buddy of mine was cleaning out an old estate. had a nearly mint sylvania 23v rectangle set (not a clone). He did not have space for it so gave to me. I checked it out and it had a nearly dead R and B CRT the G was fine. Anyway I fired it up and was able to get a good raster on green, and if I turned the G all the way down and the R and B all the way up I could see it was demodulating the color signals.

I put it aside figured I would part it out at some point just to make space, since I did not want to use one of my good CRT's on it as I was saving them for a zenith I have.

Yesterday I say a CL add for an old TV it looked like a Maggie rectangle with the tambor doors.

5$ later I have it in my truck (not going to test anything for 5$). Got it home and pulled the chassis and CRT. The cab was a mess faux finish plastic chic, and messed up at that, plus the particle board was coming apart. the chassis is not a clone. I may someday feel the need to put it on a jig and try it out.

Now the good part, while it does have a bit of a green halo, it test excellent on the CR-70 like new really, so I guess I will now have to swap it in for that beat CRT on the sylvania and get it going. I will post up some pics and make a video of it later.

here is the CL pic

Oh man, and you're in Orlando too.

Um, any chance I can get to see this TV live? :P

the maggie is history, but I will get the sylvania going with the maggie CRT.

That's what I was referring too, the Sylvania.

sure you can stop by and see it when done.

Awesome, thanks! I love the console TV's, especially that era.

here is a brief video showing the checkout of the donor CRT and the set its going into.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v9cGcDqKghU

That CRT did not require any of the "wake up" time or high heater voltage. Frankly I was shocked by how well it tested, I have some NOS rebuilds and it test every bit as well as they do.

The CRT will fit alright, right?

yes the sylvania has a 25XP22 as well.

Ahh ok, perfect.

i need that maggie crt!i have the identical set that suffered in transit.

Ron, I was really not expecting it to do so well. Figured it being a 25XP and not a later replacement, I was expecting it to be pretty weak. The Maggie chassis is super nasty with oozing yuck on the wires. that and the normal dust has made it really gross. The maggie cabinet was a really goof up, but the sylvania is near mint. Got some photos taken of the slyvania by the owner with moon walks broadcast over the air, cool stuff.

here is the CL pic

It does not look half bad in that pic, and I've seen one of those cabinets in mint shape in person, granted the set I saw had been gutted and used as a cabinet for the set that replaced it.

here is a pic of the donor chassis, will be posting up a better pic of the sylvania soon.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTnhMI3smjk

and here is the sylvania that the CRT is going into. better lighting this time and some shots with the back off.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nA3McVxplg&feature=youtu.be

had a minor set back, after pulling the chassis and replacing ONE cap a .0056 1600v bumble bee, I decided to try it out again just to be sure everything still worked and the collapsing raster was fixed. I wanted to do this before the CRT swap since the chassis is extremely easy to pull and install.

well I had a LOT of noise in the signal, huge RF noise it seemed. this was both video and audio. I noticed that when I unplugged the set the audio would clean up perfectly for a second as the caps discharged the B+.

I had a hunch it was in the HV area (the only place that can make that much noise) so I removed the Horz out tube. bingo perfect sound. I used my prob and started messing with the HV wiring and when I touched the shunt tube cap the noise went away. I pulled the shunt tube cap and the wire (thin teflon looking thing) pullled right out of the cap. A few minutes later and I had the wire reattached and the issue was gone. I ma guessing it was arcing inside the cap contained enough that I could not locate it, but arcing all the same creating the RF noise.

So with the vert rock solid now (the 1600v BB would not open the eye even at 150v) I feel comfortable with pulling the CRT and moving on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PQX9LNAfSi0&list=UUxMsHgfGwCVtyRrqXVtll-g&feature=c4-overview

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BlgJLM7Muw

its coming alone nicely, should be able to get the chassis in tomorrow and see how the new CRT looks.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0oKeQYjPnY

CRT in and working

Nice work, Dave. I'm curious how hard would it be to put a more modern 23V CRT such as this one listed on ebay in a set of this vintage? http://www.ebay.com/itm/281262783191?_trksid=p2055119.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT Did most of the 23V tubes have bonded safety glass?

I don't think bonded glass vs. banded would make a difference. Pretty sure there is enough wiggle room for the CRT to fit. The thing I look for is delta gun and pin out.

It's hard to find specs on the 23V tubes. Someone told me recently that all the 23V were delta guns. :scratch2:

zenith made some 23v inline gun crts in the very late 70s

while adj the purity I noticed I had an intermittent focus pin connection. ground of the rivuts removed the back plate of the socket, used some solder braid to form a bridge from the old pin socket to the part that broke. Had to clean up the metal of course so the solder would stick but good to go now. pic is looking much better but will still take some tweeking.

Lookin' really good there Dave. Nice clean looking set.

Thanks TVTim,

Just finished up posting a video of a prelim purity/convergence (done with live programming, will get the cross hatch out later to do it right).

One thing I plan to do is replace some of those bad 6GH8's one at a time and see what happens. One was in the pincushion I think that was the VERY weak testing one. I noticed in letter box mode there was quite a bit of pin cushion going on, so before I start tweeking the pin cushion coils I wanted to try a new strong 6GH8 and see what happens.

Any chance you could show some pics along with the youtube links? I don't know about anyone else, but downloading video all the time is time consuming and data intensive for mobile phones. Some peoples work and other "non-private" computers also block/track youtube visits. Thanks.

Carmine, I will get some pics soon.

Another small issue. I started replacing some of the 6GH8's. when I replaced a weak on in the pic cushion (practically no emmisons), it started having issues, the pic grew dim, and the tube started to get REAL hot. I am checking around the pincushion circuit and see some suspect parts, so will be checking them and trying again. The pincushion correction is not right as is.

Thanks. I enjoy following the threads and seeing the improvements, but youtube just isn't a practical option for me.

Picked up some NOS RCA 6GH8 tubes, replaced several in the set IIRC sync sep, pincushion,chroma amp, and 1st video. This cleared up a nagging sync issue and gives a good clean pic with excellent contrast control.

I also replaced a weak testing RF amp tube 6HQ5 on the tuner and cleaned the tuner. The tuner acted like it was dirty but it was not that bad. The new tube needed to be wiggled to get it to work. Maybe something in the tuner socket, I hope not as I don't want to go there. Anyway after the clean/new tube/wiggle the tuner is working much better.

The pincushion correction phasing works well, but the top still seems to have more bow in than the bottom which is completely straight. will have to look over the circuit and see if I can understand how it works. It uses a tube like the zeniths which inverts the signal for either the top or bottom, and I think just uses cap for the non inverted correction.

I am thinking maybe a screen resistor may have gotten toasted when if a tube shorted (common issue with 6GH8). I dont remember seeing any thing that odd when checking the resistance chart. Maybe just the way it is, would not even notice it with out a cross hatch or letter box programming.

after screwing with the center conv for way too long I finally figured out I had the blue lateral assy off 90 degrees (I swear I thought I had it back on the way it came off) It kept shifting the R and G dots. I finally decide got it in the right position, and then the worked as is should. Screen shots and video to come later.

http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxMsHgfGwCVtyRrqXVtll-g

I noticed on the video the greens seemed muted, do not recall seeing it that way live, but will check out a bit more. I prob just have to do a bit more touch up of the green as the grey scale may have been a bit too blue.

It uses a RCA type demodulation circuit (although not a clone). So if there is a weakness in the signal to the green I am sure I can figure it out.

I did a color bar on it early on and it seemed fine.

Thanks. I enjoy following the threads and seeing the improvements, but youtube just isn't a practical option for me.


here are some stills the 1st is a picture the orig owner had showing the 1969 moon landing, then today and today with some programming on it.

i love these sylvania sets.they were overlooked as far as quality but when they were right.they were equally as good as the rca and zeniths.

indeed the pic is every bit as good as zenith or RCA. Its incredibly easy to service, as the tuner plugs in so you can pull the entire chassis very quickly.

The one thing you have to be careful of is not to lift the traces on the pcb.

The copper seem thinner than normal for say RCA sets. On the couple caps I did remove I had some trouble there. I exercised normal care with respect to desolder practice. Good thing there was very little to replace as the only one I did was a single bumble bee that was mounted on the bottom of the set. I was having some issues with the pin cushion tube running hot so I checked a couple cap in that circuit, this is when I noticed when resolding after checking (they were ok, I decided it was the tube) that the solder on the pad did not look "right". closer inspection proved the pad had started to curl. Anyway that being said its working fine with all the orig caps, including the electrolytics.

Nice "Sly-vania!" Good job on the CRT install, it sure is nice (and rare) when you run across a good emission older CRT, must've been low hours on that 'Maggie tube.

it was grand ma's set per the owner, my guess is G ma was not one to just turn it on and leave it, but rather from the generation that did not watch a lot of TV but for the wonderful world disney and other special events.

I too was stunned to see such good performance.

here are some stills the 1st is a picture the orig owner had showing the 1969 moon landing, then today and today with some programming on it.

Thanks for the photos. The moon landing shot was interesting... I bet a lot of people did that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=plzUqSMfxn8

got it tuned up some for other channels, here it is before the soon to be gone analog signals on the cable.

Wow! I just watched the You Tube video of the latest progress, great job on the Sylvania, really good sharp color picture! Really nice looking set.

Thanks BD, yea it came out really nice. It is as good as my RCA or Zenith sets, of course a lot of it is the Q of the CRT. That was prob one of my best deals, free set and a 5$ CRT :D I like these kinds of deals helps keep the avg per set cost.

watched the video.set looks great.i had a 19 inch metal cabinet sylvania.it had the best picture!great.great set that lasted forever.it was in use right up to 1985.crt was still strong but the flyback burned up.i decided not to repair it.now,i would love to find one

thx Ron, yea a 19" metal set would be nice. That's the one thing I would like is a nice mid sized set. I jump from the portacolor/trinitron (K1212) to a 23v.

The thing I like about this set is its different, not a clone. and I can't remember if I changed anything at all in it (maybe one or two caps), I think its all original (but for the tubes). Guess Sylvania was using pretty good parts. I do know the pcb was pretty delicate so I am glad I did not have to do much (the traces would lift very easy). Oh and the tube sockets were bad but had been replaced (some of them). they are those white plastic type that has the crumblely plastic.