http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/atq/1761637948.html

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http://images.craigslist.org/3k83m63o25W55U05P5a5q0deff8b6efb41391.jpg

Nice - that's a 19A15S. Essentially a 19A11 in a maple cabinet instead of bakelite.

Just spotted this posting about an hour and a half ago. Made the deal by email, and drove up to Milpitas and back to pick it up in the mean time. Set is in nice shape overall, and price was very reasonable.

The seller mentioned that it had been in his family since 1948, and that he remembers watching it as a kid. He said it was still working up until the DTV changeover. Having heard that, I powered it up, but just got AC hum and no raster, so I'm not entirely convinced it was still working last year. No problem, though, as restoration is more fun if there is a little challenge...

Thanks for posting this here. I am not in the habit of reading CL.

Tom

http://antiqueradios.com/gallery/d/113784-1/Admiral+19A15S.png

Glad you got it - I happened upon that ad purely by accident - I'm nowhere near Chicago!

That's a beauty! :thmbsp:

As I've seen others remark before, this Admiral 7 inch set is a much nicer design than some of the others. It has a power transformer and a really nice turret tuner.

This set came to life pretty quickly. Noting a loud AC hum on first power up, I ESR'ed the electrolytic caps and found all five were open. Replacing those and all six of the HV caps (HV filters and deflection coupling) got me an out-of-focus raster. Checking the four 2.2 M resistors in the focus voltage dividers revealed they were all in the 5-10 M range. Replacing those got things in focus.

All of the regular paper caps are still in place, but it has a decent picture, albeit with poor vertical linearity. Sound is OK, but a lot of hum (not sure why off hand, since power supply filter caps have been replaced).

Taking a look at the vertical circuitry, I see lots of 10 M resistors which will soon be checked and replaced as necessary. Then I'll go after the paper caps, working my way from the vertical section outward.

The 7JP4 seems to be reasonably decent. It's a National Union 7JP4, which I'm guessing is this set's second CRT, not the original.

So far, so good.

Good luck. Mine is working more or less but has some really ugly repairs so I've not power it up since I got it last year.

Done with most of the recapping, but came across an interesting problem that took me a couple of hours to trace down.

The HV seemed to be intermittent for some unknown reason. After a while it became clear that mechanically twisting the shield box over the HV section made the HV change. Take the shield off, and HV was a bit low, but very steady. Put the cover back on, and it would reach maximum HV only if I twisted it with my hand, and it was pretty touchy. Didn't seem to matter if the screws were in place or not. I could find no evidence that putting any mechanical stress on anything inside the HV box mattered.

Finally traced it down to a poor electrical connection between the chassis and the plate on top of the bakelite HV board to which the HV box is attached with screws. I never suspected this at first, because it has a big beautiful solder joint from the bottom of one of its rivets to the chassis and from the top of the same rivet to the plate on top of the bakelite. However, a continuity test revealed that indeed the plate was not grounded to the chassis. Under those beautiful solder joints, the rivet had pulled away on it least one side. Resoldering fixed the bad contact.

Then I found that I had HV with the box off, but not with it on. So apparently, when I was twisting it previously, I was opening, not closing the contact. Readjustment of the height of the metal ring around the 1B3 HV rectifier (which is part of the feedback circuit of the HV oscillator) got things in good shape. Had to raise it up a little on the tube.

Now it has stable HV and one of the nicer 7JP4 pictures I've seen. CRT seems quite strong and sharp.

The set needs realignment, but even without the remaining paper caps replaced yet (they will be soon), this set has no other problems. Will post a picture or two when I'm mostly finished.

Tom

Well, first the good news. After realignment and adding the usual circuit modification to improve retrace blanking, this set is doing very nicely. Both video and audio working very nicely. This Admiral really does seem to outperform other 7 inch sets I have (Motorola, Sentinel, and Hallicrafters).

http://antiqueradios.com/gallery/d/113901-1/Admiral+19A15S+picture.png

Now the very bad news. Above I mentioned that the National Union 7JP4 in this set looked like the best and brightest of the ones I had. Today while reattaching the CRT socket, something cracked, and it slowly leaked to air over a short period of time. Fired up the set and had a nice arc inside the neck of the CRT and white getter flash.

Word to the wise: Be very gentle with the CRT connector on your 7JP4s. It take a bit more force with its large size and many pins. The base was a little loose, and somehow moving it around broke something under the base. Perhaps the evacuation nib cracked.

Luckily, I had one extra 7JP4 from a sale at someone's house last year where I noticed a 7JP4 in amongst a bunch of worthless radar and scope tubes. Brought it home, played with rejuvination on it a bit, and it's testing reasonably good and working OK. But not as bright as the one that came with this TV.

So ends another day in antique TV restoration land. The number of good 7JP4s has been reduced by one.

:banana: Congratulations on the fastest restoration I've seen. 3 days from start to finish I believe. I really like these sets too. Very well made for a 7 incher.

That's a real shame about the CRT though :tears: I'll handle my 7JP4s more gingerly from now on :yes:

Here's another with a not so reasonable price: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=120577404677

I had thought these were fairly uncommon, but I've seen a dozen or so in the last year.