Another RCA CT-100 discovery B8001599

[dtvmcdonald]

In my CT-100 I stared at the low voltage cage for days before deciding what to do.
I love the look of those huge orange selenium rectifiers.

But I also noted that the chassis mount can electrolytics were soldered down.
I decided that unsoldering all of them would be dangerous. Cutting them
all off near the base to restuff would be difficult and risky too.

So I decided to rebuild the whole B+ power supply with modern caps, 5 watt
silicon diodes, several fuses in various places, and large old-style Ohmite series 210
tapped (adjustable) resistors to drop voltages. In my
case the original ballast was OK and was left in series with the new Ohmites.

It put all those on an epoxy circuit board and mounted it in the cage.
I used the usual chassis clips to space the resistors at various distances from the board.

I set the line voltage with a Sola regulator transformer and a Variac ( permanently
mounted ... I inherited about 50 Variacs from a scrapped chem teaching lab)
so the filaments were exactly 6.3 and then adjusted the resistors so that the various
B+ voltages were exactly as Sams specified.

The fuses saved the 15GP22 from its first two arcs, as it got gassier and
gassier. But the third one, while it did blow the fuse, was fatal.