Is This Normal

[TinCanAlley]

Originally Posted by vol.2

The color tracking could just be the way you set the balance up. To dial it in really good, I think it takes a colorimeter.

Typically, you can get very good tracking by going back and forth between 20 IRE and 120 IRE with the background and drive adjustments, starting from wherever the manual tells you to. You can use something like HFCR and a cheap meter from the 90s to dial it in, and then do a greyscale test.

In most cases, I find that the potentiometers they provide from the factory do not have an adequate number of turns to really dial in the color, and they will often skip over the sweet spots very easily. Especially the color transistions on the backgrounds tend to be extremely fussy because the color tracking at low light is a lot worse. However, a small mistake in the bias controls can translate into a larger error at higher IRE levels, forcing you to compensate and throwing off your tracking.

If you care about it, you should be able to get it better than "looks too blue" if you want.

As for the jailbars, I have had a lot of annoying jailbar issues I could never solve, but none of them looked that severe. I would maybe look at the value of the caps on the snubber and damper diode on the horizontal yoke, assuming that they exist, or something like that exists on your set. Those are there specifically to suppress ringing. Just a thought, and I am not really familiar with you set. I generally work on stuff later than 1975.

I started to research replacing the taps with pots, but I'm pretty new to this sort of thing and couldn't figure out where to cut out the circuits for the taps and insert the pot. I figure a pot that covered the range of the taps and that would allow me to finely adjust and not just pick between 3 set values.

I'm assuming the caps you're referring to aren't electrolytic, as I replaced every electrolytic when I got it and I recreated the inside of the canister so to keep it looking original. I have the SM and will try to find what you mentioned.