Hi guys, well the TV collection has grown yet again...Just the other day I picked up this New Zealand made Murphy 23 inch B&W Television for a few dollars.

It would be from the mid 1960's at a guess and I quite like the look of this one too.
Hasn't been turned on for about 20 odd years according to the previous owner, they were going to turn it into a fish tank display or something but had sold the house and were about to move house so thankfully the set was saved.

The chassis is basically an AWA 35 Series variant, and pretty certain that it was based on an Australian design. I have another Murphy and two AWA sets with the same chassis as this. From what I've been told they were reliable and performed well. On the back cover it does say 'Manufactured under license from Rank-Bush Murphy Limited'

The deflection yoke plastic shroud that holds the geometry adjust rings has decomposed and the filter caps are leaking and bulging so before I apply any power to this I'll temporarily tack some filter caps in place and then see what happens. May be a while before I get to doing this part but you never know curiosity may get the better of me.

The photos were taken with my new iPod touch as I was curious about the picture quality, not as good as a digital camera but still acceptable.

I've also done a video on You Tube about this, here is the link - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CThn6yz8fE

Enjoy!

Cheers Glen

Nice! That chassis looks alot like Packard Bell BW sets from that era. Very well made.

Nice!! I really like the upright chassis design in this & other tv's.
Who is the Rank in Rank-Bush? any affil. with Rank-Arena?

Thanks for the comments guys :) Yes I think Rank Bush were tied up with Rank Arena.

Here is a link to an older thread showing two sets I got earlier in the year using the exact same chassis at this one and some extra photos below of those two sets.... http://videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=251672

Cheers...

Nice!! I really like the upright chassis design in this & other tv's.
Who is the Rank in Rank-Bush? any affil. with Rank-Arena?

それはすごいね！(That's cool!) I like the "Super Signal" written at the bottom of the bezel. How many I.F. stages does she have? Is there something to that or was that a marketing thing? Why does it have a channel 1??!!

きをつけて、
Mark

Love the styling on that set. Looks to be built like a tank, too.

それはすごいね！(That's cool!) I like the "Super Signal" written at the bottom of the bezel. How many I.F. stages does she have? Is there something to that or was that a marketing thing? Why does it have a channel 1??!!

きをつけて、
Mark

I guess many countries did plan a TV channel 1, and did not delete it later...
In the U.S.A., channel 1 was soon found to be useful for some other
applications, and as UHF was growing removal of one VHF channel was
deemed to be acceptable.

What is the function of that strip of power transistors? Fine looking
set, built during my childhood, so definitely worth a restoration!

Nice save ! Me likey !

What is the function of that strip of power transistors? QUOTE]
According to the adjustment locations on the back, those are really pots. They do look like TO-3 cased transistors.

i like the clean look of it - nice how it has its own legs rather than needing a stand or taking up space like a console. That tv is worthy of a place in the living room!
I look forward to seeing a picture on that screen!

I guess many countries did plan a TV channel 1, and did not delete it later...
In the U.S.A., channel 1 was soon found to be useful for some other
applications, and as UHF was growing removal of one VHF channel was
deemed to be acceptable.

!

We never did have any channel 1 stations get on the air. The old 45MHz FM band was there, and David Sarnoff of RCA, who decided he didn't like Edwin Armstrong (the inventor of FM, and built a network of FM stations on the 45MHz band) anymore wanted to kill FM radio, and convenced the FCC to relocate that band for TV's channel 1. And kick FM radio to 100MHz, and Sarnoff figured that would bankrupt FM radio. And get rid of a competitor to TV set sales. Sarnoff did freak when the FCC decided to make TV sound FM instead of AM. He had RCA not pay patent royalties to Armstrong, who had the FM patents. My own speculation: Had Armstrong pointed out to Sarnoff that FM sound would help make TV a killer app... Who knows... Anyway, 45MHz FM was to stop in 1950 to make way for TV channel 1, but it was found that 45MHz had a tendency to propagate long distance to other cities when the solar weather was right (sunspots and such) and that would make a mess of analog AM video modulated television. Before the DTV changeover, you would sometimes see this on analog channel 2. Later TV set makers went from an IF of 22MHz to 45MHz, which would not have worked on a channel 1. And the old 45MHz band ended up with police and fire comms.

I have a 1984 RCA with digital tuning which can tune channel-1 but I wonder what frequency that actually is on this tv. The raster goes blank on that channel.

Hey Tom, I've had one of those too and wondered the same thing. It may be some sort of cable channel, I remember having a channel 1 on local cable as a kid. I don't know how common it was though.

Thanks, yeah its a neat looking set. It has three I.F. stages. I think the super signal was probably a marketing thing but these were good sets so maybe a bit of both. Channel 1 - There used to be a TV channel operating at that frequency in the early days of broadcasting in New Zealand.

それはすごいね！(That's cool!) I like the "Super Signal" written at the bottom of the bezel. How many I.F. stages does she have? Is there something to that or was that a marketing thing? Why does it have a channel 1??!!

きをつけて、
Mark

Thanks for the positive responses to this TV guys :) I think I may be prompted to having a go and seeing whether I can get some life out of this beast. Thankfully it hasn't been moved too far into the depths of my storage area so its nice and easy to move back into the workshop :D

Attached is the schmatic for your interest. :smoke:

Cheers
Glen

Thanks for the positive responses to this TV guys :) I think I may be prompted to having a go and seeing whether I can get some life out of this beast. Thankfully it hasn't been moved too far into the depths of my storage area so its nice and easy to move back into the workshop :D

Attached is the schematic for your interest. :smoke:

Cheers
Glen

Thanks Glen for posting the schematic. A very good straightforward circuit, but I'm intrigued by the "video control" circuit, V-205A 6CG7. It looks like a variable voltage source that controls the gain of the video amp. Can't recall seeing exactly that setup, and it looks like the picture from that chassis might be very stable across the gray scale, and through minor voltage variations. It's always the "little extras" in circuit design that are most interesting to me. Please keep us posted if you restore it!
Kevin

i like the clean look of it - nice how it has its own legs rather than needing a stand or taking up space like a console. That tv is worthy of a place in the living room!
I look forward to seeing a picture on that screen!

Almost all the US table model sets had provisions for optional legs. They refered to them as consolettes. Most people prefered custom carts, as they were easier to move.

That is an interesting TV, Glen. I see the name "Murphy TV", though, and think of Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong)! How often did those sets need to be repaired? :)

Thanks, yeah its a neat looking set. It has three I.F. stages. I think the super signal was probably a marketing thing but these were good sets so maybe a bit of both. Channel 1 - There used to be a TV channel operating at that frequency in the early days of broadcasting in New Zealand.

Thanks Glen!
からだにきをつけて。
Mark

That is an interesting TV, Glen. I see the name "Murphy TV", though, and think of Murphy's Law (anything that can go wrong will go wrong)! How often did those sets need to be repaired? :)

Murphy was a famous British TV/Radio manufacturer dating back to the 1930's
they merged with Bush is the early 60's (name comes from the place of the original factory in Sheperd's Bush,West London) and then became Rank Bush Murphy.The main factory was by then near Plymouth in SW England.

In the late 70's Toshiba became involved in a joint venture and it turned into Rank-Toshiba,then the "Rank" part got dropped.The factory closed not long ago with Toshiba moving production to Eastern Europe I believe.

Murphy sets were well built but some models from the 50's had the horizontal output transformer in a can filled with oil....

The UK models of the same vintage as this set were totally different inside,having to cope with dual system 405/625 lines changeover IF/Timebase switches for a start !

Hugh

This is a great site with lots of Murphy UK flyers/ads and schematics: http://www.murphy-radio.co.uk/murphybilia/index.html

Who knows... Anyway, 45MHz FM was to stop in 1950 to make way for TV channel 1, but it was found that 45MHz had a tendency to propagate long distance to other cities when the solar weather was right (sunspots and such) and that would make a mess of analog AM video modulated television. Before the DTV changeover, you would sometimes see this on analog channel 2. Later TV set makers went from an IF of 22MHz to 45MHz, which would not have worked on a channel 1. And the old 45MHz band ended up with police and fire comms.

Some stations that stayed and/or used native RF channels 2-6 for DTV can be decoded during Sporadic E's (short-skip). Received/DX'd several Low-VHF DTV stations in this manner, including WBRA, KOTA, WPVI, KDLO, WRGB (and pre-"transition" WKYC-DT 2 before they moved to RF 17 post-transition).

But to bring the subject back on topic, nice photos of that TV. :)

Hi, here is a bit of an update on this TV... I got curious and started poking around the chassis and decided to temporarily put in some 100uf filter caps in the power supply and change the boost caps just to be safe and attempt to fire the set up.

Using the variac I wound the voltage up I could hear things rustling and noises from the speaker, then the vertical kicked in, so I wound the variac up a bit more and there was an odd squeal from the flyback, glanced at the 1B3GT and it was lighting up a pretty purple inside! Hmm...me thinks that tubes a bit gassy so I put another good one in and powered on again and this time we had EHT but no picture or even a raster.

Checked voltages around the video stages, all appeared to be ok there and the cathode volts to the crt was within spec. I turned the set off to see if anything would happen and as the EHT collapsed there was a small bright image on the screen....ah-ha... Seemed like the CRT was being cut off. I didn't get much further that night as was very tired.

Looking at it again with fresh eyes I checked the grid volts on the crt base and as the circuit stated this should have been at least 80-90 volts on pin 2 and varies with brightness.
Mine measured around 40 volts on the grid... We have a problem here!
Started checking things in this part of the circuit the resistors in series with brightness pot and a 100k to ground which checked ok but there also were some 0.1uf coupling caps which turned out to be leaky, replaced them and I now get a picture although its lacks width and the verticals all up the creek, but at least the TV is now functioning and its producing sound and a picture of sorts, so a good start so far.

My next move is to investigate the lack of width, the picture is not very bright and the EHT is lower than it should be at full mains voltage so will look into that and then will sort out the vertical which may improve when the width is sorted.

There are a lot of wax paper caps in this one so replacing those will only improve things no doubt and I can bet there are a few resistors that have drifted way off also.

That's all for now. Stay tuned...

Cheers Glen.

Hi all here is an update on this one, some slow but steady progress has been made. The set now produces a full and bright picture, a rather big improvement on how it looked when I got first got a raster.

I've changed a handful of components in the line output section, the low value electrolytics and resistors were way past it, so no wonder I had a hard time getting reasonable EHT and width initially.

Treated the vertical to some new bits too which helped a lot but still have an issue with the top linearity, the control is hard at one end, no doubt there will be a resistor/cap thats gone wonky in there or the control itself has gone high, will come back to that later. There is still more work to do.

So that's it for now, some pictures of progress so far....

Cheers
Glen

Lookin' good! It is very satifying to bring them back from the dead. I'm working on a 1950 Philco. Everytime I get something working great, something else goes wonky. Eventually I'll get it all straight.

I noticed back cover had that Murphy was distributed by Fisher and Paykel.

One of the "new" brands of front-load washers being sold at upscale appliance stores in the US are Fisher and Paykel, and noted as coming from NZ.

Thanks :) Yes the joys of restoring old TV sets...you disturb something in one area and down the line something else doesn't like it.... Like a chain reaction :D
I'm itching to do some more on this but time and wee toddlers don't leave me with much energy at the moment at end of the day so end up going to bed! Cheers :)


Lookin' good! It is very satifying to bring them back from the dead. I'm working on a 1950 Philco. Everytime I get something working great, something else goes wonky. Eventually I'll get it all straight.

Thanks for that information I had no idea we were sending domestic appliances to the US. Fisher and Paykel have been an NZ company for years.

I noticed back cover had that Murphy was distributed by Fisher and Paykel.

One of the "new" brands of front-load washers being sold at upscale appliance stores in the US are Fisher and Paykel, and noted as coming from NZ.

That is a cute TV and I am glad it is being put to work again!:thmbsp:

Those 1960's TVs remind me a bit of my childhood, when I was a kid, in the 1980's I sometimes saw those 60's sets on the homes of older people. It was also common to see 60's portables on bars... those 1960's sets were very common, nowadays they are more or less rare. It's sad to think that so many of them were destroyed on the last decades. People older than me, who grew up in the 70's remember that it was not unusual to see 50's TVs still functional in the homes of elderly people.

Thanks :) Yes its a nice looking TV and I hope to do some more work on it soon.
I also recall as a child seeing many old TVs still going in peoples houses, my grandparents had a valve black and white set right up till the mid 1980's when if finally died and they went an brought a colour TV. Its a shame that so many old TVs have now gone. I used to see them at the rubbish dump all the time and wished I'd saved them.
Cheers
Glen

Awrite !! Lookin' GOOD, Glen !

Thanks Sandy :) Hopefully it'll look even better when I'm done fixing it....:yes:
My backlog of TV's in the collection that need looking at/repairing would be at least 20, so have heaps to keep me busy!

Great work Glen!

Thanks Sandy :) Hopefully it'll look even better when I'm done fixing it....:yes:
My backlog of TV's in the collection that need looking at/repairing would be at least 20, so have heaps to keep me busy!

Well, its the middle of y'all's Winter, might as well have SOMETHING to do...Idle hands/Devil's workshop 'n' all, y'know...(grin)

Thanks Komet :)

Sandy - Yep it sure is the middle of winter here...haven't seen the sun for a while now! Yes plenty of TVs to keep me busy - but - have 2 small kiddies and wifey so plenty there to keep me occupied as well! :yes: I do manage to find a 'window' for old TV tinkering though. Cheers Glen.

I HOPE Mrs. Glen is a GOOD, UNDERSTANDIN' soul, & keeps the Ka-Diddles away from Dad's TV Repair Emporium...Kidz 'n' Old Lectronix-NOT a particularly good mix...Give her a Big, Regulation, East-Tennessee Bear-Type Hug for me, willya ?!? (grin)

Well, this set is finally done! :yes: All cleaned up cabinet wise, fully re-capped and almost re-resistored too. The resistors that were in this were off and some of them had even drifted oddly enough to the next preferred value, which made me wonder if they were incorrectly marked while being manufactured...who knows? But at least they're out of there and won't cause any further problems.

The restoration took longer than expected, I just kept plugging away at it slowly so rather relieved that its come to an end.

But... I did have a couple of problems along the way...The first was intermittent hum bars that would come and go at will, at the time I thought it was just some of the old caps that were still in place, but after replacing all them and the rectifier diodes the hum bars were still there.

Scoping the B+ rails one of them clearly showed this 'blip' of noise moving along in time with the hum bar on the screen.

My next thought turned to the valves, thinking that maybe one of them had an internal short possibly due to the filament supply leaking AC across internally to somewhere it shouldn't be. As it turned out I found 'several' of them with multiple shorts the 6EB8 video output tube being the worst!
Once I replaced the bad tubes and powered on again, the hum bars had vanished!

The next problem was towards the end of wrapping this up, I went through all the adjustments including the horizontal oscillator. Got that all done, had the picture all centered and locked nicely, powered the set on the next night from cold and found the sync to be way off.

After about 30 seconds it popped back but the picture was way off to one side and I could see it slowly creeping back into line, after about 5 minutes it was normal again.

My thoughts about this turned to one of two things, faulty mica caps in the circuit as there were a couple and there was one in series with the hold control and the grid of the 6CG7 or the valve itself.

I changed that mica cap as it was well below its value of 330pf, this didn't really improve things so popped in another 6CG7 and problem solved!:thmbsp:
So much for the original valve testing OK! I think in future I'll have some good know substitute ones handy for future niggly things like this. :yes:

So now its all back together and running very well, despite the CRT being on the weak side it still gives a very nice picture.

This is the first time I have overhauled this particular model and have to say the contrast and definition is really good. I guess a good circuit design plays a part in this as well. If the picture tube was good the results would stunning I bet.

The End! .:banana::banana: Some final pictures below. Thanks for following this restoration.

Cheers, all the best for the festive season. :D

Glen.

Great save on that Murphy consolette Glen! I went through the Murphy site, what a fantastic looking lot of sets, if I ever find a Murphy anything in this country, I'll buy it!

The Rank in Rank, Bush, Murphy is related to Rank Arena.

Thanks Komet :)

Sandy - Yep it sure is the middle of winter here...haven't seen the sun for a while now! Yes plenty of TVs to keep me busy - but - have 2 small kiddies and wifey so plenty there to keep me occupied as well! :yes: I do manage to find a 'window' for old TV tinkering though. Cheers Glen.

Great job on the Murphy, Glen! Got any Ultras out your way? BTW, I assume you were pulling Sandy's leg - enjoy that 8:44 PM sunset tonight! I've owned a copy of the Kinks' Arthur since 1970, where they sing "We'll fly down to Sydney for a holiday on sunny Christmas day".