Maggie Home Entertainment Center

[holmesuser01]

Dave, I spoke to the lady with the 22" Emerson. She gave it to someone I know. I think that he might call on me for help. He has more space for TV's than I do anyway.

[DaveWM]

GREAT!!

Glad to see it up and running. I found my CRT gets better as I use it (seems that way anyhow).

How does the fly look on that one, the ones on my maggies are pretty nasty but still work fine.

[holmesuser01]

The fly has been hot at some point, but is running fine, so far.

It rained tonight. I turned the set on for a little while, and the dampness has some HV discharge radiating away from the HV connection. I'll look into that further in the morning. Tonight, no gassy tubes, and no red plates. Played an Addams Family show and listened to the sound. Still need to gain width.

[DaveWM]

Just curious, I assume the width control is maxed out? thats the coil down below the HV cage. Can't recal if it goes in or out for max width.

[holmesuser01]

The only controls I have moved are vert lin and height.

I want to replace the vertical oscillator. Part of it is really weak. The linearity keeps changing....

Replaced the damper tube this morning. The old one checked good, but, a 1962 era Zenith tube pulls the width out more. Im not adjusting the magnets on the yolk yet, until I know there is nothing else causing this.

Several tubes that tested OK when I got the set are now showing their true colors, which is an acheivement for a B/W TV. The OEM 6BQ5 output decided to get really noisy. I have several new tubes, and replaced this one, and got good clear sound from the amp. Plus, the replacement tube is not getting as hot as the original did.

A new 6AL5 in the FM tuner brought the FM back to life... it worked fine back in the cold weather, but decided to die now.

I thought I got the tuner fixed. NOT! Im going to remove it and see why the fine tune slug is not moving. I may have to get a parts tuner, or at least the channel 3 and 4 strips for mine.

At any rate, the old Maggie is running well. I need to get a schematic. It's a V36 chassis.

I also took the little videomatic cell apart and cleaned the face of the photocell, and the inside and outside of the orange shell it goes in. The ciggy smoke was covering everything in there, and now the reaction to light is even better.

I cant work long today, as I am going to an auction in the next county tonight. I think there will be some old radios there, but I need to go and see.

[holmesuser01]

I've been running this Maggie nearly every day for an hour or so. I've gathered a list of caps to replace, and have some of them ordered as of 7/30/10. The audio problems are gone. The tuner slugs are working now with some paper strips installed to keep the slugs from slipping. At some point, I need to do something about this tuner. The plastic parts of it seem to be rotting away. Someone 'cleaned' the tuner with something that looks like it melted the plastic surfaces.

I've got it running thru my Dish Network satellite on channel 9 for now. This channel tuner slug seems to be in the best shape, and holds the fine tuning fairly well. The picture looks nice, and the set has good contrast and brightness. When I take a pic with my camera, it clips the image and makes it look like I have big vertical size issues, which I dont.

I've replaced both tuner tubes, now, along with all 3 IF tubes. The vertical oscillator tube is testing better on the twin diodes now than it did when I started, and the linearity has improved. The voltage doubler capacitors are among the first to replace, even though things seem to be running fairly normally. More to come.

[DaveWM]

if it came right down to it, I would bypass the tuner and go with the video composite feed (I do this now for the audio so I can get stereo sound on tv). Only if the tuner was scrapped that is as I hate not using all the parts. Can you get a pic of the tuner showing the problem? I would think getting new tuner strips would not be that hard by looking for a scrapped out set.

[holmesuser01]

Hi Dave.

I should have taken pics of it while I had it apart, but I didnt.

This tuner does not use tuneable strips. I assumed that it did. The entire drum and shaft can be removed, which I did. The fine tuner slugs are installed in 12 positions on one end of the drum. I removed the individual slugs and put some fine paper sheets into the hole where the slug goes. This was enough to keep the slugs from falling when the tuner is installed shaft-up in the cabinet. I cleaned the drum contacts, and the contacts in the tuner body. The tuner seems to be stable now, and especially after I replaced the two tubes, the AGC is better. The buzz is gone from the TV audio, too.

I have an ad in the classifieds on VK about the tuner. No answers, yet.