another addition: sylvania combo
 

Took a chance on this http://longisland.craigslist.org/zip/3957753429.html

http://images.craigslist.org/00b0b_N...e6_600x450.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/01717_i...SE_600x450.jpg
http://images.craigslist.org/01010_g...Wg_600x450.jpg


http://longisland.craigslist.org/zip/3957753429.html

She contacted me yesterday, and said it worked a year ago when put in the garage. So, i figured i'll play this smart and bring my extension cords, and test it out there, even for free, would save me the trouble of lugging this thing home if it was doa.

well, u know what they say, man makes plans and god laughs. I show up, no power cord.

Pruneface now proceeds to lecture me on how two grown men struggled to move this thing, and i would find out quickly why. This thing is by a country mile the heaviest combo i have ever moved. I got the front a couple inches leaning into the back end of the truck, and then pulled the back end in a dead lift.


After i get the truck loaded, i asked to use their bathroom. As I'm leaving i ask the older one, "so, this worked a year ago?" she get's all irritated, and then it becomes, don't know if it worked when it was put in the garage, and it;s been at least five years it's been in the garage.

The back shows corrosion, this may have been in the garage since reagan was in the white house.


I plugged it into a extension cord in my driveway, and was met with air raid siren volume humming. I mean, like LOUD. No raster.

And no i am not pissed, nor hostile, just very dissappointed.

This is going on the back burner for awhile.

btw, info, model, history, etc would be helpful. Is a remote set, she was missing the remote. From the cabinet, looks high end

Well, loud hum is most likely the caps, possibly rectifier diodes, not a hard fix. You are lucky you have the room to store it, the ability to move it, the time to go after them, and the willingness to learn about these things and fix them yourself. Good work.

Nice looking set!

so let me ask u something there squirrel,

assuming i don;t have the time or patience to become a tv repairman at age 47, is this a good checklist to run on this set

1) check all vacuum tubes
2) check crt
3) recap set
4) check all resistors for shorts

I made a lot of room by fixing those three project sets i had. Yeah i fixed those ******* all right.

If u need cabinets, u may want to drive to the toms river recycling center.

Well you got a damn nice stereo at the least.
A Dual turntable, Pickering V15 magnetic cartridge .
Not at all a "top of the low end" system here.
More like bottom of mid grade.
TV should be good too GTE's were near as good as RCA or Zenith,
I would rather work on this than an RCA.
Hows about some TV & chassis pixs ??

73 Zeno:smoke:

Nice set Joe! She DO look heavy tho. I tell you what.. you wanna know heavy? I helped a friend move one of those Zenith Porthole combo's. I truly thought I was gonna go home to Jesus after getting THAT one up the stairs. I will NEVER move one of those again.

Porthole? U got to be kidding. I bench press porthole combos all day long. We laugh and make jokes about 300 lb combo's, but I'll tell u what, this thing probably is close to 300 lbs.

Jwoww lives a few blocks over (no i'm not kidding) maybe roger can come over and carry this down the stairs on his back.

Here you go... Bench press one of these :)

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ampex-signature-v.html

jr

Holy cow, now that is a combo!!!!!

Hopefully at least a few versions are tucked away from the dismantling hands of combo haters. I know a few combo haters who love to defile such a set.

http://www.cedmagic.com/history/ampex-signature-v.jpg

heaviest combo i ve moved was a curtis mathes monstrosity from the 60s.the one with the huge,whole wall cabinet.that thing was a nightmare.of course when i was a teenager,we moved a deep freeze from a basement to the 2nd floor,a washer filled with wet clothes,a bathtub down from the 3rd floor to the front porch,etc.always had to lift and carry heavy items.still do from time to time.rather watch though

Here is an old thread about another back-breaker (but not a combo) the 510 lb Sony 30" console:

http://www.videokarma.org/showthread...ghlight=kv3000

Pretty set.
jr

opened the back cover and there are acorns in it. This thing has been in a garage for a lot longer than five years.

Becoming a tv repairman is the hobby you chose. Learning how each section of a tv, radio, or any other item works means you can skip checking items you don't need to. For example, when you said you turned it on and you immediately got a very loud hum, to me this is a power supply problem. This is the first thing to address. This could be a bad, or shorted cap, bad or shorted rectifier diodes.

Also learning what each part is likely to do when it goes bad, will allow you to look at symptoms and give you a starting point, eliminating items that can not possibly give the symptoms you have.

You are just not familiar with this stuff.... If it were a car, and it gave you trouble, you would have an idea where to go to start because of your familiarity with them.

If your stereo part is transistorized, then use this to take a look at how the rectifier circuit works.

http://www.eecs.tufts.edu/~dsculley/...s/diodes3.html

This video is very good:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyhzpFqXwdA

Youtube has a video for everything, and you could learn quite a bit from this.

The thing with vintage electronics is there is almost always more than one problem that needs to be fixed. The best thing to do is fix the first obvious problem and then move from there. The hum is likely due to bad power supply capacitors, bad rectifier diodes, or shorted output transistors in the amplifier.

3 bad tubes, and i'm not even half way done. Including the HV rectifier.