Leave It Alone And Enjoy It;.......Or Recap And Maybe Mess Something Up

[VA561]

First I would like to thank miniman82 for his post in the Curbside section of videokarma. His 11-23 post said as follows: Color Roundie Alert (Baltimore). I looked at it and I thought, thats about 150 miles from baltimore, I could do that.
My wife was out of town that weekend and didn't take the minivan so I now had a plan. I called the craigslist number and a young man answered the phone and said that yes, he still had the tv. It had been his grandfathers tv. I asked what shape the tv was in and he thought it was in pretty good shape as far as the cabinet and that he "thought" he was able to get "snow" on the screen. I told him to hold on to it until the weekend and I would buy it for the $90.00 he wanted for it. He gave me his dads number to try and get more info on the tv. The dad said that his father bought the tv new in 1960 and that everyone in the neighborhood wanted to see the tv because it was the first color tv set in that area. It was an RCA tv, the Randolph model with a CTC-10 chassis. He said his dad eventually wanted to get another tv because as he got older he was tired of having to get up to change the channels.

He said his dad had died about six months ago and was an engineer by trade and took meticulous care of things that he owned. On the following saturday morning I drove to a town near baltimore (glen burnie)and got there about 9:30. The grandson was waiting for me and showed me the tv which was sitting in the garage. My first impression upon seeing the tv was that this thing was a monster! It was a massive set to say the least. I didn't realize that 1960's color tvs took up so much space! I had brought a dvd player and rf converter and hooked it up to the tv. I turned the set on to warm it up and it did indeed have full raster. I turned my dvd player on and low and behold I was watching the Invaders on a 1960 rca color tv! I gave the grandson $100.00 and carefully loaded the tv into the minivan and headed home to norfolk.

As you can see from the photos, The cabinet is in excellent condition. I polished it and removed the front protective glass to clean it inside and out. I took the back cover off and saw a rca repair tag hanging by a string. It was dated 1962 but I could not read what was repaired. It has all rca tubes and an rca picture tube. Aside from some light dust it is in remarkably good condition. Here is where I have to make a decision. The set plays beautifully. I can watch an hour show or a movie and it runs great everytime I turn it on. The picture has great color, contrast is good and the brightness is good. I have no issues with the tv so my question is this: Leave it alone and enjoy it and wait until something breaks or start to recap the chassis and maybe cause a problem.

I am so happy when I turn this set on and watch the Rolling Stones in color on the Ed Sullivan show dvd I have. It is amazing. Its like the original owner just turned the set off last week and now I am watching it. I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Personally I am inclined to just keep watching this relic of tv history until something goes wrong but I wanted to get some feedback from my fellow vintage tv collectors. My only regret is that the owners wife went through all of her husbands papers when he passed and apparently threw out the owners manual and bill of sale. That would have been nice to have. I love this tv. It is my first and only color tv and to find a 1960 model in this condition is fantastic. All I can say is keep looking. You never know what will turn up!

[fujifrontier]

Pics of the chassis, man!! LOL.

I'm inclined to say leave it as is, if it works happily and doesn't act up. Unfortunately that day will come (as I've learnt with my 1957 Olympic radio/phono console which has started a nasty 60hz buzz that gets louder and louder if the radio is allowed to play until you can barely hear anything) where a cap will get tired and take a dump... you don't want to fry something that's unobtanium. I'm so jealous!

[miniman82]

You're welcome, and wow is that thing in nice shape!

Leave it alone and enjoy it and wait until something breaks...

Only problem with that is if a power supply electrolytic cap goes down, it could take the power transformer along with it. Even if it doesn't, they usually make a mess and a very bad smell. Not cool. And if the horizontal output tube grid coupling cap gets leaky, the output tube could draw excessive current which places unobtanium flybacks at risk. The first roundie I ever had (a CTC-9F still owned by another member) ran perfectly on all original parts just like yours does, but upon closer inspection there is usually more going on than meets the eye.

If I moved the horizontal centering over to one side, it was possible to see the edge of the raster. Then it was apparent that the power supply had visible ripple in it, because you could see the 'waves' in the image right at the edge. Then I realized the entire image was slightly undulating, which was enough for me to pull the trigger on the power supply caps. Once replaced, the image stopped doing that and the power supply was much smoother.

The sweep boards sometimes have wax caps still in them, and it's always a good idea to check for out of tolerence resistors there as well. That will ensure the sweep sections don't go down in flames, and probably make vertical and horizontal locking much more stable in the process.

Lastly, the set might LOOK right but taking a few readings may reveal more going on under the hood. I always make it a point to read horizontal output tube cathode current first thing after I power a set up, just to make sure the horizontal is stable and healthy. You're looking to draw less than 200ma whenever possible, sometimes the Sams will give an exact value. You can tweak the horizontal linearity coil to get the lowest reading possible. Also try several different HV rectifier tubes, since they are all different and when gassy won't work as well (or at all). Next check HV regulator performance: install a 1ma current meter in the cathode circuit of the 6BK4, adjust the HV pot for .8ma with the brightness control at minimum. After that, verify HV is stable at whatever Sams calls out (my RCA book says it should be 23.5Kv).

After all that play the thing for several hours, and if the horizontal output cathode current is stable and the flyback is not hot you can safely place the set in the daily watcher lineup. Even if it's cool, I point a fan at it just to make sure. Flybacks are the last thing you want to go bad.

[ctc17]

I love the logo that changes colors as you move around. Those are cool!
Some parts are bound to fail shortly after you put it back into use. The color crystals and a few of the caps always seem to fail on my revived sets. The main thing is the crt and flyback work so your good. Great find.

[mstaton]

I say leave it alone. Don't ever leave it running and leave the room though. I went into the kitchen and the flyback fried pretty quickly. That's when things seem to happen. Run the set a while and see if the electrolytic cans get hot. i don't mean a little warm, but hot! The all get a little warm and is normal. Very nice set!!!!

[Kevin Kuehn]

That's a real beauty.

[Red Raster]

I removed a packing blanket covering the Dumont Doghouse a set i put away to sit dorment for 2 1/2 months after a total recap. Within less than a minute a rock hard stable image, Other than changing channels i played with the volume control. It dawned on me this set with new eletrolytics and polyester metal film caps will now have greater stability than when it first came off of the assembly line. Come to think of it my other recaped sets share this characteristic.

Moral of the story is ... being a technician of current electronics i would normally turn on observe, diagnose and repair. The important lesson i got from this
forum is recap first before applying power. Short of having the crap beat out of me with a big stick it was tough at first to change my approch in restoring
rare and old electronics, Now i reap good results and great rewards.

Cunfusous says "many leaky caps cause many confusion in troubleshooting"

Red raster says "how amazing, only one wax cap out of twenty tests within specs" (maybe less if temperature change is factored in).

[Phil Nelson]

I would follow the advice of miniman82 and at least replace the power supply electrolytics and HOT coupling cap.

Those electrolytics are mounted above a narrow channel in the chassis, so there is not much room to install new ones underneath, although I managed that with one of my CTC-11s. For my other CTC-11 and the CTC-7, I restuffed the cans. You can read about that in my articles about those sets.

Protecting your power transformer and flyback is definitely worthwhile. When I opened the cans on my CTC-7, two looked pretty fresh and might have worked, at least for a while. A third was dried toast inside, possibly with a dead short that would have killed the power transformer if I had "just plugged it in."



Better safe than sorry . . . .

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

[wa2ise]

You know that it works, so a recap would be easy. Change a few (one at a time so you don't lose track of where the replacement goes), power it up to check that it still works, then do a few more. So you won't risk blowing up hard to find parts if you left the old wax caps in place.

[Chad Hauris]

I have had several RCA tube-type sets which worked fine when first tested but then bad electrolytics showed up after a little while. Unless it is about 40 years old or newer I don't even test it on the original caps. If it has the maroon mylar caps I replace the electrolytics and then test it out, as usually these won't cause destructive failures but can sometimes be bad.

Anything that is old enough to have wax paper caps or black beauties, etc. I don't even plug it in till all the caps are replaced.

The first thing I would do, even if you don't replace the electrolytics right away is remove any line bypass capacitors and put a fuse on the power line to help give some protection. Many times there is a paper cap right across the cheater cord terminals for noise suppression and I have seen these short right across the power line. Also I always replace old silicon diodes in the power supply as I have had a lot of trouble with them.

Like Red Raster said marginal capacitors can cause infuriating weird troubleshooting problems even if not major damage.

[Steve McVoy]

Unless you make a mistake and put the wrong cap in, or connect it to the wrong place, nothing can go wrong. Absolutely, you should recap it. Even if it is working well now the chances are that it will quit at some point. Also, the risk of damaging hard to find parts is high.

To avoid making a mistake recapping, I do one at a time. Before I clip the old one out, I put a clip lead to the points where the cap was attached. That way I can't make a mistake.

[vts1134]

Originally Posted by Steve McVoy

Unless you make a mistake and put the wrong cap in, or connect it to the wrong place, nothing can go wrong. Absolutely, you should recap it. Even if it is working well now the chances are that it will quit at some point. Also, the risk of damaging hard to find parts is high.

To avoid making a mistake recapping, I do one at a time. Before I clip the old one out, I put a clip lead to the points where the cap was attached. That way I can't make a mistake.

I've got to agree with the one at a time approach Steve mentioned. Replace em' one at a time and fire the set up after each replacement to make sure you're not moving backwards. The first set I restored I didn't go this route and simply replaced every one of the paper, electrolytic, and wax caps all at once and had a hell of a time trying to figure out where I went wrong.
Oh and congratulations on the set, finding minty pieces "in the wild" is always fun.

[WCF720]

New “digital” film is very inexpensive if you’re worried about your ability to remember where a part goes. I take as many pictures from various angles of each part to assure I know where the part came from. Be careful of the polarity of all electrolytic capacitors and floated (not directly connected to chassis ground) electrolytics. I can’t agree more with what others have said about capacitor replacement, and at a minimum; the power supply parts and sweep circuits where components take a lot of abuse! Great looking set!! Old parts are time bombs waiting to take something out… It’s just a matter of time before something bad happens.