Found this interesting set on the curb yesterday evening. It's not in bad shape but the plastic body of the yoke has disintegrated. There's a badge stating "Curtis Mathes Hi-Fidelity," which is backed up by an Amperex Bugle Boy EL84 driving an 8" speaker. It also has separate bass & treble controls. Like I said, interesting - I couldn't let the garbage truck get this one even though I am out of room!

That is a really cool looking set, it seems to be the same year and chassis as my monstrous full sized CM console.

nice looking set, a bugle boy and a decent sized speaker, I bet it does sound nice. How does the flyback look? I have had some pretty nasty looking yokes that operate fine... It has a nice looking chassis too.


oh I get it, the plastic is so bad the alignment rings are all jacked up. hmmm

Is that a 21" or 23" CRT?

That thing looks really cool, I'd love to have one!

Yeah, the part of the yoke still hanging on there was probably over the windings - the rings are dangling freely on the neck. I haven't peeked at the flyback yet - I'll do that tomorrow.

It's a 21" CRT - label is gone.

I'm assuming that this was one of the lower-priced C-M sets that year - walnut veneered and the shelf is particle board. It shouldn't be too hard to recreate that shelf when the time comes. I hope I can find a yoke for it - I really like this little guy for some reason :)

I really like that design-maybe the most attractive C-M I've seen. If you have a model number maybe we can find a part number for that yoke?

Bryan, I believe the model number is 15521 - I did jot down that it was in Sams 498-1 yesterday.

Wow that's a GROOVY looking cabinet! Kinda looks like one of those Motorola / Drexel cabinets. That is the earliest CM I've seen. If memory serves, Curtis Mathes started dealing with electronics in '57... before that they were furniture manufactureres.

My CM b&w is from '63... and the chassis looks just like yours with the exception of the 5U4 on the left... mine uses diodes. I've seen several others like in my area that I passed up because they were simply too big for me to bring home. I've noticed they usually stamped a date on the power transformer... perhaps yours is stamped as well.

That big chassis is a breeze to work on. There's lots of room under there, and the way they line up the capacitors and resistors up makes them extremely easy to change! You won't feel like you're playing "Twister" under that chassis.

Cleaning the top of the chassis will be very important as all the little tits on top are the connections from below... similar to Zenith color chassis.

Nice find!

I pulled the Sams, published 9/60. Yours would be chassis #5. The yoke part numbers:
Curtis Mathes 1A31-1
Haldorson Y-16
Merit MDF-92
Ram Y90F19/43
Rogers PCM2045
Stancor DY-16A
Thordarson Y-16
Triad Y-43 & NW2

That's a nice set and the chassis looks to be handwired. It's not often that something this nice makes it way to the curb. I'll keep my eye open for a yoke.

PTOP has two of the yokes Bryan listed - now to find what else I could use to make the minimum order...

I loaded up on #47 bulbs, got a nice box of NOS GE's.

Got some good prices on chokes and PS tranny's in there too.

Nice set! I have been looking for a Curtis. I never see any tube sets on the curb anymore. Every week I see 5 or more of the 90 table top set out but never anything good.
Hope you can get it running.

Nice save.... cool old set

Well, I'm at a standstill with this set. I actually brought it up today and it has raster and a very bright CRT. My problem is the yoke housing has disintegrated, and the centering rings are dangling loose on the neck (see pic 4 in the first post of this thread.) The Sams states that all the replacement yokes I could locate should use the "original rear cover and centering device." :(
The Triad Y-43 & NW2 simply state "connect same as original," but no luck finding those.

So...how feasible is it to make a new cover for the yoke? Has anyone done this before?

I saw one get fashioed for an old NEC 60"s B/W - the shop used the top of one of those collapsible water bottles - they just cut off the top inch or so of the bottle. The CRT neck fit loosely through the opening at the top, and the rest of the top was slightly oversized. They used cement (Duco) to hold it, but it got the RTV treatment to secure the rings around the screw threads at the top.

Dunno it that would work, or where you could find a collapsible water bottle these days....

Cheers,

I had the same problem with my Zenith. The plastic had deteriorated and made an ungodly mess. Probably not the best choice of materials, but I'm pretty good with card-stock and a pair of scissors so I formed a cover from that and assembled it with a mess of electrical tape. The neck doesn't seem to get all that hot around the yoke, not as much as it does near the filament. It has held up fine so far, but I'd like to improve on it by coating it in something firm and heat-resistant and seal it up with some kind of glue instead of the tape holding it together. I just needed something to support my centering rings, and I hope to later improve on this design with better materials.

http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/7654/img0166at.jpg

So...how feasible is it to make a new cover for the yoke? Has anyone done this before?

Yes. :yes:

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=203537

I would highly recommend the technique Charlie posted above. It hadn't occurred to me to use styrene, but it would really work nicely. It's a shame that I couldn't get the attached photo's from that thread to come up. I would love to see how it turned out! I'll keep my card-stock version in place until I get some styrene sheets to work with, and then I could dissect my older version as a template.

If nothing else, you could tuck something in there to hold your centering rings in place around the neck of the tube just for functionality. Covering the yoke doesn't do much but keep the dust out, but the rings actually affect the alignment of the beam. That was the sole reason I had to throw together my little concoction.

Thanks for the tips guys. I too sure wish the pictures of the styrene were still there.

I may use cardstock first just to get the rings in place so I can poke around it some more.

Perhaps Bob might still have those photos and can reload them again