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Television Restore

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The Beginning: If you're thinking about getting into vintage tube-based gear as a hobby... beware. It's an illness. You'll find yourself fascinated by it and want more things to add to your collection. When I restored the tube radio a few years ago... I laughed it off and said "I'll never be like that!". Woe is me, and below you may read the tale of feeding my addiction.

I occasionally browse the local classifieds for interesting tube gear. Tube radios are common, and the occasional non-"modern plastic junk" tube tv does crop up... but have one thing in common: Exorbitant prices. People tend to watch certain TV shows and think that any old thing they have is worth a few hundered. The sad reality of it is... unless you have a very rare or desirable set it's not worth anywhere near the $250+ I see some people ask for an unrestored set - not to mention the value of the time and components you need to put into restoring it "properly". Nothing is more frustrating to someone that wants to preserve vintage gear out of interest than someone having an inflated sense of worth of their stuff... and then when it doesn't sell they destroy it by what is known in the community as "fishtanking"... gutting the internals and replacing them with modern gear or an aquarium so it becomes a novelty piece... now completely devoid of any value.
I was fortunate to spot this system for sale at a reasonable price, and it was in pretty good condition. Sure, a few scuffs and scratches on the cabinet, but the important bits were all there and seemed to be in okay condition. It was listed as known not working... so I took a gamble, contacted the seller, and went off to take a look. When I got there, I was sold... so a friend and I loaded it up and off we went. An added bonus was that it included all kinds of original manuals, papers, and other goodies - a must have as these do include circuit diagrams and parts lists for reference.

This particular set appears to be a Fleetwood (made in Montreal, QC by Electrical Products Mfg. Co, not the US-based Conrac company) Constellation, model 21-65. You can see a copy of the original sales brochure which touts some of the features of the similar 21-61. Here, at TVHistory.tv
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First up was just figuring out what I had to work with and what kind of shape the gear was in, as is pretty much standard fare for older gear. Since I have all of the original documentation (and that includes service info and schematics) I opted to scan it online for the benefit of others. It's all here in high-resolution glory.
Since I didn't have all of my tools on hand, I opted to start with something simple and work my way into it. The radio bit comes with a nice Collaro changer I can fix up first.
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It is only a mono turntable and is showing its age... the motor bearings were gummed up completely, and the mat is pretty crusty and in poor shape. Let's take that motor apart and see what we can do.
There are the bottom bits. The rest of the mechanics seem to be in good working order... nothing seems to be wrong. That doesn't mean much though as there's very little that can fail on these changers... the only electrical components are the motor, a switch, and the cartridge itself. The latter is probably toast, as are most crystal cartridges from this era. They simply deteriorate with time and moisture.
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There we go, all the bits of the motor assembly apart and being cleaned. Not overly complex, as these are typically shaded pole AC motors - so no brushes to wear out.
All back together. I brought it up slowly on a variac and all was well, it spun up and works quietly as expected.
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The turntable has been reassembled. The mechanisms sound happy and are functional, so a win there. We'll have to wait until the radio component is done before we can see if the cartridge provides any sort of signal.
Next up is the radio chassis. My replacement capacitors finally arrived, so let's get cracking! There's a handful or two that need replacing - one four-section electrolytic can, and a multitude of paper ones underneath.
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Lots of space and room to work under this chassis. It's a simple mono AM and shortwave radio, with 6V6s in push-pull configuration. while they aren't the traditional wax-paper-cardboard capacitors, the red tubular ones are still getting replaced. They share the same innards but have a plastic molded outer shell... and the age of the plastic means that it's fairly brittle. As such, the shells have a tendency to split, and some of them were indeed split open. Furthermore, they're all "hunts" branded, and not particularly great quality. Some even swelled up and had splits down the side of the plastic casing!
A bit of work later and we have all the capacitors replaced. There's plenty of room under the chassis, and I know the electrolytics won't fit in the can, so I opted to just disconnect the old can and mount the replacements underneath. It's not _that_ pretty, but they're secure and functional. I'd show a picture of it "working" but there's not much to see at this point. One of the dial lights is burned out, so I'll have to find a replacement for that at some point. Other than that, I brought it up carefully with a dim bulb tester, and was met with success! Shortwave worked right off the bat, and I was confused because I wasn't getting any AM reception. It wasn't until I turned on another AM radio that I realized I'm just in a dead spot with no reception and a lot of interference. I do know AM is working though, as there are some regions of "different" noise that I can pick up.
The next step here is to do an alignment... but that will wait until after the TV chassis is done; they both will likely need a tune-up.
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Here we are, all done! I decided to go ahead and replace all the resistors as well - many of them tested outside the 10-20% tolerance, and while it worked okay, I would rather do a little preventative work rather than have to take the chassis back out in a short while because an old/borderline resistor has given up the ghost and needs replacing.
For those of you wondering, here's a full frontal shot. That's a 21" picture tube, model 21AWP4, with an aluminized inside coating. Fingers crossed it's still good! There's a label on the side with the usual warnings, and 'Canadian Admiral Corproation' with a datecode of 1969. There seems to be a weld line along the neck so I suspect it's been rebuilt and is possibly a warranty replacement.
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On to the TV chassis. Boy, is it a heavy beast, especially with that picture tube installed (Tube alone is 25 lbs, the chassis probably about the same!) Let's take a look around at it before we begin.
Underneath the high voltage cage. On the left we see the horizontal drive tube, next to the damper. The HV rectifier sits on a little pedestal for isolation. The important bit (the flyback transformer itself) isn't in the greatest shape, but seems to be in working order. It's common for the rubber coating on the "donut" to get brittle and crack - exactly what's happened here. Nothing a little work can't cure, but we'll leave it as-is for now. There aren't any signs of arcing or carbon tracks.
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Nearly forgot - here's the tube layout diagram for the chassis itself. It's quite a heavy set with a power transformer, and has a 21-tube lineup. What's interesting is that it's completely separate from the radio chassis and even has its own amplifier. It's entirely possible in consoles like this to share the amplifier between the radio and TV (as evidenced by the fact the TV schematic even has symbols indicating where a TV/phono switch would go (if present). In fact, there's even a separate set of speakers below the chassis for the TV. I guess the engineers had free reign while the beancounters were on vacation that day.
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A couple more pictures of the chassis, and the yoke assembly. The lever on the top center adjusts the image centering, and the grey knob behind it is the focus adjusment (the CRT has magnetic focus).
Let's get recapping! Here you can see all of the old capacitors, except for one that I already replaced. A mix of wax and cardboard caps as well as more of those red molded tubular ones. There are even three bumblebee capacitors lurking throughout the innards.
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Now for the rest of the underside... Here's the tuner, it's a solid barrel-type that definitely has a nice ka-CHUNK to it when you change the channel. You can also see some of the other front panel controls here. Wait a minute... what's that?
Uh-oh... somebody else's bodgework... and that control isn't even the right value; it should be 4.7 MOhm... not 2.5MOhm. It'll probably work... but let's replace it anyway.
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Huh... I didn't know wax paper capacitors were such delicious snacks... but then again my tastes probably differ from those of a mouse. Ah well, at least we have the schematic so we know what value that is supposed to be, given the sleeve with writing on it has been completely nibbled off. Also... those components are pretty tightly packed. This calls for some nimble fingers come replacement time!
Well, it works... (buuuuut...) My story is a little out of order here. I replaced all the capacitors first, and then found out that things weren't quite up to par with the TV. This was what prompted me to order resistors as well and do a shotgun replacement on those. The picture's at an angle because the yoke is tilted slightly, and the height is somewhat off. Still, a promising start!
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Here we have the underside after all the resistors and capacitors have been replaced. A few things were out of whack with the schematic, so I reverted to what was documented. The set's obviously been in for servicing as I can see some newer resistors scattered throughout, and the vertical blocking oscillator transformer was replaced. (That's the new blue wires coming in top-center.)
Here's the bottom of the IF strip. Lots of little resistors lurking here as well. All were replaced. There were even a few hiding inside the yoke itself, but those weren't that hard to get at.
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Here we are after all is said and done. Not bad at all for not being aligned; you can even see the "chroma dots" colour information in the TV signal creeping in, which means we've got at least 3.5 MHz of video bandwidth from the IF stages. Looking good!
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Here we have the underside after all the resistors and capacitors have been replaced. A few things were out of whack with the schematic, so I reverted to what was documented. The set's obviously been in for servicing as I can see some newer resistors scattered throughout, and the vertical blocking oscillator transformer was replaced. (That's the new blue wires coming in top-center.)
I've decided to call it done for now. The TV is in working order and the remaining few things I can sort out as time permits - Specifically, I'll need to recoat the flyback, fabricate some tube shields, re-glue the CRT base, source a dial lamp for the radio, and eventually do an alignment. Some channels are pretty good as it stands right now, others not so much, but from the ones that are working well I can see this will produce a very nice picture when properly aligned! Here you can see the TV chassis installed back inside the cabinet. I'll leave you with a few more pictures of the front for now, and I'll update this page when I get a chance to finish those things I listed. ;)
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Overall, I'm very happy with how this set turned out, and it's another great piece from an era long gone. I do want to get some better pictures in the future; the lighting here just doesn't condone them and using a flash just doesn't work for shiny objects like a copper chassis. ;-) Many thanks to all those who offered help at the VideoKarma forums... Until the next time I get bitten by the tube set bug! ~~VintagePC~~
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