How hard would it be to make my own color test jig?
 

I have worked on a few tube and hybrid, round and rectangular screen color TVs, and whenever I do I start to hate pulling and reinstalling the chassis repeatedly. I was thinking that it would be better to use a small inline tube to eliminate having to deal with dynamic convergence, and because inline tubes are cheap and plentiful. Is this a good idea? And would it matter much which CRT I use? I was thinking of using this working Trinitron SD-59 I've had sitting around for a long time would this be a good choice?
http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/...y/DSCN0931.jpg

Tom C.

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Well I was wondering how practical doing it with an inline tube would be because inline tubes can be had for basically free, but with how much delta gun tubes cost if I had to locate a small delta gun CRT and yoke, the cost would make it cheaper and easyer to just track down a vintage test jig.

Tom C.

I agree with Andy... You'd need so much in the way of support circuitry, that you'd be better off buying a complete jig. And that little Trinitron tube might be worth enough on eBay (if it's in good shape), to go buy a nice complete 13 or 19 inch test jig ;) . That tube goes in all the 5" Sonys including the highly-collectable KV-5000.

Charles

Sadly when carying the tube back to the garage it fell and lost vacuum.

I hate when stuff like that happens!

Tom C.

Won't work, Won't work, Won't work! You need a tube that works with about 25KV and a inline or trinitron tube will not work.

I have an RCA jig that uses an 18v tube. At some point the original crt was replaced with a used GE, probably out of one of those awful CE/C2 chassis sets. Well, if that will work, any delta gun from the 70s should suffice. One repairman I met had a roundie jig at the back corner of his bench. When it became too obsolete he built his own modern unit by taking a BPC 25" set with a bad chassis and wiring it up.

My Sylvania CK3000 uses an inline-gun 13" CRT. I doubt there is anything special about the CRT or yoke in this jig, but these units do use "yoke programmer" plug-in devices that adapt the yoke for tube versus solid-state sets among other things. Ideally, you would start with the full schematic for a jig so you could make yours out of an old 13" TV.

Keep looking in the classified ads here and on other forums, and save a search of "test jig" on Ebay, and you may find a complete jig as I did.

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There's an RCA jig that was recently listed over on ARF. I'm guessing it's a
19".

No affiliation

http://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/...?f=15&t=169861

Not sure if it's still available, but here's one of the 13" Sylvania's. Should be a good deal considering it's recently tested and comes with adaptors/cables.

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread.php?t=250648

Either one of those units Kevin mentioned would be good to have. The Sylvania is a 13", the RCA is a 19". They both can use the same adapters as well. I highly recommend trying to get an actual jig like these, because they have a built-in HV meter in addition to compatibility with multiple chassis types.

Deleted.

Consider these a go/no-go type of test tool; they are absolutely not very enjoyable to watch. I suppose in a day in and out situation, you'd learn to work around their shortcomings. Not knowing better I was pretty disappointed in the lack of convergence on the outside edges of my CK3000. For some reason I thought the modern 13" CRT would have done better.

What would be nice is if there was a small CRT that could be dynamically converged to these older CTC chassis. Just for the learning experience of going throught the convergence process on the bench.

I just don't think that a test jig is in my budget right now. That is why I wanted to make one out of a cheap or free BPC set.

Tom C.