Picked up an RCA CTC97

[zenith2134]

Turns out that the service switch was intermittent, not dirty but actually losing conection to the board! Never saw that before. Maybe it got bumped during a move once? Don't think I did it, because I was ultra-careful with it.

So the switch was actually adding green intermittently when I touched it. I blew out a lot of dust and resoldered it down good The grayscale is amazing now, really low hours on this tube.

It amazes me because first of all, RCA's crts from this time weren't notorious for reliability, let alone after 27 years. Also, the rest of the set appears very well-used, lots of dust, with slight brown-darkening around the chroma-out's and flyback. Just to be sure, I redid the soldering around them too.

You guys are very correct that this was a good set, I am impressed with the heatsink on the H-out, it looks like a vintage stereo amplifier output!

So far it has been a great daily bedroom set, I have only turned it off when I was out of the house, and it truly has a stellar picture.