1960s Sylvania Color TV Console Issues

[vortalexfan]

Hello everyone, late last year I had picked up a 1960s vintage Sylvania Color TV Console from someone on Facebook Marketplace, and its a hybrid set, and my first hybrid set I've ever worked on.

I've tested the picture tube's emissions and it tests on the lower end of the green area on the tube tester, and it does produce a nice bright picture still, but the TV has some deflection issues and I think it has to do with some of the electrolytic caps in the deflection circuitry as the deflection circuitry of the TV is both Tube and solid state and the electrolytics are in the solid state portion of the deflection circuitry.

The majority of the coupling/decoupling capacitors in the tube portion of the circuitry are orange and brown drop mylars but there are two of the older style tubular capacitors in the underside of the chassis, one of them is a black tubular cap with yelllow writing sprague tubular cap (which it seems like I had read somewhere that the black tubular caps with yellow writing on them from Sprague were usually mylar caps), and that cap is across the power plug and then there's a Bumblebee looking cap going across the plug for the speaker but I'm not sure if its a paper cap or if its a mylar type cap (as I didn't think they were still producing and using paper caps in the 1960s but I could be wrong.)

I checked the ESR on all of the Filter caps (the large metal can caps) and they all measured between 1/2 ohm to an ohm of ESR on them.

Is there any suggestions for how to go about repair/restoring this TV so that I could put it back to every day use again, since this is my first experience with a Hybrid set?

Pictures below.

[Alex KL-1]

First, is important to got rid of the unreliably caps, such as Bumblebees and paper ones. And make sure about the electros.

[Electronic M]

I've been told the yellow text Sprague's are paper and the red are Mylar.... I usually change both to be safe.

You given it a variac powerup yet?

[zeno]

Keep in mind Syllies were good sets BUT the PCB etch lifts
to easily especially at tube sockets. So go easy on it.

Once I had one that lifted badly. The set wound up at Syl service.
They told the customer I butchered it & he called the Mass board
of radio & TV techs. They investigated & even the head dude at
Syl FS admitted the set was dried up & they were prone to
etches lifting anyways. Not guilty on all charges !

73 Zeno
LFOD !

[vortalexfan]

I just recently replaced all of the electrolytics on all of the boards that tested bad according to my ESR Meter, and the ones that were still good I left alone, and as far as the non-polarized caps went I left them alone because they were all orange or red drops (mylars) and I still can't get the picture to fill out and lock in vertically, it either bounces, rolls vertically or has lines going across the screen horizontally, no matter what I do I can't get the picture to fill out vertically like it should and I can't get the vertical lock in in the center of the vertical hold control it will only lock in at the extreme left setting of the vertical hold control and even then it still has a bounce to it, I've checked the vertical oscillator and output tube (6LU8 tube) and it measures fine yet (I've tried 3 different tubes in it and all three tubes measured good on my tube tester yet, as they measure >90 on the emissions test.)

Also I checked the picture tube emissions and all three color guns measured well above the the middle marking on the tester gauge (yes I did finally get a hold of a picture tube tester.)

Any ideas as to what else I could check, as I'm starting to run out of ideas as to what else I could check to get the picture to work like it should, because other than getting the vertical to lock and fill out I've pretty much got this TV working as it should.

[damen]

Check or replace all caps in the vertical section, especially in the feedback circuit. The orange drops are particularly bad about drifting up in value causing the vertical problems you are describing.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by damen

Check or replace all caps in the vertical section, especially in the feedback circuit. The orange drops are particularly bad about drifting up in value causing the vertical problems you are describing.

OK, thanks for the info, I just assumed the orange drops being a type of mylar cap was considered a fairly stable capacitor and that I didn't need to worry about replacing them, but I'm guessing that in the late 1960s they were still fairly new technology yet so they must not of perfected them yet hence the instability you spoke of.

Thankfully I didn't bolt the chassis down into the cabinet yet (because I feared there was still going to be some issues I was going to have to work out yet) so I'll just have to remove the chassis again and check the capacitors again (especially the orange drops) and replace the faulty ones.

[vortalexfan]

I checked all of the Orange and Brown drop capacitors on the deflection circuitboard and out of the nearly 2 dozen orange and brown drop capacitors there were 6 capacitors that were leaky and or shorted 4 orange drops and 2 brown drops, the rest were still good yet.

So I just need to order the capacitors and replace the bad ones and I think it should be good to go.

I have a question one of the capacitors in the deflection circuitboard that is bad is a .56 µF 100VDC capacitor and I wonder if I could use either a .47 µF or a .68 µF Capacitor in its place since .56 µF is such an oddball value that doesn't exist anymore more than likely?

[damen]

Since that .56 is a bypass cap, its value may not be that critical. Either the .47 or .68 should be fine. Or you could put a .22 and a .33 in parallel and end up with a .55.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by damen

Since that .56 is a bypass cap, its value may not be that critical. Either the .47 or .68 should be fine. Or you could put a .22 and a .33 in parallel and end up with a .55.

OK, thanks for the info. I was kind of surprised at how many of those Orange Drops were actually bad on this TVs Deflection Board, and they weren't your cheap run of the mill orange drops either they were Spragues, which are normally pretty high quality capacitors. and then there were some General Industries Brown Drops in there (there were about 4 of them in total) and two of them were bad, so I'm not sure what kind of failure rate we're talking here but it seems that out of about 30+ mylar caps on the deflection board and the majority of them being Sprague 716P Series Orange Drops and only 4 or so General Industries Brown Drops to have only 4 Orange drops fail and two Brown Drops fail over the course of about 57 years I think that seems like a pretty decent track record. What's interesting is that it was only the vertical section caps that failed and the horizontal section caps were still good (this TV's Horizontal is rock solid yet, it was the Vertial section that failed, and I find that seems to be the case with the majority of the TVs I've worked on so far is that the Horizontal section is fine but the vertical section is what fails.)

[zeno]

Dittos on damens advice.

Just one thing, are you lifting one end of the caps you test ?
I wouldnt think so many were leaking, especially Sprague OD's.
Same with resistors, especially high ohm ones.

Zeno
LFOD !

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by zeno

Dittos on damens advice.

Just one thing, are you lifting one end of the caps you test ?
I wouldnt think so many were leaking, especially Sprague OD's.
Same with resistors, especially high ohm ones.

Zeno
LFOD !

No, I checked all of those Capacitors in Circuit, because I figured that with my capacitor checker being of the old style tuning eye tube variety it would be able to test the capacitors in circuit as far as leakage and shorts go, also the instructions that came with my tube checker which is from 1938 doesn't say anything about needing to lift one leg of the capacitor to get a reading from it when it comes to leakage and or shorts.

[Electronic M]

Most of the eye type capacitor testers require lifting one leg for testing (and all do if testing DC leakage). There were a few that used RF to check capacitance that could do a capacitance (but not an accurate leakage test) in circuit.
Orange drops and their brown and maroon cousins can develop leakage but it's rare and typically only ones installed on boards next to hot tubes.
If you take one that tests bad in circuit lift a leg and retest you'll probably find it's ok with a leg lifted... Some testers are sensitive to which lead of the tester goes to the lifted terminal and will display false leakage even with one leg lifted....My Heathkit C3 will display leakage regardless of which lead is hooked to the lifted end of the cap if the TV/radio/whatever the cap is part of is connected to anything that's plugged in.

[vortalexfan]

Originally Posted by Electronic M

Most of the eye type capacitor testers require lifting one leg for testing (and all do if testing DC leakage). There were a few that used RF to check capacitance that could do a capacitance (but not an accurate leakage test) in circuit.
Orange drops and their brown and maroon cousins can develop leakage but it's rare and typically only ones installed on boards next to hot tubes.
If you take one that tests bad in circuit lift a leg and retest you'll probably find it's ok with a leg lifted... Some testers are sensitive to which lead of the tester goes to the lifted terminal and will display false leakage even with one leg lifted....My Heathkit C3 will display leakage regardless of which lead is hooked to the lifted end of the cap if the TV/radio/whatever the cap is part of is connected to anything that's plugged in.

OK, I wasn't sure because I don't have much experience using one of these capacitor checkers, and like I said the instruction sheet inside the box didn't say anything about needing to lift a leg of the capacitor being tested to get an accurate reading. I'll give it a try again, but if it isn't bad capacitors then what else would be causing my bad vertical deflection issues? I can't get the TV's Vertical Hold to lock in at the center of its range and it shows a doubled image in the center of the vertical hold range (it will "lock" but the image is doubled split down the center) and the vertical size/height adjustment won't fill out the screen and I'm feeding the TV a true 4:3 ratio image so the top and bottom of the screen shouldn't be "cropped" like it would be if it was being fed a 16:9 ratio image.

[Electronic M]

Frequency is usually determined by RC time constants.... Double check that none of your caps are off by a power of 10 (easy mistake to make) then check for off tolerance resistors.

My D-16 behaved similar and one or two of the higher resistance vertical resistors were testing around double their rated value. Also make sure the tubes are healthy and the vertical lytics are new as either can cause vertical shrinkage.