Hi you all, i'm from Italy and i'm new on this forum,

I enjoy collecting and restoring old electronics, from stereos to tv sets, and i'm doing so since the age of 10

I have fished this nice italian-made Phonola TV set out of a dumpster last sunday, it was made in July 1964

This set uses one of the very first CRTs with the rimband type integral implosion protection, so there's no bonded shield to develop cataracts, the screen is the actual face of the CRT

It's basically working, with excellent reception on both VHF and UHF and great sound (two large oval alnicos) but it takes several minutes for it to come up with a really poor picture with almost no contrast, and both contrast and brightness controls are malfunctioning

The picture gets much brighter when the horizontal sync is lost, so i guess the CRT is still good, i think it will need to replace all paper and electrolytics capacitors...

Francesco



http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/5903/phonola2jx1.jpg

Welcome to AK, pal ! Nice t'have another TeeVee Nut aboard ! I like yr Phonola-hard to believe anyone would toss something as nice as that.. Yeah, I'd say after you get it re-capped, check the resistors, maybe replace a weak tube or 2, you'll have something that could last another 43 years...a LOT longer than the Chinese-made junk they have today will...

Nice looking set! Welcome to AK! :wave:

Right, these beauties will still work when modern plasmas will be deep down in the landfill!

here are a couple of pics, one is the chassis, the other is one of the great sounding alnicos

I have another Phonola TV from 1965 fitted with automatic motorized tuning, a spring reverb and a stereo amp... weird!

http://img222.imageshack.us/img222/3026/phonola3tf5.jpg

http://img87.imageshack.us/img87/5466/phonola4gg7.jpg

A very nice looking set you have Francesco. I wish we had better styling of sets from that ear here. In addition to replacement of electrolytics (most likely you will find no paper caps here) I would also look at the damper, horizontal output, high voltage rectifier and high voltage regulator tubes. Any of these would cause a dim blurry picture. Considering you still have a good black and white pictureI would say the picture tube is in good condition.

The most important thing to do after you re-cap the set and replace any weak tubes is to check the cathode current on the horizontal output tube. Most manufacturers have a disconnect-able lead to attach your meter to. around 200 milliamperes is a good value. Too high and it will damage the high-voltage transformer. The adjustment is usually labeled "Efficiency" or "Hor. Linerity" --just don't adjust it without your meter in circuit

This TV has no HV regulation, as most european B/W sets.

There is a "horizontal linearity" control, but it's a knob on the side of the cabinet and is well accessible by the user as well as the horizontal and vertical hold control.

This Hor. linearity control consists of a magnet which can be rotated between two coils with the knob.

One important point i forgot to mention, the (weak) raster first appears around the screen, the center of the screen remains dark and it takes longer for it to get lit up, but the "dark spot" disappears when everything is warm, is this a problem with the CRT (like a sort of ion burn)?

One important point i forgot to mention, the (weak) raster first appears around the screen, the center of the screen remains dark and it takes longer for it to get lit up, but the "dark spot" disappears when everything is warm, is this a problem with the CRT (like a sort of ion burn)?

Thanks
Francesco

This sounds like insufficient high voltage. The raster is blooming until the HV gets high enough to pull it into the center of the screen. From what you describe, I doubt this is a crt problem. That is a beautiful set by the way. I hope it restores well.

Is that any relation to the "Phabulous Phonola" company?

veg

Phonola was the trademark of the FIMI company, one of the most important all-Italian radio manufacturers since the early 30s

during the 50s and 60s their products were a serious match for Grundig and telefunken (and Philips) in terms of quality, but they costed much less, so they were extremely popular here.

They were also particularly good at making great sounding fullrange speakers, such as the ones in this TV, using big powerful magnets with tight gaps and kurt-mueller cones,

FIMI was bought by Philips in 1969 and abandoned the consumer electronics market in 1974 to concentrate on professional monitors (industrial, medical...) and still exists today as FIMI-Philips

The Phonola brand was then slapped on a line of Philips-made consumer electronics, only for the italian market, until the mid-late 90s when it finally faded into obscurity.

We never saw 'em in the USA...Too bad, yr set is VERY nice looking, there might have been a small market here for them. When did you guys get color ?

Hi Francesco,
Welcome to AK and I wanted to say what a nice tv set that you have found. I agree with Jpdylon that i wish the US sets from that era would have had nice styling as your Phonola has. I agree that replacing the capacitors and checking the tubes should take care of most if not all of the problems that your having. The 1965 Phonola tv you have sounds interesting also. Any chance that you might have pictures of that set also?
-Tony

In Italy we got our first experimental color broadcasts in about 1970, with regular color broadcasts starting in time for the 1972 olympic games.

Color TV sets began to sell in respectable numbers in about 1975, but many people (especially in rural areas) stuck with B/W sets until the late 80s or later

By the way, a couple of italian manufacturers (Zanussi and Indesit) continued to make hybrid chassis B/W sets well into the 80s, these sets had remote control and digital tuning but still had a few tubes on their chassis!

Hi Francesco,
Welcome to AK and I wanted to say what a nice tv set that you have found. I agree with Jpdylon that i wish the US sets from that era would have had nice styling as your Phonola has.

The 1965 Phonola tv you have sounds interesting also. Any chance that you might have pictures of that set also?
-Tony

Funny, i thought that the styling of this Phonola was very "americanized"

Here's a pic of the 1965 "stereo" Phonola set i have, note the coaxial knob, the inner knob is for the master volume, the outer is for reverb level.

By the way, how do i upload thumbnails?

http://img219.imageshack.us/img219/1185/phonola65cc0.jpg

after typing your post, click "Go Advanced" instead of "post quick reply" scroll down below the message window and click "manage attachments" pictures must not exceed 120kb or 900x900. click upload, and close the window when finished, then click "submit reply"

BTW, I assumed your sets were black and white. I forgot that not everyone had color in 64. Have you ever come across any TV sets with round picture tubes?

I would agree that these have an American look to them, but flashier than many of the bw sets we had in the mid-60s. These look like the higher end bw Zeniths or RCAs.

Hybrids in the eighties? Wow! I guess the local market was really propping those companies up. But, there are things that a tube can do well and cheap.

Sadly, no color roundies here in Italy, as color broadcasts came in the era of rectangular CRT and hybrid chassis

There were very few consoles here, 99% of our sets (even expensive ones) were tabletop models (by the way, both Phonola TVs i have are 23")

We had some strange "half american" sets back then, for example, we had 100% Italian Emerson TVs made by Emerson's Florence plant

then we had Philcos with an American-made chassis in an Italian made cabinet, then Dumonts and Admirals made from 100% american components but assembled in Italy

We even had the little "porta color" but it had an Italian made PAL chassis inside.

Funny, i thought that the styling of this Phonola was very "americanized"


That's what I was thinking too, the set has a very "finished" look to it, like a Zenith of the era, not unlike the remote set I just picked up (but haven't taken a picture of).

Speaking of Zeniths, have you ever seen any in Italy? There is another Italian collector who posted some pictures of a 4-tube color Zenith set made for the Italian market (Never had a knob for hue, as it was a PAL set since new). That model was very popular in the US.

Oh yeah... keep the pictures coming for all the Italians living over here! I'd love to see that tube-hybrid digital tuned set!

I haven't yet seen a Zenith in Italy, any color set made before 1975 is extremely rare here.

I'll take a pic of the digital tuned hybrid ASAP, i have it deep down in my "basement landfill", sadly, it has a totally worn-out CRT

Here is a link to that earlier thread...

http://audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?p=963190#post963190

What "gets" me is how relatively late in the game so many of the Western Europe countries got color TV...I mean, it wasn't like it was some big state secret or unknown technology we were trying to hide from everybody else.. Australia could possibly be excused for the lower population there...But Italy ? Prosperous, well-educated country, no shortage of engineers/scientists, good infrastructure...Decent electronics industry...Looks like the populace would have been raising hell to get it. Lots of Italians in America, surely some of their "old country" cousins came over here & saw it 1st hand for themselves...

Well, it was mainly a political problem, they first tried to halt the beginning of experimental color broadcasts during the 60s (i guess because the Italian electronic industry was not happy to invest in R&D for color TV, remember the tube chassis dragged into the 80s...)

Then it took the best part of the 70s for them to decide between PAL and SECAM, until, in 1977, they officially adopted PAL,

So almost all of our color sets made before 1977 were able to receive both PAL and SECAM or were PAL sets with an optional module for 625 line SECAM reception

many people bought color sets early because in some parts of Italy you could receive color broadcasts from neighbouring countries (france, switzerland, istria...)

I still have our first color set, a 1976 Voxson (italian) fitted with electronic tuning, ultrasonic remote, and a 110 degree delta gun tube, sadly, the flyback blew in the mid 90s

By the way, sadly, we're not great at preserving vintage TVs, no one wants them, even for free, most people consider them ugly, the only exceptions are some 70s plastic portable TVs which are considered "modern art" (i prefer big wooden sets a lot anyway)

Francesco

I have found a schematic for the Phonola TV, it's quite unusual and complicated for an European set

Here's a scan of it: (the dark grey areas are the PCBs)

45054

Hi Francesco! Your Phonola is very similar to the one I owned for several years when I was much younger! My aunt bought it in 1964 and it had exactly the same frame surrounding the picture tube! It had a long bar you had to push to switch from VHF to UHF reception. When you were on VHF range the word "nazionale" (national) would come on while when you switched to UHF you could read the word "secondo" (second channel). The selector knob was very similar and I ever thought the set looked very "american style" while almost all italian and european models had a push through picture tube. The chassis was the same. Which brand is the second set you show on this thread? I'm an italian tv collector too. Perhaps we could get in touch and speak a little in our language...:yes:

Francesco, in Italy we had color roundies. They were mainly Zenith and Admiral sets. I owned a beautiful Zenith roundie with metal cabinet. I know of another Zenith sitting unsold in an old tv shop here in my town. I also had the pleasure to meet the importer of Zenith color roundies here in Italy. He had a warehouse literally full of Zenith color roundies. Too bad all this was thrown away no longer than four years ago. Zenith sets were very popular here in Florence when I was a child!

Hi folks,

I'm done with the recapping of the Phonola, now i have better picture geometry and stable, less touchy vertical hold.

But the original problems are still there, i have a very bright raster, but the picture has little contrast, it gets to a half scale grey where it should be black (swapping the video amp tube with a NOS one makes no difference)

I also still have the shrinking horizontal scan, it starts wide then starts to shrink after about 5 minutes (as you can see in the photo of the TV in the first page)

By the way, this TV has cathode drive for the CRT

I hope i don't have a bad CRT or partially shorted flyback... any ideas?