My little RCA 13" portable fromn the early 90's had a little run in with one of my speakers...(i.e. if the screen is blue, a patch in the upper right corner is purple. When this happens with my computer, i can just use my monitor's Degauss feature. Leaving it sit for a month unplugged made no improvement. but my TV don't have that. Is there any way i can do this myself or do i have to haul it off to a repair shop?

Thanks in advance

If you know anyone with a degausing coil its pretty easy. if not, a repair guy with one will be needed.

If memory serves, simply move the coil in circular motions over the screen in thighter and tighter circles, and pull it slowly away from the center. done.

Most all modern TVs automatically degauss themselves whenever you turn them on. You ever notice that same kinda buzz sound as your computer monitor makes when you hit the degauss button?

A poor man's degausser is an everyday soldering iron. Don't unplug the iron until you're quite a ways away otherwise you could make the picture worse.

Anthony

The Radio Shack bulk tape eraser (if still made, or if you can find one second hand) is a very effective degausser. I'm not sure a pencil-type soldering iron would have a degaussing effect, but a soldering gun should.

Is your TV still near the speaker? If so, degaussing may or may not help. However, if you move it away and still have the problem, then degaussing is definitely in order.

And the tip about using a soldering gun, not a soldering iron, is correct. If it's working, you will see a bunch of crazy colors when you are near the set. Sweep it all around the set in circles and gradually pull away wile still making circlular motions until the crazy colors disappear, then turn it off.

My old Weller soldering Gun does a good job of degaussing a color CRT, position it (while on) to get the largest rainbow effect, move in circular motion over whole face of tube, and don't turn it off untill you move it away from the tube by several feet.

My TV does not have any degaussing feature(no sound on turnon) or if it does, it's broke. Even if i were to try this, i'd probably screw it up royally. Come tax time it's going to a repair shop. Thanks very much for the help.

If you can get your hands on a soldering gun give it a try. you really can't screw it up, as you can always re-try, and use the repair guy as a backup only.

I once asked a repair guy, near 40 yearsa ago...) why he had to pull it away. He said "if I turn it off to close it does this... and did it. the colors went sproing! then he repeated the process, (took seconds) and all was well.

So from the previous posts ammost any tool utilizing a coil as the main function, leaving aside motors, will do it? I had always seen them built as a ring.

Take a look here (http://repairfaq.ece.drexel.edu/REPAIR/F_tvfaq1.html#TVFAQ_014) on various methods to degauss TVs.

Your set should have an automatic degausser, it just only works from a cold start and may require many cold turn on cycles. I gave my son a new TV for Christmas, and on the day after Christmas he moved it up to his room. Somewhere along the way the screen got gaussed (?!), and stayed that way until yesterday, when the last of it finally cleared up. It must have taken a dozen or more cold starts (TV off for 30 or more minutes) to do it, but it worked. Patience is the key.

Good luck!

i'll try that cold start thing. the comment in that link about bending the shadow mask with a speaker magnet worries me.

See, what caused this was, i had some friend-of-family's kids in the house, i was of course talking with said parent, and i went to get up and what do i see?

The child had foud an old driver from a radio i had laying around (Screw retreival device, that sort of thing) and had it up against the screen and was fascinated with the pritty colors. of course i ceased this action calmly once i could but the scar was left. Now i'm worried. I'll do the cold start thing a couple times, see if it works. thanks a bunch

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, new 13" TVs are only like, what, $65-70 or so at Wally World-maybe less if they had too many for Xmas & need to get shut of a bunch of 'em-you may just wanna get a new one. I don't think ANY of 'em are designed to be your good buddy for very long anyway...this one may be starting to go south on you in a big way. -Sandy G.

And toilet paper is now less than a buck a roll! Funny thing happened to my mother's computer monitor, the colors went wonky and she thought I may have messed with the settings.......they had that altogether most familiar purple and greenish tinge to them.....I hit the degauss button and everything snapped back to normal (except me). Don't know why it got funky on it's own overnight, just weird.....just shows to go ya, sometimes CRTs get out of sorts for no apparent reason.

Anthony

I use Bean-O. An excellent degasser indeed!

At the risk of sounding blasphemous, new 13" TVs are only like, what, $65-70 or so at Wally World-maybe less if they had too many for Xmas & need to get shut of a bunch of 'em-you may just wanna get a new one. I don't think ANY of 'em are designed to be your good buddy for very long anyway...this one may be starting to go south on you in a big way. -Sandy G.

Yes, but he ho does not have the cash cannot spend it! besides, this TV has sentimental value.

I rode on a ferry once that had 25" color tv sets. When they turned the tv on, at the dock, the picture was fine, but man, as that boat moved the color went all over the place. Kinda neat. Noticed same thing on some older (crt-type) monitors on an airplane.

My mother has a mid-90s RCA console that she bought at a freight salvage. There is a smear in the color in one corner that has never gone away, not near the speaker or anything like that. I suspect the mask was damaged in transit-the only other damage was a chip in the front of the cabinet. I have a good degaussing coil and would try it out but she has never said anything about it.

If the distortion is not right where the magnet was against the face, you are probably lucky and the mask is not deformed - however, this tube was subject to strong fields and a built-in degausser may take a large number of cycles (approaching infinite) to clear it up completely - you really should try manual degaussing, and you will know in a minute if it's recoverable or not. - Good luck!

It sounds like the amount of magnetic field the kid applied will need external degaussing to remove. The soldering gun trick should help. Or a tape eraser. Maybe the thermister that the internal degausser uses went bad. It's a variable resistance that has low resistance when cold, and high resistance when hot. It's usually in series with the degaussing coil across the powerline on the load side of the power switch. The thermistor heats up to hot in a second or two. You might be able to salvage one from an old computer monitor. It looks a little like a disc ceramic.

i saw a soldering gun at the pawn shop the other day-i'll check it out. I'm not about to fork over $40 for a soldering gun. My mother has a aquaintence who runs a tv repir shop, did a vertical circuit rebuild on our big toshiba, i'll see what he charges compared to the price of a coil/gun....Maybe a soldering gun might be a good investment anyhow...

[Sorry 'bout the late reply; I'm just catching up on posts after having been away from the forum for a bit...]

While I can't find or remember the book I saw this in, a few months ago I was flipping through an old TV repair book and it described a simple method for constructing your own color CRT degaussing coil. Unless I'm hallucinating, the instructions were basically:

- Get some ordinary 18 gauge insulated wire (single conductor, type and gauge not critical)
- Coil it up into a ring about 12 inches in diameter (I don't remember the number of turns you were supposed to make, probably something like 20 or so)
- Wrap electrical tape tightly around the loop of wire you just made to keep the coil turns held tightly together
- Strip both ends of the wire and connect them directly to an AC line cord.

...and that's it!
At first, this idea seemed a bit too simple (and perhaps unsafe) -- would a simple coil like that generate enough inductive resistance to prevent it from looking like a short circuit? ...but come to think of it, that's probably pretty much how a commercially-produced degaussing coil is made anyway. Any thoughts? Am I forgetting something important here? Would this be a practical servicing tool or a death trap? [...Then again, I think this might have been something I saw in a TAB book... :rolleyes: ]

The construction is generally as you describe, but you should not guess at the gauge of the wire or the total length - it is mainly the resistance thar limits the current, not the inductance. It WILL get warm and eventually hot after only a little while. Commercial units usually have a "hold to operate" switch. We had one with a shorted switch once, and it's a good thing it was lying on a fireproof bench. Of course, if there's no switch, you would turn it off by unplugging, which you are unlikely to forget (I hope!). So, if you find the article and follow the numbers, it should work fine.

I tried salvaging the coil out of a later model rectangular set once, just hooked it to AC. It took about 5-10 seconds to start smoking. I guess the commerical coils are wound on a form, maybe a steel ring? From holding it, it seems so.

Made one many years ago when I worked for Phillips, memory is that it was 400 turns of #22, it could rattle the shadow mask and got warm after 30 seconds, could demag any tube !!

hit the yard sales and flea markets.
i just got a weller 100/140 gun in good shape for a buck at olive road flea.

OK enoght messing with half measures and guesses. here are 2 sites on hoew to build a de-gauser. I like the first one, but whatever floats your boat.

Site 1 (http://www.oscarcontrols.com/degauss/index.shtml) :thmbsp:


site 2 (http://www.buchanan1.net/purple_spot.shtml)

I pulled this from an old 25 inch console 20 years ago.
I dont have a light bulb in series with it. It
seems to stay cool long enough for me
to get the job done and the strongest of any
I have ever used.