10" Admiral, 1948

[DavidGoncalv]

After a long absence...

30A1 chassis, in a walnutty case. All complete, and bought from the son of the original owner. Lots of little scratches, dings, and such, but it is complete.

This is labeled for Ch. 1, and just has the small knob (with a little bit of brass molded in) for pointing to the selected channel. Most of the channel numbers are worn off.

Unlike the GE 16T1 I was working on before - I will do an electronic restoration before working on the case. Should that fail, perhaps doing it up on a 80-20 frame and casters to wheel around the workshop would be kind of neat too.

I moved the workshop from the raccoon-prone basement to Artisan's Asylum of Somerville MA. Really cool place - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JjV7yRxzsU

Parts List in the works: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

[Sandy G]

Always have liked those "Flying Buttress" Admirals...Good Luck on the restoration..

[Einar72]

I had one of those right from the thrift store - no knobs, scratched really bad, upper chassis bolts gone. it was a roundie, so it came home. The upper cabinet on those looks like those little squeeze toys where everything pops out when you squeeze it. This one I agreed with my ex-wife who called everything I brought home "ugly". Saved the chassis (X2). Oh, the base was off the CRT, but I have it somewhere. That makes two Admirals that I've saved just for the jug and parts.

[DavidGoncalv]

A dusty workshop...



First order of business was to check out the CRT. The base was loose to I temporarily Scotch taped it in place so that I could connect my B&K 465 tester. It was left to 'cook' for a while, then tested. While the filament lit and the base got hot, the emission was in the BAD section. I did a couple taps of the Dynamic Intensifier and saw a brief flash of light from the neck. The emission improved to just over into the GOOD region. Cutoff control was OK. Not great, but good enough to try for a restore.

I pulled the tube from the chassis. Boy, that base was loose.



But the conductive coating is in good condition and it is always neat to look THROUGH the CRT like it was a empty wine jug.



OK. Looking as the chassis, it appears that it has been worked on the past, and I guess those guys are always in a hurry because there are missing chassis screws and bolts. Lots of dust, a little rust but nothing that would dissuade me from the restoration.




Hey, this was odd - one of the tubes on the tuner subchassis is ringed in a thick lead-like shield, in addition to the original shield. Never seen that before!



Under-chassis, it appears that there was a little fire in the area of the horizontal linearity control (the chassis-mounted variable inductor). Wow - burned wire insulation, chassis charring, some outright missing insulation, and a very clean looking variable inductor. Hmm...



I found some wax dripped on the main chassis shelf of the case - could this be a failure in the HV cage? Let's take a look.



Looks clean (actually, the flyback looks REALLY clean so I wonder if that has been replaced too), but no source of dripped wax here. Perhaps it was from the large paper cap under the chassis or from a previous flyback.

Lastly, I took a look at the curious tuning mechanism. This version of the chassis uses switch wafers rather than the turret used in the earlier versions - it seemed easy to switch with the small knob that came with the set, so I guess that must have been some improvement. The fine-tuning control is some odd mechanism - and it seems a little faulty as you can PULL on the fine tuning mechanism and the fine tuning slug will begin to pull out. I feel like this needs a video - I'll post it later.



I pulled all the tubes for testing, and found just a couple bad - the 1B3 and a couple of common miniature tubes. Added them to the buying list.

EDIT: Ah! Photos!

[bandersen]

It appears you are linking to photos in your Google Plus account. You might need to flag them as public (if it's even possible at all).

The lead is there to reduce microphonics. I've seen it in a few early Admiral and RCA sets.

Is there a 1/4 Amp fuse in the HV cage ? I suspect not since you have the early revision of this set. The Riders service notes have a section describing how to add one to protect the flyback.

You've actually got it backwards - you have the very first version of the tuner. They quickly switched the the turret tuner and used it for years to come.

Good luck. I have a couple spare parts chassis if you need anything.

[DavidGoncalv]

Thanks Bob!

No fuse, so looks like I've got some other items to scare up.