Late '50's 17" Olympic

[radiotvnut]

I picked up this circa '57 17" wooden cabinet Olympic (model 17TU97) B&W TV. As you can see, it's missing the channel knobs and a bezel that goes behind the side knobs. I suspect these parts will be difficult to find. The CRT test weak; but, should produce a picture. When powered up on the variac, the B+ is low (probably bad caps) and there are no filaments (probably an open resistor or tube filament). This set used two selenium rectifiers in a voltage doubler configuration; but, someone jumped them out with silicon diodes. And, they left the old selenium rectifiers in circuit; which, is a no-no.

Anyone ever worked on one of these? This Olympic set looks to be a cheaper built brand than RCA, Zenith, etc.

[marty59]

Kinda' reminds me of a metal version I had years ago. Had a power supply problem also with not enough width or height but would play otherwise. I was never able to do anything else with it.....

[leadlike]

I had a 21" in a really nice cabinet, it had been worked on before, and the previous restorer claimed to have replaced the flyback and yoke, in addition to recapping. Well, I found the filter caps wired in wrong, and the yoke and flyback were bad. I round a replacement yoke, but before finding a replacement fly, one of the ladyfinger modules went bad, killing the whole horizontal section. I replaced the module with individual components, but the set just never came around, and I needed a 21" crt for another set, so it was junked.

I still have the chassis, but it looks nothing like yours. Olympic liked to give two letter designations to their chassis (for example, mine is "HB"), so that helps tremendously with cross-referencing parts. These are very cheap sets, I don't think mine had DC resto, and since there don't seem to be many late 50s Olympics around, I gather they went up in smoke frequently.