Maggie Home Entertainment Center
 

I am about to aquire this B/W unit from its original owner. It was made in 1961. When I saw it yesterday, all the tubes and the turntable had been removed. It's all there, otherwise. I couldn't find the little model sticker, but I didnt have much time to look around for it.

Im going back for the cabinet soon. I have all the tubes that they pulled, and the turntable that they pulled, too. They didnt know what they were going to do with the thing so they started by parting it out.

The little amp chassis uses a pair of 6BQ5's. One is original, and the other one has been replaced in the early 1980's with a GE.

I really dont have room for this set, but I cant stand to see things go to the landfill.

When I get all the tubes and turntable back in it, I will bring it up slowly on my Variac and see what happens! I'll update with pictures as soon as I can.

Bruce

sounds like the chassis I have, is it a C-36 if so I have a bit of exp on that one.

the cap doublers were bad on mine, so monitor the B+ when you bring it up (the diodes are plug in with spade connectors). You can make a easy mod to the stereo tuner to drive the audio off the audio out from your vcr/dvd/converter to have true TV stereo sound.

Good luck with it, I like mine and watch it every day.

does the chassis look like this?

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=239083

hmm oh well I cant see the pics and it wont let me repost them.

Thanks Dave. I thought I was going blind there for a minute.

The set has had only 2 tubes replaced. The 6BQ5, and the damper tube twice. All others are Magnavox branded.

The old tubes were found inside the back of the set behind the TV chassis under the kine. There is an E-V replacement stylus package in there too. I guess Mr. King, the original owner, kept all the old parts! I like the history of the set.

I have one like that as well, uses a SE 6bq5 amp. the tuner did NOT have a mpx, but I got one off Ebay, just have not yet gotten it installed.

the only real issue I have is on the interlacing, I have 3 C-36 chassis TV's

a tubed console, an astrosonic (SS) console and a cabinet model. Of those two have interlace issues, one you can adj out with the vert hold, the other can not, it jumps in and out constantly. I was going to try building a new low pass integrater off the sync tube to the vert osc, as I have checked/replace just about everything else.

One thing to watch out for is if you get a vert weave, check the screws that mount the deflection board. the heater grounds are just compressions joints from the pcb to the metal chassis. If ANY resistance (loose screws, corrrosion) is developed there, you will a slow weave, think its the 60hrz heater filament beating against the 59.9997 (what ever) vert osc frequency.

I cured that once and for all by soldering a buss wire from the pcb ground to the chassis, not relying on the compression to ground the board.

lets try this

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=246420

before bringing it up you should at least replace the coupling caps in the amp, they no doubt are paper and are leaky, which will quicklty ruin those
6BQ5 tubes in short order. at least put a meter on the grids and watch for +vdc.

My set chassis looks alot like yours. Thanks for the pics.

I contacted the current set owner. I will have the entire set on Friday. I went over to the house and got the cardboard back from the dumpster that they rented this afternoon. Glad I got it. All the functions are listed on the back!!

My cabinet is dark, and has straight legs. It might be a 23" screen, too.

I recently got a B&K CRT tester. This should be a good first B/W try for it. It tested my color roundie CRT's and they test good.

And to think that all these years, this TV was sitting in the living room of the home directly across the street from my home!!!

I have a B&K 440, but like my sencore CR-70 better (for some reason my b&k always reads lower than the sencore). In any case dont rely on the results (and go off rejuvenating if weak). I have found that B&W crts that test weak to dead often are fine, esp after letting them play for a while).

I rejuved a tube once got better emissions but cutoff went bad.

Also dont be concerned if the fly looks bad, one of my sets has one with an absolutely hidious looking fly and its fine.

oh and pull the HOT if your going to variac it. Not good to run at low voltage.

along those lines I would put a meter in the cathode circuit to maker sure the current is ok (around 120ma IIRC). What you dont want to do is take a good fly and make it bad messing about with a start up with leaking coupling caps in the osc circuits.

I generally dont even bother with the whole variac deal if there are papers in there. The variac idea of reforming the filters may or may not work, but it is tough on tubes and flys.

one last thing, I would power up in a dark room and look for red plates, that happened to me once, you can see it happen much faster in the dark. Of course smoke is harder to see in the dark so I guess its a trade off.

Thanks Dave. I'll take all this with me when I start on it. Cleaning 50 years of crud out will be a good start. I'll probably clean and lube that Micromatic turntable first thing, since I have several Maggie stereos sitting around that I can play with here.

OK. It's here on my front porch. Im going to have to wrap it up for right now, as there is no place to put it in my house. No kidding!

It's a model 2MV386N with a walnut cabinet. Run #1.

The sticker on the TV chassis is V36-02-00.

The AM-FM tuner is mono, I'm sure. There's no MPX setting on the controls.

The set is sitting out there airing out for awhile. It smells pretty musty from sitting all those years in that empty house. The wind will help, I hope.

Pictures yet to come. It's too cold to be outside very long...

if you want to do a quick monitorf of the startup, and have a DMM with a AC millamp reading, you can pull the diode doubler spade out (where the two diode connect together) and put the AC current reading between that junction. Then pull the HOT, and slowly variac the TV. IIRC the max current will be around AC 250-300ma more than that and you prob have a leaking doubler or filter cap.

If It passes that test you could try it with the HOT installed and see if you get a raster. My guess is the doublers will be leaky, the filter prob ok, dont know why but that was the case on all three of mine. Perhaps the High value lower voltage are just prone to going bad. Also maybe the doublers just see a lot more ripple coming off those diodes. the filter cap comes after the choke IIRC.

Rechecked the AM-FM section... It is stereo.

Having to wrap it up on the covered front porch for a few days. They expect snow here. Dont want the cabinet to get wet.

good on the stereo, you need to make sure it has the MPX unit (this is all tube set right), it is a separate chassis that connect between the tuner and the amp, at least on the tube sets that is. They all have the stereo selector but I think the mpx unit must have been an option that could be order with the unit or added later. If you dont have one, just look on ebay, they come up now and then, 20-30$.

Thanks for the heads-up Dave. I'll check for the MPX unit. And yep, its all tubes. I look forward to seeing it turned on and lit up!

I would be interested in seeing the tuner, Magnavox had a couple tuners but basicly two kinds, inductor tuned FM and VC tuned FM. If your lucky you will have the VC tuned FM, its a triple ganged AM and FM tuner so the AM gets an RF section as well. The VC has a MONSTER wheel on it so you get great tuning and it very smooth. On the tv sets I think they had the inductor tuned tuner, its a German made tuner with a variactor for the AFC all built into an alum box with a string that is wrapped around the shaft of the VC for the AM.

It works fine, I just prefer the smoother feel of the VC with that huge wheel.

Those tuners are both pretty much touble free, you may have to repalce the can, but I would hold on that until trying it, or you could do a cap check if you have a old school cap tester. I think all the coupling and HF bypass caps are ceramin or the intgrated networks that rarely fail.

the most likey problem will just be dirty pin contacts. There may be a couple cathode bypass electros on the preamp tube which is a dual triode. seem to recall they had a dual electro tubular down there.

ALL the audio coupling caps are ceramic, so no audiophool caps used at all in the tuner and mpx.

If you get the MPX it will be a 2 or 3 tube unit. If its a 3 tube you should check out the 1uf cap on one of the coils, it is prob open and will account for a very hollow sounding MPX. I think the 2 tube did not have this.

There is no MPX indicator on tube magnavox's at least on the early ones with the separate mpx. I seem to recall the last versions had a MPX intergrated into the tuner chassis.

I checked for the MPX module. No go, here. Checked all of the tubes. The tuner mixer-osc is dead, along with all very weak, and leaky I.F. stage tubes. The vertical oscillator is barely reading at all. Vert output checks VG. Horizontal output is VG, along with the damper. The 1B3GT is barely reading. All weak tubes, except for the vert oscillator are in my junk box. They are old common B/W TV tubes.

There's an original 6GH8 AGC tube there, and believe it or not, it checks 100%! It was made by GE, btw, and no shorts! I've replaced lots of these in RCA sets!!

The 23MP4 kine is really weak, as in barely moves the meter needle. I'm hoping that raising the heater voltage will help get its emissions going. I'll deal with that when I get a warm day to work on it. Giving it the hot-shot would be a totally last resort.

I ran the set using my variac and kept an eye on the amperage between the diodes like you said, Dave. At 70 volts, I started hearing noise from the tuner. I started hearing FM at around 100 volts. I got the set up to 110 volts, and could hear the vertical running on the TV chassis. I got brave, and installed the Hz output, and fired it up. I got a dim raster, with vertical that doesent fill the screen for now. I've got to get a few tubes found to go in there first.

It took almost 4 hours to bring the set alive.

I didnt have anything to check out the little amplifier on today, so, and I hope I didnt do anything to it, pulled the outputs, and used its power supply to run the tuner module. I fed the output from the tuner to the amp into an older Magnavox amp that I recapped years ago that uses SE 6BQ5's like the set amp does. I got sound from the tuner on both AM and FM, but after awhile, the sound quit suddenly, like I had disconnected something. I can turn the set off for a minute, then back on, and get some radio sound for a moment before it cuts out again. I turned it all off for now.

My old Sencore tester cant check the 6EU7 preamp tube on the amp, and the tuner, but I did swap them and got no change. Suspect the cathode bypass caps?

I was impressed with the amount of sound that I have coming from these 49 year old speakers.

I'm not going to do anything until I get the caps done in the amp and/or tuner. The TV needs alot, too. I havent pulled the AM-FM tuner assembly out, yet.

This TV was owned by a smoker. I cleaned the front of the CRT, bezel, and safety glass. Just doing this makes the set look so much better, and keeps me focused on making it run.

Oh yeah, I dont own a cap tester.

It's been a really long time since I worked on any B/W TVs at all. 35 years, I think.

And this is my first attempt using a variac on a TV. Batting 1000 right now!

I want to get this set into the house, too. BUT, right now, there's no where to stick it. I need to get rid of a few things first. Hmmm. The other half wants all of this stuff gone!!!

My camera is traveling thru Middle Tennessee today. I forgot and left it in the back of the car. My oldest son is heading to Arkansas and will be back in 10 days.

I replaced all of the weak/leaky tubes in the TV section this afternoon. Turned it on, and got sound and picture within a minute. The pic is very dim not sharp. I remember seeing this with other sets with rotton kine's. At least, I know the set chassis is basically OK now.

I have a blown midrange speaker. It's an odd looking oval type and is part number 584010. If anyone has something I could use, please let me know.

While I had the amp out this afternoon, I discovered that no matter which audio input was connected on the amp, both speaker sets would react. First, I found that someone had wired it so that both speaker sets were connected to the #2 speaker terminals. There was still no stereo, but if I rocked the 6BQ5's I could get some minor distortion from the dirty sockets on each channel. I pulled the amp and checked the wiring. I found a foursome of resistors between the preamp input and the 6EU7 tube that had been crushed together at some point in the last 49 years. This was causing the mono sound. Now, after carefully separating the wires, the signal is stereo.

I installed one of my spare Micromatic turntables in this set (the original is not ready to go, yet) and played a few records while testing the system. Sounds pretty good.

I appreciate all the help from you guys. Dave, I enjoyed our phone conversation this morning. I think this set will be around for awhile, bad kine or not.

if it dim it may by the magic eye, you can change settings including disabling it completly by selecting different spades to plug into. I though I had a dim raster but I was in a dark room, turned on the lights and the brightness came back.

If its out of focus you can try the focus adj, but the difference was slight.

Im not aware of the Magic Eye function.

Through a VCR, I ran several episodes of I Love Lucy, Beany & Cecil, and 2 Ben Casey shows. As the hours went by, I was able to see a little more picture, or maybe it was because it was getting darker outside!

I left the kine turned on all night on my Sencore tester. I ran the filament at 7 volts. It still checks bad, but not quite as bad as yesterday. How long should I let this tube sit and run? Thanks a ton for all the offline comments, and your help here, DaveWM.

it may or may not have it, but its a a sensor (light sensitive resistor) prob on the lower left side looking at it from the front.

it controls the brightness to adjust to ambient light. By selecting the different voltages you can adjust how much it adjust by. It sorta looks like a pilot light (which will be on the other side) just bigger.

I would just keep running it and see if it gets better. Can you check the HV?

I think you should be around 15-16kv does it bloom or is it just a focus issue?

If it was mine I would just keep looking for a picture tube. Then when you get one, try rejuv the old one with the CR-70 (I dont like to do that with out a backup). In the mean time just get all the other stuff working and replace all the paper caps.

a screen shot would be nice to see what you are getting. Take it with the flash off if you can.

Guess what? I have a magic eye!! I thought that thing was another pilot light! No clue as to how to mess with it!

I replaced all the pilot lights tonight. Still dim picture. When my camera comes back from Arkansas, I'll post pics.

I have a HV probe. I dont think there is a problem here, as the pic never blooms.

I'm looking for a tube.

Bruce

well just for grins, take a flashlight and hold it up to the eye, see how bright it gets then. I was looking at mine in a garage with low light and thought I had a dim tube until I brought it out into a lighted room.

It snowed about 4 inches today here in western NC. It will be a day or two, but I will do the flashlight test... also check the HV.

Right now, I am dragging it out, uncovering it, running it, covering it back up, and moving it out of the way. It's getting old, but I have found some stuff to move out so I move it in... The saga continues...

let me know how the flashlight trick works for you. I hope it is just the magic eye killing the brightness.

A flashlight on the magic eye made no difference.

I checked the HV... right at 14K.

Applied 7 volts to the kine filament thru my tester. Slowly, the meter needle moved up toward good. Finally, it was at 80% and holding. I left it alone for a time while I worked on the tuner. Got the tuner cleaned up and now the fine tune is working. This took about an hour.

Turned my attention back to the kine, and noticed that the meter was now indicating BAD. The filament is intermittent. I can see it flickering on and off. It couldn't handle the 7 volt supply. The set will have to wait for awhile since I need a kine. In the meantime, I will get the stereo half of it running nicely. I hope I can either find a kine for it, or can get the one I have rebuilt.

Until then....

any updates?

None to speak of. The set is inside the house now. The kine is shot. Calling Scotty in the morning, as I couldn't get in touch with him on my last day off from work.

I dunno. Do I really need to spend $270 plus shipping on a set that is considered totally obsolete by most of the world?

I'm still searching for the 23MP4 / 23ALP4 / 23AMP4. There's got to be one out there somewhere that needs a home!

I'd shop around before jumping off into a new CRT just yet. Place a wanted ad in the classifieds and maybe someone has a used good CRT they'll sell you. Or, you might try video display corp. I like old electronics and try to bring as much old equipment back to life as possible; but, I'd have to think long and hard before spending $270 on a fairly common B&W set.

Also, before you condemn the tube, make sure that the CRT socket does not have an intermittent broken filament connection. If that is not the problem, try resoldering the pins on the CRT, assuming it's the type of CRT with the bakelite base and large pins.

UPDATE: A nice guy in Raleigh NC contacted me. He told me I could have a 23MP4 tube that he has if I come and get it. I loaded up the car and went down there last weekend... about a 4-5 hour drive. About 100 miles into the trip, I remembered that I forgot my tube tester...

I got there. The guy is great. We went through his barn and found the Magnavox console that I was getting. Yep, its a 23MP4 in there. My car is not big enough to haul a console, so we pulled the tube and sat it in my trunk on several layers of blankets, and wrapped the tube up with more blankets for the trip.

I also got a load of OEM tubes from this set. ALL of them test good.

I thanked him, and headed home. When I got here, I brought the tube into the house and tested it. It has a H-K short. I'm sure he didnt know it. So, I'm back to square one, again. It only cost me a tank of gas both ways.

Hey, the filament looks really nice glowing in there!

Is it possible to blow out a CRT short? I remember reading a description of someone doing something like that... charge up a nice big capacitor, short the heater lines, connect one end of the cap to the heater and another to the cathode... just an idea, maybe it's stupid but it might work depending on the nature of the short.

did you try the tube tester short fix?

also just to see if ti works you could disconnect the filament and drive it with a separate 6.3 tranny. how did the emmisions look?

opps I see HK shorts can't be removed with my CRT tester. oh well could still try powering it with a separate tranny.

one last thing did you try leaving it on for a while just to see if it would clear up? long shot I know

Here we go again!
 

This obsession some folks outside our hobby seem to have with making fishtanks, bookcases, etc. out of old TVs is, IMHO, getting well out of hand. I found this on eBay this morning, in the item description for a Magnavox three-way entertainment center:

"Great for parts if someone has similar unit, or could be used to put a fish bowl in where the TV screen was."


As my subject line says, here we go again! What is it with people wanting to make fishtanks out of these great old consoles? I don't know about that, but I do know that if I were buying this (I'm not, despite the $9.99 starting bid, as I don't have the room in my apartment for anything that big; besides, it's too far away) I would do everything in my power to get at least the stereo working, though it would be nice to have the television operational as well. No way would I ever put a fish tank in the opening where the TV now resides. My best guess is that this TV has some very major problems the owner either doesn't want to or cannot deal with (the latter due to the expense), so he or she is selling the set with a low starting bid just to get it out of the way. I'd guess the owner upgraded to a flat panel and doesn't need this big Maggie anymore, or else he/she is moving and is getting rid of it because they are downsizing. Or perhaps the set was put down in the basement when it finally quit, and the owner wants it out of the house ASAP--who knows? The set could have little more wrong with it than a defective low-voltage rectifier tube or a blown fuse if nothing works, but if the owner wants it out of there for whatever reason, none of that really matters.

I tried the 6V tranny. It's a bit small, and the filament is not quite as bright, but it checks boarderline between ? and good. I have a feeling that it would be good without the short. Previous owner told me it has been sitting in the barn for at least 35 years. Belonged to his granddad.

I cant zap H-K shorts with my tester either.

well if you could find a brightner it would kill two birds with one stone, at least until you find anohter tube in good shape.