Bel-Aire TV / Clock / AM Radio
 

It looked interesting so I picked it up. Anyone know anything about it ?
It has Rubycon, Nobel and River parts inside.
The only mention I've found on the web so far is this site which says it's from 1970: http://membres.multimania.fr/siroistv/tv-autres-eng.htm

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7029/6...0efe88e5_b.jpg

Neat score ! But that Bad Boi looks a LOT older than 1970....

dont know anything about it, but it sure looks nice. Looking forward to an inside pic.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It definitely has some tubes - maybe entirely tube based. I'll take a closer look later tonight.

I would love to see the inside of that. What a cool set

There was a similar set at an ARCI donation auction last year. I was real disapointed that I got there too late to bid on it.

I took some photos from the back and pulled one of the tubes. It's a Hitachi 6BE6.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7156/6...323e4230_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7025/6...c63e6a4a_b.jpg

Looks like a fried resistor on the left.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7017/6...c3a2f579_b.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7016/6...bc50e42b_b.jpg

The gray dog bone resistor next to the antenna in the third picture looks cooked.:eek:

That is one of the oddest things I've seen in a while! I guess this is from one of the smaller outfits in Japan; looks too cheap to be all-Hitachi. A great find!

It sure is :(

Thanks! I got the set from a friend who was transporting a bunch of sets this afternoon. He pulled right up in front of my place with a truck load. Mostly it was newer stuff so I passed on everything but this guy.

I did some more web searching and actually found list same set in an ebay auction from November 20, 2010. I suspect that's where he got it from.

http://vintagetelevision.org/rare-wo...tv-radio-clock

I also discovered it listed on the ETF 2010 equipment donations page. I wonder if this is the same set :scratch2:
http://www.earlytelevision.org/eqpt_donations.html



No luck whatsoever finding service info :(

Sure looks like it was working back then.
http://vintagetelevision.org/wp-cont...6171506441.jpg

I've come across similarly-constructed radios, and even an electric piano made in Japan during this period. It seems those cabinets are all very much hand assembled. I typically find quite a bit of writing in them, indicating cabinet measurements, I guess. Build quality is always very crude, like this one.

Like your tv, a lot of the stuff I find seems kind of one off, at least on English language web pages, I don't find much info. It may be possible stuff like this was purchased by a serviceman stationed in Japan and brought home.

Well, WHATEVER it is, & HOWEVER OLD it is, I still like it...GREAT Score !

Change all those green caps!!!

If it was purchased in Japan rather then made there to sell here it would have Japanese control lables.

Nice set! Probably not many of those left.

Thanks for the info.

I found this label on the picture tube. It's a Hitachi 210CB4 I think from the 10th month of 1962. The rest of the inside make me think early 60s too.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7148/6...ea10e2a7_z.jpg

I assume that means they have a high failure rate ?

True unless it was marketed to American servicemen.

Thanks. I bet not. No useful info in the Internet so far except what I get here :)

I pulled the chassis tonight and here's what I found.
Very clean inside. All but a couple tubes are Hitachi branded including the CRT.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7028/6...11af5c1a_z.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7157/6...3aac7a8f_z.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7173/6...f6e3f599_z.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7012/6...935c1eb0_z.jpg

Judging by the tubes #s, it's a series filament set. Perhaps the power transformer is just for B+ ?
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7148/6...9e4d3757_z.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7025/6...b7a7d43b_z.jpg

12G-B3 and 12R-K19 HOT and damper tube. I'm not at all familiar with this Japanese numbering system.
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7153/6...476c3114_z.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7151/6...f07fbdf6_z.jpg

Picture tube tests like new :banana:
http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7155/6...034fb146_z.jpg http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7148/6...33f1850c_z.jpg

looks pretty much unmolested with all those paint drops. all those grey caps are prob bad, I had a kenwood receiver with them, EVERY one of them leaked badly, just like a wax paper cap. Super clean chassis, that's going to be a sweet setup when you get it done.

It looks like the transformer is an isolation transformer, as there is nothing isolated from the chassis. Notice it has a primary for 117 volts. Japan still uses 100 volts, both 50 & 60 hertz, so the set was intended for export. Those sweep tubes are replaceable by 12AF3 and 12BQ6.

This is, perhaps, my favorite item i've seen on this site all year! Great find!

Seems like I've seen one or 2 of these things over the years on Fleapay...

Is the power transformer ok? That "smoky" pattern on the chassis near the upper corners looks like it could have gotten pretty warm. :scratch2:

jr

Thanks for the tips. I see what you mean about the discoloration above the transformer. I haven't tested it yet, but for sure one resistor fried. Looks like it's in the vertical circuit.

Most of the Japan sets from that era used those green wax capacitors. I have never seen a good one. They get really leaky or short.
They grey ones are better, but I had a set where the boost filter got real leaky and overheated the flyback.
At a minimum I would change the green wax ones, the one that couples the signal to the horizontal output tube and the boost filter.
The Japanese electrolytics are awesome, no need to mess with those unless theres an issue.

That is one neat little set :yes:...I have some oddball Japanese TV schematics in a folder, might be able to match something up as its a TV/Radio combination. I've got Hitachi/Sony/National/Crown/Sharp/Mitsubishi/NEC and most are tube b/w schematics. Worth a shot?:scratch2:

Those green and grey oil filled caps...pull 'em out and toss 'em :D They'll all be leaky and more than likely be the cause of the burns up you can see...:) Sorry just read the comments above, so I won't repeat what others have said about them ;)
Cheers
Glen

Sure, if you wouldn't mind looking :thmbsp:

I haven't pulled all the tubes yet and there's no tube chart, but here's what I found so far. I'll dig back into the set soon and get a complete list.

12G-B3
12R-K19
12BH7
6BE6
6AH6

I don't think there was that many of those to begin with. Too expensive for a novelty set. I like the way the power supply diodes were replaced. It looks an American hack technician repaired it.

Also looks like some butcherin' around the HOT socket, I would verify the parts values before powering up.

That is a very interesting set, can't wait to see the video and the finished product! I wonder why the chassis is designed with the tubes inboard?

I also see a charred resistor in pic #2 on the far left.

Good question. The only way to service the tubes is to pull the whole chassis out :screwy:

Yes indeed - it's charred and I can't read the value :tears:

Very cool! Yeah, that would have been my guess--closer to 1960 than 1970. Good luck with it.

Looking closely at the inside of the set, it looks like the two sections of the TV chassis were originally designed to go behind each other, back to back, like the RCA 8 inch portable. My guess is, the chassis and CRT bezel were designed for an 8 inch portable with a metal cabinet, bought as surplus, and later adapted to this use. The rear section of the chassis had to be flipped around in order to move the tuner to the front of the cabinet, and in the process access to tubes got blocked off.

The radio and transformer section looks a bit thrown together, and would not have been part of the original portable TV design.

I've had luck measuring burned resistors, and finding that they hadn't drifted that far off value. Maybe you'll be in luck....

maybe 1960 ?

I received a partial translation of the label inside the cabinet. Since the label is right next to the clock, it might just apply to it.

"I can't make out the bottom line (aside from Tokyo and some characters that suggest the rest is a company name), but the first two lines read:

Type 1

Kanzen Taisui Hoshou [cutoff] -- Guaranteed Completely Waterproof

Not sure why you'd need your clock/tv/radio to be waterproof though."

This label is probably for the plywood the cabinet is made from.

Another one just showed up on ebay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/VINTAGE-1960...-/130640907610

Lots of good reference photos :)

I was excited until I saw the price - $195 plus $129 shipping to canada! Phew, that's a lot of money for this thing, especially considering it needs $50 of parts, and there's no gaurantee it'll survive shipping. I don't see why shipping is so expensive, it's only 30 lbs.

Where in the item description is it mentioned that the TV needs $50 worth of parts before it will work? :scratch2: It looks as if it's working quite well as it is, except for a vertical sweep problem (the seller did mention trouble with the vertical sweep, which probably could be compensated for by a slight adjustment of the vertical size control on the back of the set). Unless there is something else wrong with the TV, such as broken, shorted or out-of-tolerance parts, I can't see why this would need anything even close to $50 worth of replacement components. If the flyback or some other major component were defective or getting there, yes, I could see it, but since the TV's picture looks almost normal, again, a simple adjustment of the vertical size control could very well solve the sweep problem.

Speaking of tubes, I doubt very much that this TV is all solid-state as the seller claims. I could swear I saw at least one octal tube socket on a PC board in one of the rear-chassis views. Maybe the radio is all-SS, but the television looks to have at least one tube (maybe the HV rectifier?) besides the CRT.

Shipping charges may be so high because this TV will have to go through customs and who knows what else on its way to Canada from the US.

It's full of those grey japanese capacitors which have a reputation for leakage. I would not feel comfortable using it regularly with those plus original electrolytics. If it has a few bad tubes, 50 bucks will come up very fast.

Customs is paid on the receivng end, not the sending end - and would be in addition to whatever I paid the seller. There is a profit margin added to that shipping quote which may be considerable.

It is a tube chassis, the tubes all face in due to the fact it's a portable chassis repurposed to fit the cabinet.

Actually despite my feeling that it's priced high, I'm seriously considering it. It's only money after all, and I haven't got a new (old) TV this year :) I may be waiting a while before this one comes up again too. There's something about this set that appeals to me - maybe because it's a bit of an oddball.

When you look at it like THAT-Go For It !