First truly practical color television set?

[Jon A.]

Originally Posted by benman94

If someone forced you to use a fully restored early color roundie as a "daily driver", which set would you choose?

While the 15GP22 based sets are interesting, most all of them are cantankerous at best. I'd probably go with my Hoffman or a CTC-7. Both are very reliable, requiring only the occasional tube and periodic degaussing. My experience with the CT-100 was exhausting; I'd get one issue solved and three others would crop up. It seems for some early color sets, restoration isn't a process but rather a perpetual state of being. Then for others, like the Hoffman in particular, they just run and run and run....

It wouldn't take much forcing as I already use a 40-year-old console TV daily. The better convergence would be a plus.

This was a tough call. The more unusual the better, to me anyway, so I did a little digging and chose a 1965 Sylvania D01 metal cabinet set.

Now, if someone can give me highly detailed specs on Zenith's infamous horizontal efficiency coil, perhaps I can practice making duplicates with coils from my junk boards.

[hi_volt]

I'd use my blonde CTC-16X.

[Tubejunke]

Originally Posted by Jon A.

Now, if someone can give me highly detailed specs on Zenith's infamous horizontal efficiency coil, perhaps I can practice making duplicates with coils from my junk boards.

I would have and many vintage Zenith owners WILL wish that someone gets those specs and starts making them because they are nearly unobtainium and the spools are brittle and broken on many sets. If the slug freezes in a brittle spool it is DONE!

I have a 1964 Zenith metal cabinet job that a while back was familiar to this forum due to both that and a popped resistor under an arching (to the point of ruin) HV rectifier socket.

I finally found a coil and a socket, but it wasn't easy. And understandably there weren't a lot of enthusiasts with spare chassis wanting to sell off vital parts. Someone finally came to the rescue with the rectifier socket and for the record, the resistor isn't even necessary. Can't remember why to explain, but a very reliable source told me to run a jumper where the resistor was and all would be well. And it was.

I still have the set, but the project got put to the side by the acquisition of a new woman and all of her (MANY) belongings. No room to pull a TV chassis, so I shifted my interests to restoring old test equipment like Heathkit C3s, Sprague TelOhmikes, and Solar stuff. The type that test for leakage at full rated voltage. Great, if not essential for people doing what we do here at VK and NO a modern DVOM with capacitance WILL NOT tell you the condition of any capacitor; only the uuf or uf value with it's 9V battery.

Don't want to go off topic so yes the set sits waiting for it's day in the sun of the right buyer. It works pretty good. Needs a little convergence work and I run it on my Variac with a milli ammeter hooked up to the cathode of the horizontal output tube to keep an eye on the current. I don't want to lose a flyback! The current gets a little higher than I feel good about at full wall potential, so I need to replace a few caps in that circuit and all will be fine.