Admiral T1000? - Videokarma.org TV - Video

bgadow · #1 02-28-2007, 12:01 PM

A friend of mine just called, he has the chance to buy at auction a tv. He could only tell me that it is a heavy table model and is clearly marked as Admiral T1000. I have checked all the websites, the Sams index, etc, and come up with nothing. I'm guessing T1000 might be a model line identifier in the same way as Predicta or Miss America from Philco. Any ideas?

bgadow · #2 02-28-2007, 12:11 PM

update-apparently it is a 24E2 chassis, mid sixties color. Gonna try and get it.

bgadow · #3 03-01-2007, 08:01 AM

Moderator, you can move this to early color if you'd like.

I pulled the sams when I got home...this is a color roundie, c.1964, likely their cheapest table model. It should be in my possession by the weekend, and I will share pics at that time.

veg-o-matic · #4 03-01-2007, 10:03 AM

Oooh, can't wait 'til you get it! Sounds like my kind of set!
veg

Sandy G · #5 03-01-2007, 10:38 AM

Aren't Admiral roundies kinda few & far between anyway ? Good score...

N9ZQA · #6 03-01-2007, 12:09 PM

I don't know exactly how rare they are but I've only traditionally heard of RCA and Zenith round-tube sets. Here is a link to an image of an Admiral roundie that I found when I was looking for information on my Admirals.

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1965-Admiral-Color-TV-Ad.JPG

Jim

bgadow · #7 03-01-2007, 03:05 PM

Of course, I couldn't wait! I went during lunch and picked it up. Pretty much as I imagined-a cheap, black metal cabinet, no UHF-this was as cheap as Admiral could sell you a color TV in '64, I suppose. Probably about the cheapest anybody had. This is NOT an RCA clone, but a real Admiral chassis. Like other companies did, they built a "mirror image" chassis with the HV cage on the left of the chassis and the power transformer on the right.

Tonight I'll check the crt...fingers crossed...and will keep everyone posted. I really wanted a roundie that wasn't an RCA or Zenith and now I have it, so I am

Where to put it

orthophonic · #8 03-01-2007, 05:03 PM

Consumer Reports tested that very model in 1964. They said it was important because the 500.00 price barrier had finally been broken (the Admiral was 450.00 ) and this along with more color programming would make color more affordable and practical for more people.
As for the sets performance, they said in color performance it
had the same advantages and limitations as the best RCA & Zenith sets they had tested. Brilliant accurate colors, poor
convengence in the corners, fair interlace and mediocre
black & white performance. CR claimed the limitations
(convergence, mediocre b/w resolution) of all color sets was due to the RCA tri-color tube, and color sets would not improve until a new picture tube was developed.

N9ZQA · #9 03-01-2007, 08:40 PM

Nice find!

No cataracts on that tube either - bonus!

I think that chassis may be the same one that's in my 1965 console. It was quite a surprise taking the back off and not seeing parts in the usual places.

. Took me a minute to figure out what was what.

Good luck on getting it up and running!

Jim

rcaman · #10 03-02-2007, 05:07 AM

our first color tv was a new round screen admiral in 1965 wood cabinet on legs. it also had the control where you could make the b&w picture more blue or brown cant remember what it was called. that set seen some pretty heavy use. in 9 years it only had one tube replaced under warranty. it was still running when we traded it in on a new rca 25" xl100 console. steve

oldtvman · #11 03-02-2007, 10:52 AM

By the time I started servicing color I don't remember seeing a good picture on any of the Admirals that I serviced. To me it looked similar to the Motorola performance.

bgadow · #12 03-02-2007, 12:10 PM

N9ZQA & Orthophonic, thanks for finding that info!

I had to dig into this last night. First I tested the crt-all 3 guns are good! It is the original Admiral branded, RCA built, crt with a date code in the 3rd quarter of '63. A mix of different tubes in the set, all caked with tobacco soot. So, I pulled the H.O. tube & damper and gave the set a soft start. At about 90 volts the breaker on my iso-tap tripped. I tried a couple more times but it wouldn't hold. I felt the filter caps and one was warm. Well, pulling the chassis is never fun but at least I had pinpointed the problem. Pulling the chassis wasn't too bad, similiar to an RCA. I changed out the 4 sections, putting them on a terminal strip. The adjacent can had one section replaced before but the replacement had lots of age on it, too, so I swapped it out. Besides, the last guy had paralleled it instead of clipping out the old one. I put it all back together and tried again. This time I had audio when I powered up...I installed the HV tubes and went again. There was not sign that the HV was running, and then the breaker tripped again. Now the other can is warm to the touch, so I pulled the chassis again. (nothing was bolted down, so it only took a couple minutes) Tonight I'll swap out that can, and maybe the 2 smaller ones in there as well.

At this time I usually find myself wondering what retired a set. I would have blamed it on the caps but the breaker on the set hadn't tripped. So maybe it was a HV problem, and the caps are just from years of storage. If the HV doesn't come up then I'll start with swapping the 3A3 and go from there. I'll post some more pictures, including the chassis, later on.

One reason I like this set is that my first color roundie was an Admiral. This was in the early 90s (I watched the first gulf war unfold on that set) and if I had known then that cataracts were repairable I would still have that set. I think it was a little older than this one.

compucat · #13 03-02-2007, 03:52 PM

Those symptoms are similar to what I'm having on my Zenith roundie. I had the breaker trippin in the set because of a shorted electrolytic cap. I overcame that to discover that the horizontal output tube was drawing excessive current. After that, a broken horizontal efficiency coil. I'm going to replace that and see if the horizontal oscillator is running.

Without oscillator drive, nothing else in the horizontal sweep and high voltage circuits will work. You might want to check that out.

I'd love to see the inside of that set. Can you post some pics?

polaraman · #14 03-02-2007, 07:27 PM

Bryan,

Nice find! My Admiral roundie is a RCA CTC11 clone. I have yet to get to work on it. Still puzzled by my Sylvania roundie.

Link: http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthr...hlight=admiral

polaraman

bgadow · #15 03-05-2007, 12:03 PM

Well, gang, you can see where my spare time has been going lately!

I eventually replaced all the can caps. This was on suspicion that something was dragging down B+ but it wasn't. I'll tell you, I learned a lot while playing with this. I have a bunch of books and old magazine articles that were a big help, and taught me some of the theory behind the circuits involved. I need all the help I can get! What I found was a blurry blob of a picture; focus voltage was only about 1KV with 15KV at the anode; I learned to measure the HV regulator current, which I could not get below about 1.8ma. (should be around .85) An excellent article covered identical symptoms on a rectangular screen Admiral and came up with a bad capacitor. I replaced that with no luck; the article also mentioned to check the resistors, which tested fine. Later I clipped in a substitution box and found one WAS bad, apparently it couldn't take the heat? A new resistor got me good HV & current. (and focus) The next concern came after the set had been running about an hour and I started to hear what I thought was corona inside the HV cage. I could see no sparks, but then noticed bubbling wax near the core of the flyback. I was hearing not corona but the sizzling of the wax.

I hate to admit it but I had never before attempted adjusting horiz. efficiency but I knew I had to have a look. I thought this would be easy as I have a device that plugs in between the tube and the socket for easy measurement of the current. Unfortunately something is out of whack with it, and I really didn't feel like pulling the chassis again to do some unsoldering. (why didn't makers put something on the top of the chassis to make this easier? Next time I will put a terminal strip up top for easy access.) Instead I concocted a device out of an old octal base and socket. Now, the articles I have said to set the regulator current and not worry about the HV, but it was easier to use the HV at this point. But I found I could not get both a good H.O. current and good regulator performance without checking the regulator current. See, I was learning! Both are now pretty much in specs. The H.O. might be slightly high-I'm not sure how accurate my meter is. Should be 215ma but it looks more like 225ma. The flyback is still warmer than I would like; I need to try and recoat it as a lot of the tar had long ago fallen off the bottom. But I suppose that is the effect of high temperature and not the cause. For now I have left off the cover to the cage for best airflow.

I was surprised to find that the color was working fairly well-that was apparent even when the picture was just a blob. Somehow the purity was almost perfect. No automatic degausser in this set, either. I touched it up...another problem is something screwy in the screen controls/normal-setup switch. I can't get a good line. It almost acts like an intermittent. I've cleaned the switch and all the pots with no improvement. I set the bias/grayscale the best I could.

For now I've put it aside-too many other projects demanding my attention. I really enjoy having a challenge like this land in my lap, though.

oldtvman compared the picture from an Admiral to that of a Motorola and looking at it I think it is a fair comparison. Not unpleasant, really, but there is a pastel kind of look to it. I should be able to squeeze a little better performance out of this one with further efforts, but I don't expect to turn it into a Chromacolor!