never seen a degaussing coil in one of these fail. In fact, I've only seen two degaussing coils fail in all of the TV's that I've messed with over the past 19 years. Your shutdown problem: I agree that bad solder connections are causing it. Try resoldering the horizontal drive transformer, the flyback, the horizontal output transistor, and the connections around that big resistor. I don't know why; but, several companies experienced trouble with the horizontal drive xfmr being soldered poorly. What chassis (CTCxxx) does your set use? The latest colortrak 2000 model that I've seen was from around '92. Then, the Proscan line came along. Boy, I remember the local dealers playing up on how advanced the Proscan line was. I had a '91 27" that uses something like a CTC157 or 159 chassis. It was a TV shop reject and played well after I changed the flyback and HOT. I used it for several years and then sold it when I needed $. |
#10
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It's chassis CTC140.
Model F313255B. The thing that happened with the degausser -- I'm ashamed to admit -- I have a long wooden dowel that I use to push on the white ceramic obelisk resistor to re-set the TV when it goes into its switching on and off hysteresis. I was a bit careless the other day, when the set did this for the first time in many months and the dowel slipped off and hit something on the circuit board behind the resistor -- further toward th middle and under the picture tube somewhat. I think it was the thermistor because an orange glow briefly appeared from the spot I hit and then the set was on normally. I often have to repeat the punching procedure and this was one of those times. The next time I clicked the TV on, I saw a white spark come from a region slightly more outboard from the place I hit -- more in the high voltage area. The TV came on normally and worked all day. The next morning, I turned on the set and a zapping/crackling sound came from the TV and the picture came on with the magnetized magenta frame around a green oval that I described. After that, the degausser never made the deep thump when it switched on, so I'm thinking that a capacitor or other high-voltage assist died in the flash of light that I saw the previous day. So I've unplugged the degausser because it makes a mess of the picture after I've done the best I can to hand-demagnetize the screen. I found an old bulk eraser for tapes tucked away and it does pretty well. Its problem is that it isn't a big enough field for such a large tube, so the bottom corners stay pink when the rest is clear. I think they might age back to normal with time and besides most programming on the DTV is 16x9, where the bottom of the tube is idle anyway. I am not confident enough of my ability to solder such tiny parts to take the set apart, so I might just leave it alone. I still love the old set for its color fidelity... |
Audiokarma |
#11
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CTC140 with random shutdown????
Check the connections on the diode SIP board in the main power supply. This is a little (about 2 inches) board standing on edge in the power supply. I've fixed hundreds of those sets by resoldering the connections on that little board. You'll need to take it off of the main board to do it right. I think it has 7 wires that connect it to the main board.
I've also seen a lot of them with a bad diode.....the big diode on that little board. I think it is part number 164589--someone check me on that as I am nowhere near a service manual right now. It'll test good with a meter, but try to suck an amp through it and it'll fail. As said before, the thermistors on these sets seem to just fall to pieces. get a new one, p/n 207768 and you'll be good to go There are other places that could have bad connections too, so get a strong light and take a close look. Good luck! |
#12
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The random shutdown of the set is a different issue from
the degausser failure. The degausser had been working fine until my wooden dowel slipped off the large obelisk resistor and hit the circuit board behind. That caused a yellow light, like something glowing red hot briefly. This crippled the degausser, but did not kill it. It still puts out a little bit of current and shuts off gradually, as if the thermistor is still working. There just isn't enough juice in that circuit to properly demagnetize and instead caused a magnetization that ruins the picture. So I unplugged the degausser at the little connector on the wires coming off the circuit board. End of that story, unless someone knows how current is supplied to the degausser circuit and how it can be restored to full value. Otherwise, hand-degaussing is adequate. I haven't had any further intermittent shutdowns of the set as yet. For a couple of days after the accident with the wooden dowel, the vertical size would vibrate slightly, but this effect went away. The telltale horizontal size shrinkage that precedes the intermittent shutdown wasn't happening, though. It was something new. So now I have a beautiful picture except for a magenta lefthand bottom corner and a spot slightly inboard from the righthand corner. These persist even after hand- degaussing with a bulk eraser. I'm searching ebay and other sites for a large-diameter degaussing coil. I notice that ebay has many of the really cheap green rectangular model degaussers for sale cheap. I wonder why... |
#13
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I had an RCA console given to me that was about that same age, I can't recall the chassis number. It had 2 problems: 1)the degaussing thermistor. I first replaced it with one from my junkbox which caused the fuse to blow. Next I swapped one in from a junker Zenith 19" and it worked fine. 2) Sometimes it would not power-up. Keep hitting the button (or remote) and eventually it would fire up. Someone suggested replacing a few caps and it worked. One in particular was obviously leaking.
__________________
Bryan |
#14
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Does anyone know if these old ColorTrak2000 models qualify as
'studio' monitors? I mean, with the colors filtered to meet NTSC standards. I know that the set doesn't compensate for different signal strengths like so many always have. What you input is what you get back out. In the early days, LaserDisc were a huge disappointment because of the relatively shallow luminance and chrominance gamuts. The set wouldn't make them pop with compensation. But DVDs play superbly, with deep blacks and saturated colors and subtlety of tone in between. Same with the new little DigitalStream DTV converter. Reds and yellows and even deep greens are in proper register. Turquoise is about the only color that won't play too well. Green phosphor is too yellow for that. But the brightness of the set is compromised by keeping the colors true, I think. In a dark room, it's superb, but by daylight, it is a bit dim. Always has been. Compared to the 'brighter is better' decade that preceded it, some might have felt it was a step backwards. I have a JVC of similar screen size -- the 'flat' tube 32 inch model and it has a very bright picture, but a coarser aperature grille and is prone to poor color reproduction on analog signals. It also is not as subtle with the DTV signal. It's perfect with DVDs, though. I still prefer the ColorTrack2000 of 1989 to the JVC or 2004. Don't even get me started on a widescreen Sony HDTV tube set that graced my home for a year or so. Horrible color fidelity! I would think that HDTV would finally allow receivers and broadcasters to standardize -- like PhotoShop did for computers. But I have seen no evidence of that so far... |
#15
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I helped a friend install a new Toshiba Regza 42" LCD HDTV.
It has bright saturated colors, but faces are yellow. I still prefer my old ColorTrak2000 for color fidelity... |
Audiokarma |
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