Ugly No More - Motorola 9VT1

[compucat]

I restored this 8" electrostatic Motorola 9VT1 back in 1999 and have enjoyed it ever since. It was my first successful vintage TV restoration. However, I did not do anything with the wood cabinet except clean it up. I had never tried refinishing a wood cabinet before. After many years the wear began to show in torn grille cloth from my kids when they were small. I used to let them watch their cartoons on it when they were into Dora The Explorer. This also resulted in a badly damaged speaker cone. The cabinet was always covered in nicks and other damage including a gouge on the right side. The finish was worn and it was now just too ugly to display. I finally decided to restore the cabinet on this set because I wanted to look as good as it works and bring it back into regular service again. I mainly wanted to practice cabinet refinishing on this set before trying it on my larger and more valuable (at least to me) 1952 17" RCA Victor blonde console with doors.

What appears below is the illustrated chronicle of the Motorola's cosmetic restoration. This was more of a practical restoration so I was less concerned with originality as I was functionality and future serviceability and longevity.

The grille cloth came from a remnant of upholstery fabric. I bought some new radio grille cloth which looked nice but the fabric was so delicate that just handling it put catches in the fabric. It was getting damaged before I could even begin to install it hence the cloth you see here.

After stripping the old finish, I used red mahogany stain covered by several coats of spray laquer, lightly rubbing with #0000 steel wool between coats. The finish turned out well. I did not attempt to fill the gouge in the right side. That is a bit beyond me yet besides it does not look so bad now.

When I restored the set in '99 I worked at a factory where I had someone make a back cover out of scrap aluminum. The original fibre back was damaged. This metal back was painted black but I decided a recoat was in order for this project. I used a light tan with black for the tube cap. The color scheme seems to fit better with the set.

The speaker cone was damaged beyond repair so I just decided to go with a new 5-1/4" speaker. The sound is sufficiently loud and very warm from this new speaker, especially inside the wooden cabinet.

The little square thin you see on the bottom front of the cabinet interior is a pice of styrofoam wrapped in masking tape and glued to the bottom of the cabinet. I put it there in '99 to provide additional support for the CRT. The gasket is fine but I felt it needed more than that to prevent possible damage. If I were designing these sets, I would have had the CRT bolted to the chassis or some better kind of mounting arrangement in the cabinet.