55 Westinghouse 21" B&W

[Adam]

Here is the 55 Westinghouse B&W I brought back from MI. I am currently in the process of recapping it. This one was used long after it stopped working well. Lots of melted caps and burned out tubes. Several repairs with bad soldering. One of the 5U4s (there are 2) had an open filament. Weak CRT, but I used the rejuvinator, and it seems to have worked. I like the copper plated chassis and the swivel base, cosmetically this set is in great condition, except for the missing trap-door in front and volume knob which I broke myself trying to get this out of an attic in Michigan, this set is much heavier than it looks: all metal cabinet and chassis.

[Eric H]

Hi Adam, that is a really cool looking set!

I love Westinghouse and their copper plated chassis, it has a such a high quality look.

[Adam]

I agree about the quality of the Westinghouse, a very well made set both structurally and electronically. Two LV rectifier tubes, now that's classy. This is the only one of their sets I have seen, but it makes me wonder why they weren't more popular and stopped making sets. I wonder if they ever made a color set, anyone out there with a Westinghouse color roundie?

[Charlie]

Westinghouse had their 15" color set out just before RCA had the CT100. There were a few others that followed. i remember finding a Sams for a late 50's roundie... i think it was from 57.

You mentioned this set being heavy. Funny to think they use those skinny looking legs to hold it up! Kinda reminds me of Jeff Foxworthy talking about TV in the old days... having a 500 pound set sitting on top of a TV tray!

[bgadow]

Westinghouse was in the tv business up until about 1970. They had a full line of color sets, too. Saw an ad recently in a Look magazine from about 1968 showing their color console. I've never seen one, only bw.

About the time they made this set they were producing the rectangular color set using the CBS crt.

[glen65]

Reminds me of the copper plated chassis used in some
of the RCA Golden throat radios.

[Adam]

I got this working last night. It works good, except for the strangest thing, on ch3 it gets ch5. I don't think it is a problem with the rf alignment, as I get a good ch2,4 and 5. A bad coil on the ch3 strip in the tuner? Oh well, I'll watch my dvds on ch4, I really would rather not take the tuner apart if I can avoid it.

Now I only have 3 b/w sets that don't work at all left (56 Bendix, 58 Hoffman, 58 RCA). 2 color sets that need a little work(63 Philco, 67 Zenith), and 1 that needs alot (63 RCA).

I haven't seen too much from Westinghouse out there. I do agree that they put out a quality product back in the 50's. My mom still uses her 1949 Westinghouse **electric** stove every day and everything still works on it. For years the matching refrigerator was plugging away in her garage, with handle nearly falling off but still workable. It got a little too frosted up and quit during a heat wave last summer. Still has a tiny 1939 Westinghouse frig keeping sodas cold on her patio. That thing came out of a 1904 apartment building and has been dropped on its side and bounced around from place to place and it keeps on going. But you can't watch Lucy on it.

[Adam]

I was working on this today trying to fix the vert. linearity problem it had. I'm not near a scanner now, so I will try to describe how it goes. The vert. output trans. is connected on one side to the cathode of the vert. output tube, in the middle to the vertical portion of the yoke, and on the other end of the coil to the other side or the vert. portion of the yoke and the horiz. output trans. at the same place one side the horiz. portion of the yoke is. It is seperated from the horiz. out. trans. by a 3.9k resistor, after which is a 30mfd capacitor connected to ground. Am I correct in assuming the vert. output tarans. is just using the connection to the HO trans. as a power supply and for no other reason? Anyway the 3.9k resistor was on its way out at only about 20k, so I replaced it. Afterwards the bottom edge of the picture would not fill the screen at the corners, in the same way it would if the yoke was moved back along the neck of the picture tube.

Originally the problem with the picture was that, first of all only the top half of it was visible, it would fill the screen, but it was stretched out and the bottom portion was not on the screen anymore, if I was to adjust it so the whole picture could be viewed, the top 1/3 of the screen would be empty, and the bottom 2/3 would have the entire picture. After replacing that resistor, this problem did not go away, the other one just started.

Then, I just decided to replace the vert. out trans. I had a spare, and even though the one in there tested OK (off by about 10% as to the resistance in the coil), it just didn't look like it should be working properly, so out it went. This actually fixed the linearity problem about 80-90%. Exactly what was happening, I'm not really sure, but I was happy it was working better.

Then I go and try to hook it to a VCR, so I can get something with a strong signal and a still picture to adjust it by. But when I hook it the VCR now all I get is sound and a blank raster. First of all this TV already had a strange tuner problem (it gets ch 5 on ch3) but otherwise its fine in that area. So I had been using the VCR on ch 4. Now it gets in ch4, sound and picture, if I use an antenna. But if I hook it to the VCR, just sound and a blank raster. If I remove one of the wires from the tuner, when connecting the VCR I get a picture, but its like one would expect with only one of the wires connected, full of snow and bad sync. But put both wires, and I'm back to a blank raster?? I tried the VCR on other sets, and I also tried other VCRs on this set, so I know its the TV. I can't imagine what is doing this. And if this has anything to do with changing the vert. out. trans., which I think it can't possibly. I can put up a schematic when I'm near a scanner tomarrow, thanks for any ideas anyone can give me, I've never seen anything like this before!?

[Adam]

update: The new problem seems to be somewhere around the 3rd if tube (6CB6) , the voltage readings on the schematic check out until that point. One end of the coil following it hooks to the cathode, the other to one of the grids, the grid side of the coil reads the correct 110v, but the cathode side reads 0v when the TV is hooked to the VCR, but the correct 110v with an antenna or nothing at all. The voltage readings at the 1st and 2nd IF tubes (also 6CB6) are unaffected. I tried replacing the tube, even though the original tested good, but it made no difference. I also checked the resistance of that coil to make sure it wasn't broken somewhere, it wasn't.

[Adam]

next update: I tried testing the voltage at more places and the problem seemed to be contained between the 3rd IF tube and the video output tube. But I couldn't find the source of the problem. Then I thought if I get some picture with only one wire connected from the VCR to the tuner, what if I put a resistor in there and see what happens, well nothing. But in the general mood of trying random stuff, I put the resistor across the antenna leads, and my picture was restored! The lowest value resistor I had (15 ohms) produced the best picture. But if I just connected the antenna leads together, with no resistance between them, I just got static and snow (not a blank raster, but no more sound other than static or discernable picture). I feel good that I got it to work, but I have no idea what is happening!

[Adam]

Ok, I tried different values of resistance, and what it wants appears to be very specific. Decreasing the resistance further, putting 2 15ohm resistors in parallel, just changed where I had to set the fine tuning, but putting two 15ohm resistors in series produced a picture nearly as clear as before this all started. But a 68 ohm resistor doesn't work very well at all.

[Adam]

I fooled with the resistors some more, I found that if I put 2 15ohm resistors in series, parallel with a 100ohm resistor, it produced a clear picture. I think that works out to about 23ohms, so atleast if I can't figure out what caused this I can just solder a resistor across the antenna connections on the tuner and fix it. I'm still not sure what happened though.

[Adam]

I put it back together with those extra resistors, and it seems to work. But after watching it for a while I can see that the vertical still isn't right, better, at least the whole picture is on the screen, but still a bit compressed vertically at the bottom and expanded vertically at the top. Everything checks out though, so I'm still not sure what's causing it, I have an extra yoke for this set, I might try that later, but its really not so bad now as it was, so I might move on to another set first. Again, if anybody can tell me why I needed those resistors, at this point I'm just curious as to what is going on. I thought the resistance across the antenna input of these sets was supposed to be 300ohms, with these extra resistors it should be around 20?? But then it works like this with the VCR or a RF modulator, but if I just want to connect an antenna it works better without the resistors.

[Steve K]

Adam:

First of all I do not think a new yoke will fix your vertical problem. Usually a bad yoke results in a keystone shaped picture. Did you re-cap the vertical section? There is that 30mF cap, a 4mF cap and a 150mF cap in the cathode circuit of the output tube.

The video problem sounds like you're overloading the tuner with the vcr output.

Your location says LA, is that Louisiana or Los Angeles?

Steve (near LA as in Los Angeles!)