Saved another Portacolor
 

A good friend of mine really came through last week. He spotted a Portacolor on the side of the road and nabbed it for me.
http://i.imgur.com/xbOYyAXl.jpg
This is a pretty early model. It has neon illuminated tuning, color, and tint controls. The chassis was dead on power up, which turned out to be a damper tube with an open filament. The El-menco ceramic caps, including the .1 1000V boost cap were leaking wax like crazy, so I replaced those before I did anything else. I popped in a new 12AX3 and cleaned the tuner, and it came to life. All the can caps are running nice and cool. It produces a decent picture, but the focus is pretty soft, and this set doesn't have a focus control. Did early Portacolors have a focus rectifier that went bad? If so, where is it located? Also, how hard is adjusting the purity on these sets? Thanks in advance.

no focus rectifier, they use boost, B+ or none based on taps. not hard to setup, I did a complete CRT swap so it was completely out, did not take too long to get the hang of it.

they are a bit different due to the inline layout. IIRC the purity is setup with the green gun (the center gun).

if its got the 11SP22 then you have the large dot aperture screen, not the best for high resolution.

I have that model too its my favorite of the bunch. Check the CRT see if its the 11SP, if so keep an eye out for an 11WP, it has the smaller dots, makes a nice pic.

Same version I have, mine has 1967 date codes.

Mine was identical to that one, it was a 1966. Had the 11SP22... A member here gave me a new in box CRT for it. Made a great color picture, ya know, within its limitations. IIRC, this chassis had selectable stakes for improving focus. Mine was destroyed in hurricane Sandy.

It's twin, AKA my Porta-Color:

mine with the fine dot 11WP22

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmA086NflUE

Looks like a big improvement !

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This set has the 11SP22. I couldn't find any focus taps. I tested the CRT on my newly acquired Sencore CR31A Super Mack. The blue gun had excellent emission, the green gun was good, and the red was weak bordering on bad. A couple of treatments with the current limited auto cathode restoration function, and the red gun is back in the good zone. Focus hasn't improved, and I've confirmed via timed photos that it gets worse as the set warms up. From raster to 15 minutes, the picture looks good. From 15-30 minutes on, the focus gets blurry.

they are just post in various locations on the board.

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wonder if it could be a HV thing as well. I would try monitoring the HV 17kv IIRC, and see if its holding steady. PC's are real basic so not much to go wrong. if the HV is acting up start with the HV rec/horz out/damper. have you replaced the two ceramic tube caps? .1 and a .047