Found a Videodyne on CL

[kvflyer]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

I also remember sneaking a watch of Steve Allen's late show, but my mom would insist I turn it off and go to sleep. So I wouldn't fall asleep in Mrs Murphy's boring 4th grade class.

I was around 9 or so, and had thought "fink" was the "F" word. I was a little behind in my vocabulary at the time.

Someone with the name Donald Fink wrote a television broadcast reference book. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_G._Fink

When this Videodyne TV was made, they may have gotten a great deal on surplus aluminum, as there was tons of it left over from WW2 military equipment manufacturing.

Sorry to go OT. But... I went to Catholic school. In High School, 1962-66, we were taught by Marianist Brothers. I was brought in after school for using that word. I was very close to getting suspended. My, how times have changed...

[old_coot88]

Originally Posted by kvflyer

...I was brought in after school for using that word. I was very close to getting suspended. My, how times have changed...

What, for saying fink?

[Eric H]

I know just the thing to place on top of it.
I picked up one of these Kem Weber designed clocks at a swap meet about 35 years ago.
The clock is about ten years older than the TV so it was a rather odd choice of style for Videodyne to make in 1948.

[Sandy G]

I'm in love..

[Phil Nelson]

Oh, MAN -- some people have all the luck. $175 seems totally reasonable for that scarce set.

You're right, that swoopy Streamline Moderne style was big about 10 years earlier. My GE F-63 is from 1937:



Philco made similar 1937-1938 radios (37-610 and the like). There are probably a bunch of others.

Phil Nelson
Phil's Old Radios
http://antiqueradio.org/index.html

[Eric H]

This has the serial number of 1811, possibly the 811th of these made, depending on whether they started at 0001 or 1001. I would love to know what the production numbers were.

Sams has a Photofact for them so I would think it have to be a fairly substantial number for them to have bothered. I've had the Sams for it for years, never expected to need it.

Four stage i.f amplification plus DC restoration so it wasn't a stripped down chassis design.

[Eric H]

I'm going to stick with these, they are.really Nice and look good on the set.
They shined up really good too!

[azbigsam]

Great find Eric! And for a great price. What do you plan on doing for the mask?

[Steve D.]

Originally Posted by azbigsam

Great find Eric! And for a great price. What do you plan on doing for the mask?

Eric,

Not sure if you attend the ETF Convention. Maybe you could have a 3-D copy made in Columbus, Oh. from the ETF set? If Steve McVoy would lend you the mask.

-Steve D.

[Eric H]

Originally Posted by Steve D.

Eric,

Not sure if you attend the ETF Convention. Maybe you could have a 3-D copy made in Columbus, Oh. from the ETF set? If Steve McVoy would lend you the mask.

-Steve D.

I doubt I will make it to the ETF convention, though one of these times I really must.

If there was way to simply put the mask in a 3D scanner and copy it that would be great, I don't know if that tech exists yet or is practical if it does, so making a copy will probably involve a Rubber mold of some sort, not the kind of thing that could be done in a short visit.

I noticed the 10FM is on the ETF's list of rare Post-War sets with two verified examples, three now I guess.

[Eric H]

I pulled the chassis out and took some pictures, it's a most unusual set.

The chassis is quite interesting, made from Aluminum, everything is screwed in, no rivets, it seems to be built around a massive Aluminum top casting with the sides bolted to it and the top welded on, it's so thick on top that the sockets inside the HV cage are recessed into the chassis and the tubes only go halfway into the sockets, also the tubes ride on the tops of the screws holding the sockets in, making the situation worse. It feels like something from a small company working out of a garage, even the cabinet, which looks really slick but isn't all that complicated in construction.

The amount of labor required to bolt it all together must have been substantial, stamped steel and rivets would have cut the work significantly, but maybe that's why they were out of business by 1950.

Interesting that the 5U4 LV Rectifier is inside the HV cage while the 5V4 Damper tube is outside by the Filter cans, I checked the schematic thinking they had been switched but no, that's the correct layout. Maybe one of those engineering Doh! moments when they realized they made a mistake but it was too late to change it?

The CRT has a ground wire taped to it, when the mask was removed it allowed the CRT to slide forward enough to lose contact with the ground springs, the solution was to tape a ground to the tube and screw it to the chassis. The age of this hack tells me that the mask was removed long, long ago, no doubt so the visible area of the screen would be larger, maybe he saw a Porthole set somewhere and got the idea.

[electronjohn]

That is so cool, Eric!

[EdKozk2]

Eric,
That 10FM or 12FM is in very good shape all around. Great find. The FM version
uses the better tuner I think.
Ed

[Eric H]

I started work on it tonight.

Nothing major, just pulled all the tubes, sprayed out the controls and tube sockets and cleaned the dirt off the chassis. Most of it was loose fluff and it came off easily with a brush and vacuum cleaner, then a little spritz of cleaner here and there.

I noticed that both of the potentiometers have switches on them, one is on/off, Brightness the other is on/off Contrast (the cover page of Sams has an error where it calls them both out as Contrast controls). The second one switches of the "Y" section of the power supply only, I haven't figured out what that is yet but possibly it cuts out the TV circuits when you want to listen to the radio?

[Eric H]

I've been working on this slowly but steadily, it's completely recapped but there are a few caps I just tacked in for diagnostic purposes and still need to restuff in the original paper sleeves.

The set was having some vertical issues, sometimes working, sometimes jittering all over the place and folding over, also the vertical output tube was overheating and a 22k resistor to the Sync tube (one I had already replaced) was getting hot enough to discolor.

I replaced the Vert Hold pot that was very flaky, that helped some but it was still having issues, they got worse after it ran a while.

Did some voltage checks and found some serious discrepancies in the Vertical section, that turned out to be an open winding in the Vert Blocking Transformer, tacked in a new (but incorrect) one and it started working very well. NOS Stancor transformer is on order, also some NOS Allen Bradley 1 meg resistors to replace a couple that are more than 50% high.

Here's a short video showing it malfunctioning.

And a picture showing it after subbing the bad transformer.The transformer I used is the wrong part number but is probably close enough I could have gotten away with leaving it, however the correct part (Stancor A-8111) was easy to find and cheap so might as well do it right.




The temporary transformer install, all the old paper caps here except the dangling one have been restuffed, the yellow caps and the blue electrolytics will be restuffed inside the original sleeves before it's done.
I had to dig up four 1949 era Sprague .1@600 caps to replace some that had been replaced way back in the sets history, I could have restuffed those I guess but I decided to use the type it left the factory with.
All the OEM caps in this were Sprague, none were Bumblebees or Black Beauties, that's good because they would have been hard/impossible to restuff.