My wife and I love vintage stuff, and I particularly hate to see things destroyed or sent to a landfill simply because they have fallen out of favor. So, as a rescuer of vintage electronics I have managed to accumulate WAY too many non-functioning audio and television projects. While I am not a complete and total dummy, I have not done any restoration more complex than a "dust out the insides and clean the pots" kind of thing. If it doesn't work after that then I am lost. To complicate matters I seem to like the German audio consoles a lot, so I have a couple of Grundigs and a Telefunken that are in need of attention, along with the Motorola and Philcos.

I work on vintage cars and travel trailers, and since I am more of a visual learner than a book type, I'm hoping that perhaps there is some local VK'er who can walk me through the steps of troubleshooting tube radios or even my Westinghouse B&W TV from start to finish.

I'm located in the Waterford/White Lake area. Thanks for looking.

Come to the Early Television Convention in Hilliard in May. You will meet many collectors, including several from the Detroit area:

www.earlytelevision.org/2012_convention.html

My advise is to start with tube radios and audio equip, then once you get the hang of it to start to work on TVs. The three best tools for a radio beginner are a good Tube tester, a DMM and or a VOM, and a copy of the schematic of the set your working on.
Bad electrolytic capacitors will cause hum and distortion and sometimes worse. Try to get replacements that are close to the rated value of the oiginals. If you are within 30% of the MFD (or sometimes written uF value) on new lytics, and have the same voltage rating or HIGHER on the replacements then you have the right replacements. Observe the polarity on the replacements as they can explode if connected backwards.

If the tubes are all good, and you have new lytics installed and it is still not good enough check for paper capacitors. They should have MFD values between .1 and .001. Get replacements with as close a MFD value as you can and that match or exceed the the rated voltage of the orignals. Paper caps don't care about the polarity of their connections like paper caps do so that removes a step of consideration from instalation.

Tom: thanks for the advice. I figured I would start on a radio, but if the opportunity came along to get one of the TV sets working too...

I have the tube tester and VOM. On the first set I wanted to tackle I just found a schematic as well.

I have heard two schools of thought on the electrolytics: some say replace them prior to even turning the set on, and others have said to test the tubes and then turn on the set, and if there is no hum and the cans aren't hot then there shouldn't be a problem.

Other threads have also suggested warming the set up the first time using a variac, something I don't own and I have no experience with. Would this be a recommended purchase?

It is good to have a variac, though one can use a dim bulb tester or if in a pinch an outlet connected to a dimmer switch.

Anything post 1955 I will bring up on a variac (sometimes before testing the tubes) to see what I've got to work with. 1945-1955 is a gray area which depends on what I have, and how I feel. Pre WWII stuff tends to yield consistantly poor power up results that make it usually not worth a power up before changing the filters, though I've been surprised by some pre-war sets (radios only...my luck is not good enough for finding a prewar TV set that I can afford) that work fine with the original parts.

A soldering iron is also a must. One can pick up a decent starter unit for 20$ at any good hardware store.

I have ordered capacitors from Just Radios in Canada which were good quality, and there are many other options if you can't get what you need locally (which is likely).

Best not to use a dimmer... Those are not designed to drive transformers, and transformers won't like the funny AC waveforms you get from a triad-type dimmer.

Go to Youtube and search for account "allamericanfive." He's posted several videos with good explanations for a newcomer to vintage radios.

Thanks again to all for the input. I know that a TV is too much to tackle by myself so I have a couple of vintage AM radio options that I can try out first.