Last night, my dream came true. Special thanks to Mark (zenithfan), he was the one who alerted me to this one's whereabouts. It's a CTC-9F (210CK905, The Atherton), from 1959. Heavy beast must weigh at least a solid 250, I about threw my back out getting it into the apartment.

Curiosity got the best of me like it always does on the first night (I move fast, ask my wife :smoke:), and I plugged it in...


Pulled the HO tube first, just to see what would happen. Low and behold, all the (apparently original) tubes warmed up, and I heard the vertical output transformer making it's normal scanning sounds. That went well, so I plugged the HO tube back in and let 'er rip.

At first I didn't think anything was alive, but after a good 25 seconds of breathlessness horizontal came up strong all of the sudden and static on the back of the picture tube blasted away 50 years worth of dust. Tweaked the knobs on front, and: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, WE HAVE A FULL RASTER!

:banana: :banana: :banana: :banana: :banana:


Mark is gonna stop by this Friday with his tube tester, so we can see what the real condition of the kinescope is. After that, it's on to chassis resto, cab resto, ect. Enjoy the pics, I'll put up better ones of any angle for anyone who requests them.

Doubt I'll sleep, but I'm off to bed.

WOW! That is one pretty set!:banana::yes::banana::thmbsp::banana::yes:
jr

So Jealous.....

Great score! :banana:

WOW! Looks like it's gonna be an easy one. It seems the caps hold up well in CTC9s, I've seen a few now that still work with no smoke.
I'm very glad this is working out well for you.:thmbsp: It's a great first roundie, that's for sure. I was thinking when I was debating getting it, this one hasn't seen much use and the number of original tubes are proof.:yes: How do the the boards look? BTW, you are very welcome for the heads up:thmbsp:. I'm just glad it went to a good home, not a fishtanker:no:

WOW! Looks like it's gonna be an easy one. It seems the caps hold up well in CTC9s, I've seen a few now that still work with no smoke.

K, I lied- can't sleep just yet. :D

I didn't pull the chassis obviously, but the only thing I saw from the tops of the boards was poly caps (brown drops?). I assume there's at least a few nasty (PIO) ones lurking 'under the hood'? Other than that, all I could see was the can caps. They were not showing any signs of distress, but they will be replaced as a safety precaution.

How do the the boards look?


Clean! The whole set, actually. Only nasty thing in the entire set is some wires that have some sort of sticky film on them, and I can definitely deal with that. I think you were right on the money BTW, this set could not have been owned by a smoker- it's too clean inside.

BTW, you are very welcome for the heads up :thmbsp:. I'm just glad it went to a good home, not a fishtanker :no:

hehe, me too.


Now for the bad news: the volume control is shot, stuck at slightly less than mid level. Pulled the audio output (6AQ5), to save sanity in the meantime. I hooked it up to the cable box to try and get a picture, but nothing- tuner appears to be dead, but it may just be a dud tube somewhere in the strip or whatever. Vertical control is a bit wonkey too, one direction intermittently causes a loss of vertical deflection about 2/3rds of the way into rotation. Other than that and some jacked up plastic knobs, which I'm sure I'll come across at some point, it appears I have a winnah! :yes:

Thanks, jr and jp. It's been a long time coming. :yes:

And now, I SLEEP. :drool:

Lovely! Enjoy your new old baby!

Hey! I'm thinking about it now, but don't let me forget about bringing a bunch of CTC9 info that you will most likely need. You can make copies or borrow it for a week or two. I also repaired the Sencore CR-70, it was bad solder joints like we were talking about. I resoldered a bunch of suspect ones and bam! works great now.

Clean! The whole set, actually. Only nasty thing in the entire set is some wires that have some sort of sticky film on them, and I can definitely deal with that.

That sticky goo is probably the plasticizers separating from the rest of the insulation. And the wire insulation will eventually get brittle. It'd be a PITA to have to change out all the wire, though. You probably don't have to worry about it for a few decades... :scratch2: Not sure if you can just wipe it off and call it done.

That stuff can also corrode the untinned copper inside the insulation. You've probably seen old line cords oozing green jel, that's copper oxide and some other yucky stuff.

It does wipe off, rubbing alcohol or strong glass cleaner (I have concentrate from work) does the trick. I think you're right, they seem like they're good for a few more decades, just not sticky anymore. The reason why I cleaned them, besides it bothering me because they were also black is what you said, corrosion, seen it many times when wire is like this. Maybe it's similar to the oiliness associated with the rubber gasket on non-bonded color CRTS, they clean up well and are still supple.

I guess I'll wipe it off, then. Sure is annoying when you're trying to work on an otherwise clean chassis, wires leaving nasty streaks everywhere and all.


OK, last night I pulled the chassis out to have a closer look at it. There's nothing besides the can caps, and a 2uf/350-volt 'lytic on the video amp board that I can see needs to be replaced. Everything else is either an orange drop, or a brown colored film cap. Did these come with film caps originally, or did someone already do my work for me? They look original to me, they have the same lead covering on them the resistors do.

I had a look at the volume pot, since it was having volume issues. It's a multipurpose thing having a power switch at the back, volume pot in the middle, and color pot in front. Looks like the power switch had been repeatedly slammed to the off position, because the thing had seperated causing intermittent connections on the volume control. I 'rebuilt' it, giving it a good cleaning in the process, now it works as advertized.

I also installed a composite video input jack on the video amp tube's grid, since the tuner is currently dead. This will allow me to work around the tuner, and get the thing at least running.

Put the chassis back in, fired it up. Looks like everything's working, but something's amiss with horizontal hold. I think I might have disturbed something in the circuit, because now the horizontal control is unresponsive. It's definitely getting the signal because it's trying to display a picture, but I can't get horiz to lock to investigate further. I'll look into that more tonight.

Mark: you wouldn't happen to have a small 350-volt 'lytic for the video board, would you?

Yep, I have a spare 2 Mfd 350v that you can have. I put a sprague atom in there and had this one left over from my order. Those "brown drops" are original but they aren't always great so it would be good to check any in an area where you think there might be a problem. There are several in the horizontal section you may want to check since you are having issues there.

I figured you might, since you're doing a '9 right now. :thmbsp:

It's been my experience that the film caps never go bad, but I'll check in the section that's giving me trouble right now anyway. I think I already know what it is anyway: I bumped the horizontal hold control during chassis reinstallation, so I might have broken one of the fine wires on it. Shouldn't be a big deal, I've repaired them before.

K, dug into the horiz thing. Turns out I broke the ferrite slug in the control when I installed the chassis last night, so I took it out to glue the slug back together. Once it sets, I'll probably have a rough pictureon the screen!

Glue is done drying.

I get something that resembles a picture, but horizontal and vertical are a mess. I think I might be injecting the signal at the wrong spot or something, because there's too much wrong to be just one section of the set. It's more like a weak signal. I had my RCA jack coming from the LD player going to the 1st vid amp's grid, then switched it to the 2nd and it was worse (lost color). It might just be the wrong value coupling cap though, I'll fool with it some more when I get home.


Mark: if you have a degaussing coil, add that to the list of things to bring on Friday. Also, you'll need a moving van for all the sets in my garage. lol

I don't have a degaussing coil but we can try the high wattage soldering gun method and see what happens. It also appears, by your screen shots that the green gun isn't up there with the other two. The CR-70 will take care of that without hurting the tube, 8v for a while should wake it up. The screen looks pretty uniform without big blotches so the purity looks decent judging by your pictures, I'll bring that solder gun anyways though.

I don't have much room but I'll see what I can fit in. I'm headed to a lady's house in Milwaukee to pick up three sets on Sarurday. One appears to be a late 60's color set, a late 40's 16" or so console roundie, and the third is a mystery set that I haven't seen yet. Three sets for 15 bucks, I don't need to see it:D the other two are good enough. I also like the suspense, God (and the lady:) ) only knows what it is. I'm also probably getting that '75 Chromacolor II. It's been a tv explosion at my tiny house lately. Looks like I gotta throw out more crap.

It's more like a weak signal. I had my RCA jack coming from the LD player going to the 1st vid amp's grid, then switched it to the 2nd and it was worse (lost color).

Usually video amplitudes in a TV set are significantly higher than the 2Vp-p unterminated you'd get from the player. Something like 7Vp-p, so it looking like a weak signal would make sense. So you may not be in that bad of shape.

I had similar results injecting video into my CTC-9 as well. Since I had an rf modulator laying right next to the tv, I went with that and didn't investigate it further. This may also help with your sync issues, as I have seen pictures fall way out of sync when injecting video.

Usually video amplitudes in a TV set are significantly higher than the 2Vp-p unterminated you'd get from the player. Something like 7Vp-p, so it looking like a weak signal would make sense. So you may not be in that bad of shape.

Maybe for this CTC-9, but my Philco set worked great using the same method.


Mark: That first shot with the purple-ish screen was just to see if it would even do anything late at night, so don't pay it any attention. It looks a lot better now, but will likely need a lot of adjustment. I didn't know where the controls were set at that time, so... might have been tint way to one side or something.

Sounds like either you are injecting video into the wrong area, or something's amiss with IF circuits. Is the raster washed out?

Could be, guess I'll find out here in a little bit.

Oh, and another factor to consider: Video is "unipolar", a fancy way to say it matters if it's in phase or 180 degrees out of phase (inverted). Sync tips are the most negative part of the waveform, and white the most positive part. Though, on an RF carrier, sync tip is max amplitude modulation, and white around 10% of that. They did it that way so AGC circuits would have a constant thing to look at, when slaved to the horizontal osc, which should easily find said sync signal. Get it inverted to the way the TV circuit you're trying to inject into, and it's a total mess, no sync, and pretty much unintelligible. Unlike audio, which is "bipolar" in the sense that it doesn't matter (in mono, anyway) which way it is fed to an amp or speaker (in a stereo system, you need to be consistent channel to channel, but otherwise it doesn't matter).

Not sure what I did, but....

:banana::banana::banana::banana:

I decided to put all the RF tubes back in and try the tuner again since composite injection was not working out, then low and behold it starts working! Unbelievable, this set is straight outta '59 and works with no resto at all. This is with some coax (not matching x-former) going straight from the DVR to the set.

Vertical looks a bit stretched at the top to me, and height needs adjusting.

Where the heck are the height/width controls on this thing anyway???

...Where the heck are the height/width controls on this thing anyway???
Concentric with some front panel controls possibly(?). If you're unable to get enough sweep at the bottom of the screen, look and see if there's an electrolytic to the cathode of the vert. out tube. If it dries up it can cause unsufficient sweep.
Bill(oc)

OOPs! Brain fart. There's no electrolytic cap at that location in the CTC-9.

OOPs! Brain fart. There's no electrolytic cap at that location in the CTC-9.

But other caps in the vertical, if leaky, will throw off the linearity and height. Replace all the wax paper caps (if you haven't already) and it should become adjustable.

My old Admiral does have an electrolytic at that location, and yes, it dried out and I had to replace it to get the linearity and height correct.

All the caps in this set are film, but I'll have a poke at the vertical board anyhow. I searched the interwebz, and found that this set has 'controls inside controls'. In other words, the front panel controls are hollow, hiding another pot inside. I was able to tweak vertical so it fills the screen now, but it's still folding over. Also recentered the horizontal. More in a bit.

Celebrate our Independence, happy 4th!

Took the chassis with me back home to my folks house, so I could get more in depth with it. There's a scope here, and better tables to work on. Thanks to Mark I now have a good Sams for this set, so things are moving fast now. I found some out of tolerance resistors in the vert board, and replaced some suspect caps in various other parts of the chassis. Still have to order the can caps...

Main thing I'm glad I found was a whacked resistor on the vert board, which came from the height control. It was supposed to be 1.8 meg, but read out at 2.2 meg. I'm betting that's why the height control had needed to be full CW to get the screen to look right. Unsure if it will fix the vert folding as well, we'll have to see after I get the 'lytics swapped out.

More good news: according to Mark's Sencore picture tube tester, I have a like new 21CYP22 in my set!

Guess I'm talking to myself at this point, but I guess some things never change. :smoke:


Just thought I'd update everyone: the work I did this past weekend did a lot of good. Vertical now fills the entire screen, the horizontal control now sits more in the center of it's adjustment instead of at an extreme like it had been, and I did a 'ghetto convergence' job tonight using the DVR. :D

This is what it looks like now. (excuse the crappy cell pics)

It really does look quite good. If I can get Mark to bring along his bar gen next time he stops by, we'll be able to tweak it a lot better than it is now.

That is looking good!

Progress!

I'll bring over a B&K NTSC generator that's fun to play with. After the convergence, we can use the color functions and dial that thing in perfect (or as close as possible). Plus, the color bars make great screen shots.:yes: Lemme know when I can stop by.....

This Friday? Bring the truck, so you can clear out my garage. lol

We'll see about clearing the garage, mine needs a bit of clearing as well. I did like that Admiral and Zenith though, that should help somewhat:scratch2:. See you Friday.........:smoke:

This might be a dangerous precedent, but I'll help rearrange your garage if it help you fit stuff...

More progress to report!


Late last night, I finished replacing the last electrolytic caps in the power supply. I was only able to restuff the cap that has a paper cover though (C1 in Sams), since the replacement caps I bought (Illinois brand) were too large to fit inside the metal can of the multisection ones. That's probably because they didn't have exact replacement values available at Antique Electronics Supply, so everything that went in was double original capacity. :thmbsp:

That being the case, I populated the remaining caps close to their respective circuits. I was able to use spare terminal board points in most cases, it almost looks like they belong where I put them. Naturally, I left the original caps in place on the chassis for the sake of appearances. I also found the AGC pot ground had worked loose, so I soldered it back down.

Today that led to a nice afternoon of slight tweaks, and a good 30 minute session of Fox News and a bowl of ice cream treat myself. :D

It was short lived, however. :tears:

After I shut the set down, I looked over the chassis to make sure none of the work I had done caused any problems. I saw nothing out of the ordinary, but I did smell something odd. Immediately I suspected a hot flyback (smelly old wax), so I popped the HV cage off. Sure enough, melted wax was all over the place and the HV coil had started to sag downward. Right now what I'm going to do is clean up the fly, and replace the silicone since it's old and nasty. Once that's done setting, I will check the horizontal output tube's cathode current to make sure it's OK.

Sams gives a nominal value for the 6DQ5's cathode measurement as 160ma, if it's high I need some suggestions on what to check. Right now I don't think the flyback is bad (it's a low hour set), but I will replace it if I have to.

Just checked HOT cathode current, it's sitting at around 190ma. That's about 30ma high, but not really alarming to me. Anybody think the 6BK4 could be causing too much load on the HV supply? I'd like to adjust it, but I have no idea what the anode is currently at. Being that most of the pots in this chassis have drifter by quite a bit, it wouldn't suprise me at all if the anode voltage needs checking/correcting.


EDIT: forgot to mention that I replaced the old silicone on the flyback, and installed all new wiring for the HV rectifier filaments and HV reg.

I also have a Sencore yoke and flyback ringer tester with HV probe if you want to borrow that too. Let me know......

Will it read anode voltage, while the set is running the flyback?

I'm not going to attempt to converge this until I'm certain I have a handle on the HV section, so I might just take you up on that.:thmbsp:

Yes, it reads the HV with the set running.

Nice, you'll have to bring that thing by sometime. :thmbsp:

Did some tweaking, and after the set ran for a while the 6DQ5 cathode dropped to around 183ma. I think I could still get it lower though, 183 is still 23 high. Flyback is not quite so hot anymore, so the wiring I replaced was probably arcing or something.

Pretty bars - bet they look even better without the window light.

They are!

I shot in the light partly because I wanted to show how bright the tube really is, it's not necessary to be in a dark room to see a great picture with this set. I think black level could still be better, though. As you know, that's another odyssey.

I'm thinking the only way I'll be able to get cathode current back into spec will be to add a horiz drive control to the circuit, what do you think?

Well I tried lowering the drive signal to the 6DQ5 unsuccessfully, lowest I was able to get it was 179ma and that's after trying some of the things outlined in Sams on adjustment of the horizontal section. Tweaking the horizontal linearity coil got me a drop of a few ma, but I can't check anode voltage just yet to finish the proceedure. Basically what you do is monitor cathode current on the horiz output tube and HV reg, turn the focus and HV pots all the way down, then adjust the horiz waveform coil for equal peaks, adjust horiz lin for 'lowest reading' on the output cathode, then tweak the HV pot to read .8ma on the 6BK4 cathode.

That reminds me, does anyone in Chi Town have a scope they'd let me borrow, so I can tweak the waveform coil?

Too bad mine needs recapping at the moment or you could borrow that too:) Those color bars look great on that 21CYP22! That generator is fun to play with huh? The thing is great for doing purity, just press the red button:D

Would you mind explaining how to hook all of this up to monitor cathode current? I've just about got my '9 dialed in, but I'm afraid to run it for long periods as I have little understanding of how to do this. The Sams says to remove a jumper, but I have yet to see where this jumper is at that I can hook my ammeter to...

Too bad mine needs recapping at the moment or you could borrow that too.


I tell ya, I'm gonna buy stock in all the major capacitor companies! At the very least, I'll cause my own stock to go up with all the parts I'm buying. hehe


Those color bars look great on that 21CYP22! That generator is fun to play with huh?


I know, right? I'll take a shot later on when it's darker outside, so you can really get a feel for the satuartion. On a side note, I may have found an issue with my Portacolor while playing with the gen... More on that later.


The thing is great for doing purity, just press the red button

Yep, and purity on the 9 is spot on for all guns. :thmbsp:

Would you mind explaining how to hook all of this up to monitor cathode current?


Sure, but let me explain my way of doing it as well. :yes:


Sams has you use different moving needle meters to make the measurements: a 0-1ma meter for the 6BK4 cathode, and a 0-500ma one for the 6DQ5. Normally you would either unsolder a ground connection (in the case of the 6DQ5), or clip a little wire jumper (on the 6BK4) and place the meter inline to take current readings. Instead, I chose to permanently install 1-ohm 5-watt resistors from the cathodes to ground. This allows me to set the DMM to read voltage instead, so I can move 1 meter around vice watching 2. It gives the same exact readout as it would if you were reading current, I just think it's easier to move leads around to different resistors.

Plus it's somewhat less dangerous-not so many wires to run into while making adjustments. And even if I did bump a lead loose, there's little risk of hurting anything since the circuit would still be complete. If you measure current with an inline meter on the 6BK4, I shudder to think what would happen since the high voltage would be instantly unregulated if a current meter lead came loose. :scratch2:

The Sams says to remove a jumper, but I have yet to see where this jumper is at that I can hook my ammeter to...

For the 6DQ5, you have to remove the ground wire on pin 3/6 for a current reading/install resistor for voltage reading. On the 6BK4, you have to follow a wire from pin 1 back to a terminal strip. On the strip, you'll find a little loop of wire. Clip that loop, and insert the current meter or install the resistor. :thmbsp:

Today old tv nut and myself went through the entire Sams horizontal adjustment proceedure, to try and get the current lower. First we connected a scope to the horizontal sinewave coil, and adjusted it for 'equal peaks'. Then we used 2 current meters, one on the horizontal output one on the HV regulator, and a high voltage probe on the anode supply. We tweaked the efficiency coil for lowest reading on the output, then adjusted high voltage for <.8ma on the HV regulator while reading 23.5kv on the HV probe.

Result: 6DQ5 cathode finally settled at around 176ma.

Next, I'm gonna try rolling a few different output tubes to see if I can get it even lower. Chas mentions there were some issues with some iterations of it, so I went right to Ebay and ordered a few. My hope is that the new HOT will get me the rest of the way there.

Also, Moyers does not have a replacement flyback for the '9 at any of their stores...

BTW, I found out what happens if the HV regulator becomes defunct: a whole lotta nothin'. HV jumps up to like 27k, but nothing that would stand out at get your attention. It happened when the current meter came off the 6BK4, just like I said it would. lol

Forgot to update this thread!

I was finally able to mod the CTC-9 to include a drive control, which basically involves installing a pot, cap and resistor. I just copied the schematic of the CTC-7 chassis, and it worked a treat. Cathode current is now spot on where it should be, and the picture quality did not suffer. Width is still good, too. last thing I'm gonna do is see about getting a few louvers punched into the HV cage, then I'll install a fan and call it done. That should make a very stable platform for long-term watching.

BTW, I found out what happens if the HV regulator becomes defunct: a whole lotta nothin'. HV jumps up to like 27k, but nothing that would stand out at get your attention. It happened when the current meter came off the 6BK4, just like I said it would. lol

Usually, variations in the very high voltage on a CRT makes the size of the raster change. Higher voltage makes a smaller picture, as the higher voltage is pulling on the electrons harder. Changes in the picture content in a set with DC restore will change the current draw on the flyback, brighter makes the voltage sag and the picture will get a little bigger. B&W sets usually did not have DC restore, when the TV show showed a night scene, the blacks would get gray. And the grays would get blacker if it was a sunny day in the TV show, so the current draw was fairly constant and thus the picture size stayed pretty much the same. But no DC restore looks crappy on a color set, so they put it in, and then the need to regulate the HV shows up.