1956 Admiral T103 10" 14YP3B-chassis

[dieseljeep]

Originally Posted by ZackN920

Hey guy’s. As usual, it’s been awhile… Anyways, I’m back to working on this project after a good year’s hiatus. Had some more important stuff get put on the bench and that stuck around for awhile and after that was done, I worked on a few other things. I kind of forgot about this set. Was looking for some tubes in the basement and uncovered it. Had it covered by a towel, and had some junk piled on it...

I don’t remember exactly when I got this set, but I believe it was in the summer of 15’. After seeing a couple series of restoration videos on the T103 (I think they were by Bandersen here on VK) I was inspired to re-cap mine.
When I got it, the seller claimed it worked. Of course he had to plug it in and show me, and it did-kind of work. It had a raster and that was it. So I had that to go from.
I did the standard re-cap job. There still are a few original plastic caps in it, but those are higher voltage caps that…I still don’t have any replacements of. I also put all new e-caps in too. One of them was already replaced, but some of you guys here would probably shit yourselves if ya saw how it was done. I may have a picture somewhere, maybe not. Anyways the old can was removed and the new can was electrical taped to another can and another component in the tv, and extended wires were soldered in place to be able to connect it in circuit. Wasn’t pretty at all. And of course when I took it apart the tape had been degrading due to the heat and whatnot, so a little messy too!
Anyway’s, after recap, the set still didn’t work any better than before. I could not get signal through. Found a couple tubes in the IF sections had shorts. I picked up good ones and now all tubes are good, but the set just acted marginally better. I was finally getting something through, but not much. No sound other than some scratch from the dirty control and a very weak picture. Everything was synced good and had a recognizable picture, but weak.
So, if I remember right, I pulled the tuner out and cleaned the contacts inside. Put a new capacitor on it (that was normally unreachable when together) and re-attached it in the set. Set still has problem with the tuner… In order to get signal, it has to be carefully placed slightly counter clockwise of the “click” detent to go through. If that’s done, and it actually stays, I now get a pretty good looking picture. Any way to fix that tuner issue??? Still needs some more work in regards to the picture, but a great improvement. Still, and to this day my main issue. NO SOUND

That was where I was at, until just recently. All I’ve been doing lately is messing with it. Found some wires that needed re-soldering on the pcb, and 1 joint that needed reflowing. Still had no sound. I also have a weird little resistor with one lead on the power switch and the other going to nothing?! I have no clue what the deal with that is. Can’t find anything in the schematic on it and there is no spot nearby that looks like where it used to be connected. I don’t know if it was supposed to be on 1 of the lugs of the volume or what…
Well, after more looking and messing around, I finally got some sound from the signal being put in. Not much, volume needs to be near or at max, but Sound!! At last!!! I noticed that it looked as if someone bottomed out one of the adjustable sound coils, so I figured, “what the hell, what have I got to lose from this” and started screwin the Sound IF and Quadrature Coil back and forth. Best I got was stated above. What else can I do to get better sound?

Well if you read my whole essay, I applaud ya!!! Please give me some thoughts, opinions, advice or whatever on what I should try next to get my little 10” Admiral going better. I'd like to make this one a watcher sometime down the road...though i'd like to mod it too, but getting it working correctly is my main priority first!


Schematic: http://www.earlytelevision.org/pdf/A...Sams_350-1.pdf

The only thing, I can comment on is the tuner problem. The set uses the Admiral built tuner with the two round discs. One of them gets loose on the shaft and doesn't hit the contacts properly.
You have to remove the cover check for play. IIRC, the rear one.
The proceedure for repair is to properly center the disc and carefully drill a hole through the hub and the shaft and use a cotter pin.

[ZackN920]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

If you've got a B&K 1075/76/77 analyst you could try signal injection troubleshooting, or if you have a scope you could do signal tracing.

I just realized I have one of those sets too.

hmm I do not have any of them particular instruments.
I guess these sets are quite common I've seen some other collectors with them too.

Originally Posted by dieseljeep

The only thing, I can comment on is the tuner problem. The set uses the Admiral built tuner with the two round discs. One of them gets loose on the shaft and doesn't hit the contacts properly.
You have to remove the cover check for play. IIRC, the rear one.
The proceedure for repair is to properly center the disc and carefully drill a hole through the hub and the shaft and use a cotter pin.

Make sense. Too bad I didn't notice that when I had the tuner pulled apart for cleaning.


Well, I got measurements from the 3 tubes that have the most to do with the sound. I've got some that are way off...

Title tube# Type

Sound IF V6 5U8 p1] 212 p2] 0 p3] 40.9 p4] 0 p5] 0 p6] -0.9 p7] 0.3 p8] 36.7 p9] 33.3

Audio Det. V7 3DT6 p1] 0 p2] 1.2 p3] 0 p4] 0 p5] 98.7 p6] 78 p7] 0

Audio Out. V8 12CU5 p1] 74.6 p2] 74.4 p3] .08 p4] 0 p5] 73.3 p6] 256.5 p7] 250

These were all taken after a 20 minute warmup with a digital multi-meter.

[ZackN920]

Ok, after some more work, I found that R41 and R42 (on the Audio Output tube) were way off, so I changed them and sound got a little better. All others directly connected to the AO were within range.

Started checking around the 5U8 sound IF. I found that it seems my sound IF coil is bad. I get no reading. It's not shorted, but I'm not sure if its completely open either. All I know is that its too high for my meter to read, and its only supposed to be at 4ohm's. It is though, still affecting sound. When I stick my allen wrench in to adjust, it picks up on it, and will make more static sounds. and If I mess with it, and move it from its current setting, it will kill the sound that I do get now out of the set.

I also noticed I need to figure out how to adjust the fine tuning. I get the best sound when the picture starts getting wavy and distorted. I get scratchy, static-e sound when I move it to get the best stable picture.