found a 1960s Philco Portable TV today at the Antique Mall!
 

Hello Everyone, today I was browsing at one of the local antique malls and I was browsing through the booths and sure enough in the 3rd to the last booth in the store I find for $15 a 1960s vintage Philco 19" portable B&W TV that I picked up and brought home as a possible future project. As soon as I got home I plugged the set in and turned it on the TV came right up like it was supposed to with exception to a horizontal line in the middle of the screen (I have a picture of what the TV is doing) I kind of suspect that its a vertical stage issue (e.g. bad vertical amp tube or something like that) but from what little I could see of the picture tube in its fully collapsed state it looked pretty bright yet like it might of been a low hours set (the cabinet is in near mint condition as well except a little wear around the VHF tuning knob) other than that the original bunny ears are still intact not broken, and the cabinet is nearly flawless minus the yellowing of the plastic.
I have pictures of the unit and also I noticed that its a slim-line model (its less than a foot deep as can be seen in the pictures.)

Any help, advice or information about this TV would be wonderful.

Thanks,

Levi

UDATE: I opened the back of this TV Set and apparently this TV has never been opened as it still had all of its original Philco branded tubes in the set yet. I checked the 6FD7 tube that operates the Vertical amp and vertical output stage of the TV and sure enough it tested completely dead on the tube tester, and when I looked at the getter material, it was completely gone, as it had apparently gone to air at some point in time (there was a faint white outline where the getter material used to be.) SO I think this is why the TV had no vertical deflection. Its a cold chassis design that utilizes a 6BQ5 tube for the audio output stage and has the option for a remote control (has markings moulded into the back cover that says something about a remote control switch of some sort (which isn't there in this case.) Apparently this was a higher end set for the time period?

Turn the brightness down or you will burn that line into the phosphors permanently! The reason that line is so bright is that the energy that would be dispersed over 525 lines is being concentrated on only one....The phosphor is not meant to handle that much energy hitting it! Turn the brightness all the way down (if that extinguishes the line turn it back up until the line is visible again but dim) until you fix the vertical.
Even weak tubes can produce a bright line, you will know it is a good tube once you fix the vertical.

Tubes can be an issue, but bad capacitors, and resistors are a more common cause of vertical deflection failure....I hope the vertical output transformer and yoke are good, they are not the most common cause of that type of failure, but still a possible cause, and often hard to get replacements for in many sets.

I just updated this thread and I stated that it was due to a bad Vertical Output/Vertical Amp tube, also I didn't leave that set on for very long only for a few seconds to get the picture and to test it and that's it, I immediately turned it off afterwards. Do you honestly think I'm stupid enough to not know about Picture tube burn in?

A COLD set? how about a picture of the chassis?

Yes, this is a cold chassis set, it has a rather large power transformer in the back of the set near where the power cord interlock plugs into the chassis. I'll get you a picture of the guts of the TV. Does anyone here know anything about this old Philco set?

Not to bad...not bad at ALL !!

Does it use a tube B+ rect...or diodes ?

It uses 2 silicone diodes for the rectifier. :yes: :thmbsp:
All it needs is a new 6FD7 tube and it should be back up and running again. :yes: :thmbsp:

Honestly, given some of the blatantly wrong info you've posted in the past as fact, the way you busted the controls on that Magnavox, etc....You come across as a green thinks-they-know-it-all upstart (no offense that is just the impression you give), and with those types I've found it is safest to never assume they know any specific thing until they prove otherwise.

Always be humble, and never think too highly of your self or your knowledge, because the moment you forget that there is always someone somewhere that will knock you off your perch/poke a hole in your ego, (and those that can and would help you, won't bother)....That is a lesson I've learned the hard way.

Well sorry to burst your bubble sir, but I DO know about how TV screens can get burned in, In fact I've known about it for years, ever since I've first used CRT Computer monitors I've known about that issue. And considering that I successfully got an early 1960s Setchell Carlson TV up and running yesterday all by myself WITHOUT damaging anything, (if you would of paid attention to my thread I posted about it yesterday) maybe now you can eat a bit of humble pie yourself, considering you were just trying to suggest that I don't know anything about what I'm doing! I'm not going to argue this point with you anymore because its pointless to do so, so either contribute helpful, useful information, or don't contribute to this thread at all! I don't need people trolling in my threads!! :mad:

Tom would just as soon post what he did about screen burn on a thread of mine just as he would yours. Part of the reason is because he's responding as well to anyone who picks this thread up in a Google search in the future that might have this set with this issue, and NOT know what you know.

There are a lot of people here who know a lot more than you, or I, do, about television repair. Getting a Setchell Carlson going that was previously restored, with a few tweaks, was a good thing. Here, you will find that humility, patience, and the willingness to learn will go quite far.

That said, chill out, and let's put this train back on the rails.

I know and that's what I was trying to do. I realize he was just trying to help but he could of been a little less rude about it. That being said I didn't leave the TV on in that condition for very long at the most 10 seconds which wouldn't of been enough time to burn in the screen the screen would of had to of been on for like 10-15 minutes before it would of done any major damage to the screen.
That being said I would love to learn a little more about this particular model of TV as far as an exact year of manufacture, and also how high end of a unit this would of been, I know it would of had to of been a fairly high end unit for it to of used a 6BQ5 audio output tube in it and for it to be a cold chassis designed unit and also for it to of had both UHF and VHF on it (it said on the tube chart that it could of been a VHF only model which means this TV must date to between 1958-1963 which was before the UHF mandate for tvs.) Also I noticed (and it can be seen in how shallow the cabinet is compared to others from the time period) that it has the 110 degree deflection type tube in it.

Some CRTs (non-aluminized and projection tubes especially) will burn in under 30 seconds, especially if the HV is over 18KV and the gun is biased for high beam current.......High enough beam current and you can burn that line in to the face in under a second....It is hard to tell the amount of beam current in a photo, just as it's hard to tell tone in a post (given your odd cagey reaction to my first one), and it's better on a CRT to turn the brightness down for a dim line the moment you realize one of the sweeps ain't working, than to risk it......Hell, when I do a gray scale on a color set with the min brightness setting and the service switch flipped I don't waste any time in turning all the screens down if any are at all bright. CRTs are a scarce finite commodity and should be treated with as much care as possible.

I would've bought that set, myself. It was the TOTL for a 19" that year.
If you have a 6DR7, IIRC it is a sub for the 6FD7. At least, you could try it, until you get the FD.

...

I thought about that but sadly enough I pretty much had every single tube that this TV needed in my tube stash except the 6FD7 or its subs... :sigh:

First please dont toss bombs back & forth. This is
just e-mail so we dont know much about motivations
without the face to face input. Tom has much to
add & you are motivated & informed. Nuf sed.

Anyhows the set is a great find. Never seen one, most
Philcos this vintage were hot sets & kinda cheap.
Even though I am sure you have seen it the dag is
peeling off the CRT & when it gets on the chassis will short things out.
So a good D&C is in order. Good luck with her.

73 Zeno:smoke:

what's D&C? Also I did see that some of the black coating on the back of the CRT was coming off some of it was hanging down into the chassis but not enough to touch anything to short it, the only thing it was touching was the top of one of the vacuum tubes in the unit, so I peeled off the hanging piece of the black coating so it wasn't hanging down anymore.
By the way what is the purpose of that black paint stuff on the back of the picture tube? Is it supposed to be some sort of x-ray protection, and would it hurt the picture tube to leave it as is right now and run it with that black stuff peeling off as long as it doesn't come completely off?

That stuff is called aquadag (conductive silver paint), and it's purpose is to filter the HV. The outer coating is grounded (or should be) and the inner coating (inside the CRT glass walls) is connected to the HV....Together with the glass between them they form a capacitor that filters the HV. If that coating is not or poorly grounded many strange symptoms can result, including (in the worst case) CRT implosion (a member reported having a bad arcing ground connection that caused implosion after a few minutes of arcing).
If patches of the grounded side are disconnected from the rest arcing may occur. If the grounded side is disconnected it may float up to HV potential and shock you while servicing the rest of the set.

It likes to break into small bits once it de-laminates so it would be a good idea to clean all the bits and any on the tube that are loose...Unless you are fine with the risk of it shorting and burning up one of the more delicate not necessarily easy or cheap to replace coils (IF, h osc, traps, etc.).....

Thats a very nice explanation of that coating as i was asking about it in my post too.

Nice looking philco!

D&C is dusting & cleaning. Also refers to a medical
procedure for women.
If much dag is missing you can replace it but I
dont remember what its called. Be sure to follow the
old pattern.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Do you have a sub guide?
Many times the subs listed are only close tube designs and will, only once in a while, cause a new problem. IE: the vertical hold will be critical or the lin or height won't adjust properly. The 6FD7 and the 13DF7 is a Philco designed tube.

I do have a tube substitution guide and I saw what subs were listed for this tube and I didn't have those tubes in my collection so I just went ahead and ordered a new one over at AES it was only a $3 so it wasn't a big deal.

Most of the coating is still intact yet just a little flaky but its still attached the bottom of the tube is where it was coming off the worse which I just peeled it off (it was hanging down into the circuit board area sitting on top of one of the tubes.) So how hard would it be to recoat the back of this picture tube or can I just let it be for right now as long as its not missing too many huge chunks of it? Like I said its mostly still attached to the tube yet its juts slightly flaky on the top side of the tube, and a small chunk missing on the bottom side of the tube and its mostly on the part towards the neck where the stuff is flaking off so I think its still grounded yet.

OK thanks for the explanation, I wasn't sure what you meant by that but now I do. :yes:

So as long as there isn't any huge chunks of that coating missing would it be fine to run it as is? Its still mostly intact yet just a little flaky on the top and a small chunk missing on the bottom side.
So would it be very hard to recoat the picture tube?, and if there's still sections of it that are intact yet would I just leave that alone and just redo the areas that the coating failed in?

If any part of the 'dag is ungrounded or poorly grounded, or if any part lacks electrical continuity with any other part (is 'floating'), there is liklihood of arcing.
Arcing 'dag can case really weird effects mimicking AGC and sync problems.

OK, well another question I had about redoing the coating on the back of the picture tube, what does one do with the old paper labels on the picture tube when one does do something with recoating it? would you just peel the labels off and then reglue them back on again once the new coating has had a chance to dry? Also could one just recoat the areas where the coating was damaged and leave the coating that is still intact alone?

Just did a google search on this TV and apparently it must be a fairly scarce model because I couldn't find anything about it anywhere on the internet. Its model number is UL 3804 and its called the Philco "Townhouse" (at least that's what it says on the front of the TV) I searched under the model number and its name and nothing shows up on the internet about it anywhere, I wonder if this is the only one left of this TV?! :scratch2:

The dag looks pretty rough so I would at least get
all the loose stuff off & coat that. You do have to be sure
that you have a single U shaped pattern. I cant see the
ground, it may be a spring or fingers on the chassis
that touch the dag. So find it & be sure it will contact
the dag.You can probably work around the tags.

It is a rare set, probably $20-$30 more than a series
set, a LOT back then. $20 could get you 3 tanks of gas
( 60 gal ) & a carton of smokes. Now some places you cant
get 2 packs for $20 ! So not many sets sold.

73 Zeno:smoke:

I only saw one in my time. The neighbor, across the street had one. It replaced a 1952 Philco metal table model. They seemed to like Philco products, as they had a Philco portable stereo, as well.
The stereo was nothing special. It had the cheap VM changer, that was rigidly mounted. :boring:

It must be poor storage conditions. I only had two sets that had peeling dag, in over 50 years of doing this.
Living in Wisconsin, all my life, most people had basements or attics, where they stored these items. Also, if no longer used, they sold or gave away the sets. Very seldom, they were stored in sheds or barns.
I'm rather spoiled, so I'm not too eager to restore sets, that have rust or excessive cabinet damage.
The Philco, Townhouse, I would make an exception on. :thmbsp:

That's what I'm guessing, is maybe poor storage conditions, because even on that old GE 9T001 TV of mine which is at least 5 years older than this Philco it didn't have any peeling coating on it at all. But I figured though that this TV had to be worth buying and saving because it seemed like a fairly uncommon unit and the cabinet was still in good shape with very little wear except on the tuning knobs and the built-in bunny-ears where even still intact which is very rare to see on any TV of this vintage.

How much do you think a set like this is worth restored? Just curious.

That's amazing! So I'm guessing that I got this TV for a steal then for $15... :scratch2:

Just curious but what if the aquadag is still intact around where the grounding tabs are at, but just flaking around the areas away from the grounding tabs, could the set still be used safely that way until I could get some money saved up to properly redo the aquadag coating on the back? I would probably only use the set very sparingly until I could redo it properly.

Also Just so you know the grounding strips for the aquadag material is 4 metallic coated cardboard strips that are located one at each of the 4 corners of the picture tube.

Update: I took a look at the rest of the tubes inside the TV which about 95% of the tubes in the TV are the original Philco "Cool Chassis TV" Branded tubes and they all tested good yet (around 100+ each time on the emissions test), and then there was a Amperex Bugle Boy tube and then there's a Sylvania tube Both of them of which are in the tuner section the rest of them are the original Philco Branded tubes, and then once I replace the 6FD7 tube that will make 3 tubes in the set that aren't original which is pretty good for a tv that age, speaking of which I looked at the date code on the tubes on the TV and they have a date code of 1962 on it so the TV is apparently from 1962 or 1963.

So I got the 6FD7 tube today in the mail and installed it into the TV and I got full picture again (its full going vertically and horizontally) but I've noticed that I can't get a signal from my source to lock in (its just a mess of white noise and horizontal rolling bars going across the screen at a slight angle), I could get the audio from the source to come in but not the video from the source (I was using a super nintendo with the RF Modulator attachment via a 300 ohm to 75 Ohm adaptor using channel 3) and the only signal I could get to lock in was the audio but not the video, Is this something to do with the black coating peeling off the back of the picture tube or is it something else? I've tested all of the tubes inside the tv and they all tested good, so maybe its due for a recap?
Although I would of figured I would of gotten at least something... :scratch2:

Try using a different signal source, VCR or DTV convertor.
If I have trouble with a signal source, I try switching the RF out on the VCR, 3/4 switch, usually on the back.
The tuner might need cleaning, because of the poor storage conditions. The contacts seem to corrode more the when stored in a home. :sigh:

Well I figured out part of my problem, I was apparently using the wrong fine tuning knob, I was using the fine tuning knob for the UHF instead of the VHF Fine tuning knob (I thought that maybe since my old 1957 GE Television used a single fine tuning knob for UHF and VHF that it was also that way on this Philco as well, but apparently not, it uses seperate fine tuning knobs for each band) and I was able to get somewhat of a picture (although the vertical and horizontal hold wouldn't lock in when I was trying to adjust it) and I also noticed that whenever I would adjust the horizontal hold control it would cause arcing inside the picture tube (you could even hear and see it arcing because it would make snapping noises and the screen would react funny.) And then after a little bit the screen's vertical collaped on me again (and yes Electronic M this time when it did it I made sure to turn the Brightness and contrast down on the TV!) So I'm not sure what's going on with it because the audio is working perfectly hum free and everything. And the 6FD7 is still good yet, but yet the vertical sweep has collapsed on the TV (it actually did it twice to me, the first time it did it to me I immediately shut the TV off after turning down the brightness and contrast, and then took the tube out and tested it and it tested fine) so then I reinstalled the tube into the TV plugged it in and turned it back on and sure enough the vertical sweep kicked back in like it was supposed to and I had a full screen (but still no picture from my signal source but plenty of audio from it) which is when I decided to try and see if the VHF knob itself had a fine tuning knob around it and sure enough it did and that was when I was able to get a signal lock but the vertical and horizontal hold wouldn't lock so I tried adjusting them and it didn't make much difference.

EDIT: I was able to get the vertical and Horizontal hold to lock in but then the picture was looking kind of splochy and from what I could see it looked almost like there was two video images ontop of each other with a thick horizontal bar inbetween almost as if the vertical hold still wasn't completely locked in yet, and I tried using my converter box to give me a more reliable solid picture and I couldn't get my converter box to respond or give me a signal and then yet again the vertical sweep dropped out again, so I don't know what is going on.

That arcing is an indicator of the aquadag needing a recoat. Knock the loose pieces of dag off and recoat over the rest trying to keep the new dag in the outer bounds of the original dag. You risk an implosion if it is arcing between points on the dag.

The vertical is probably either collapsing from an intermittent open or a cap that is border line. The 'overlapped image with horizontal bar' sounds like the vertical osc. is running and syncing at a multiple of it's designed 60Hz frequency....It's probably at 120Hz and news commentators heads are being scanned on to the same patch of screen as their chests....If it was 30Hz (the second most likely case) there would be two identical images, one on top half of screen the other on the bottom with the vertical sync bar and closed caption stripes separating them. Vert. osc. frequency issues are normally caused by bad caps or resistors.

OK, well here's a picture of what I was talking about that the TV is doing and I will definitely try to recoat when I can get a chance and can get the money to get some of the paint, and I won't run it until I get that fixed.

So how is it that the vertical oscillator can start running at 120 Hz instead of 60 hz?

At this point, a copy of the schematic would be very helpful.... I believe that it can be found in Sams 650, folder #2.
If this set uses a circuit similar to "slender seventeeners" and predictas of the era, you will find a fairly large cap ( .15 to .22 uf or so) connected near the cathode circuit of the 6dr7/6de7 (pin 8) to the vertical hold pot.... I would consider replacing it first.

jr

Thanks, I think I might actually have a couple of those laying around too so I'll give it a try. :yes: