Vintage TV Job

[countryford]

There is a local antique store here in the PHX area, that had this tv set. They had a vcr hooked up to it and it would play I Love Lucy episodes all the time. Well just recently it quit working. Last time I went there I talked to the owner about it. He doesn't want to sell it, but does want to get it repaired so he can watch Lucy again. Since it broke down, he has a small portable tv hooked up to the VCR. Anyways we were given the job of repairing it for him. Just picked it up today and it is now in the shop waiting to be repaired, so Lucy can enjoy it. Its a General Electric.

 

[countryford]

The back with the cover on.

 

[countryford]

The guts of the tv.

 

[cfz2882]

cool! hopefully the problem can be found and corrected easily.I have found GE tubes from around the era of this tv seem to be "gassy"more than earlier GE tubes or other tube brands.

 

[whirlcool]

This set is from around 1957 or so I believe. It could be anything from a tube to a capacitor or resistor causing the problem.

 

[fester]

I'm green with envy!

Another technology I'd love to learn about. Vintage electronics and vacuum tubes! I even have one of those old DIY tube testers like every appliance and TV dealer had. It's on the to do list.

FEster

 

[rp2813]

The guy who re-capped my 1950 Admiral told me that tubes rarely fail.  I'd still try changing out tubes first, but the likely culprit is a capacitor or resistor.  I don't know how you'd go about isolating the problem component without a schematic, and it's commonly recommended to simply replace all capacitors and resistors anyway.

 

It's a beautiful set and worth fixing.  However, if the guy is running Lucy on it "all the time" he should be on the lookout for a replacement CRT.

 

[countryford]

I'll of course test all the tubes, including the crt to see how they are. As soon as I get a schematic I'll start obtaining the caps and replace them. The set is from 1959.

 

[rp2813]

So Justin, what is the set doing -- or not doing?

 

[arbilab]

The large tube near the photo center looks gassy. The white haze around the black/silvered dot is not supposed to be there. There's a lot more to a TV than that, but start there.

 

[d-jones]

The guy who re-capped my 1950 Admiral told me that tubes rar

I wonder why a repairman would have told you that. I have a very clear memory of the tail end of the "tube" era, and my family had both radios and televisions with tubes in them. Once I was old enough to be trusted with small errands, if the old Zenith black and white(that's still in my folks garage by the way)started acting up, my dad would pull the tubes and put them in a brown paper lunch bag, then send me down to the local Sav-on to test them out in their tube tester. I was always given a few dollars to buy any replacements if one or more should turn out to be bad, and I almost always ended up needing a replacement.

 

[rp2813]

David, my guy does repairs out of his home as a hobby.  He's some type of electronic engineer for a large high tech firm and not in the actual repair business.  He was likely speaking from his own experience, but I'll bet even on the old Zenith chassis you still have more original tubes than replacements.  Also, in some cases when capacitors fail they can create conditions that will burn out a tube -- collateral damage to a tube that was perfectly fine.  Maybe that's part of the basis for my repair guy's statement.  Regardless, if I were tackling a project like Justin's, I'd try the easiest fix first and validate that all tubes were good before getting any deeper into things.

 

[arbilab]

In the 60s as repairman for Monkey Wards I replaced a LOT of tubes. They DEFINITELY go bad.

If a tube didn't fix it I pulled the chassis for the guys back at the shop. Tubes fixed it more often than not. But not ALways.

 

[rp2813]

I replaced a LOT of tubes. They DEFINITELY go bad.

Yes.  Duh.  Tubes are man-made items.

 

I guess my point isn't getting across. 

 

I presume you made more than one service call during your time with Wards and opened up many a TV set that had a rogue tube.  Put another way, I presume you didn't quit your job after making one service call, which required replacing all of the tubes on a single television set.

 

Is anybody getting it? 

 

[maytagbear]

The cabinet is just gorgeous

Gorgeous!

I miss console TV's. Yeah, they took up a lot of room, but they were great for family photographs, or for the cat(s) to sleep upon.....and they looked nicer than a flat panel display, which is not great looking when it is off. Flat panels are one of the many reasons why I have abandoned TV for the time being. That and the craptastic programming.

Lawrence/Maytagbear

 

[tolivac]

Yes,tell what the synptoms are-just what is the set doing or not doing-like no picture,dim picture,rolling picture,no sound,etc.I go along with what rp2813 is saying be on the lookout for a new pix tube-or perhaps another newer TV to play the Lucy shows on.An older TV like that GE-has a lot of hours on its CRT already-however CRT's are VERY reliable display devices.This does bring back memories when I fixed tubed TV's while in college to earn a little extra money.Careful on those store tube checkers--they can be errenious.Substitute a known good tube in the stage you are troubleshooting or test them on a shop mutual conductance tester like a Hickock.

 

[arbilab]

A service call resulted when the set ceased to function. It could take up to 5 tubes to bring it back to proper operation. Let's see if I can remember them. 6BQ6, 6DW4, 6BK4, 1B3, 6GH8.

If substituting tubes didn't improve it, there was no charge for the attempt. I NEVER sold a tube that was not needed to solve a problem. Not to say EVERY TV truck driver was as ethical as I was.

 

[tolivac]

In the above tube lineup-sounds like the set had HV problems-6BQ6-horizontal output stage tube,6DW4,damper diode tube-works with the horizontal output tube to generate horizontal signals to drive the horizontal deflection windings on the CRT deflection yoke.1B3-HV rectifer-rectifies the seconday voltage of the flyback transformer-used with the horizontal out and damper tubes.the HV supplies the HV anode on the CRT.6GH8 horizontal oscillator or sync seperator stage tube-drive the horizontal out stage-sync sep-separates the sync signals from the transmitter and sends them to the vert osc and horizontal osc stages to sync them to the transmitter.(prevent picture tearing,rolling)Remember those WELL!

 

[beekeyknee]

If you don't know it all ready, be careful of that high voltage tube and where it connects to the CRT. I'll shock the PISSSS out of you if charged.

 

[lordkenmore]

the craptastic programming

This pretty much sums up why I pulled the antenna plug on TV. I haven't had TV since 2007, and I can't say I miss it.

I'm especially grateful right now, since no TV means I don't have to endure ads from those seeking elected office. It's bad enough dealing with my e-mail in box, and my snail mail box some days....

 

[cadman]

The comment about tubes....

I think the big rift here is that back in the day, the wear-out items were the tubes, and the sets got USED. Hence, that's what got replaced to bring the set back to operation.

As a collector, even though I like to use my sets, they never really see the heavy hours that were put on back in the day. And while tubes don't have a shelf life, capacitors surely do. 90% of the time I never have to lay a hand on the tubes to bring a set like this back to operation. The caps have failed, or are failing, as a matter of age. -Cory

 

[countryford]

The issues with this set is it does not have a picture. I am getting sound but thats it. It appears that I'm not getting any High Voltage. Having noticed without taking the chassis out, one of the caps has blown already, and a resistor broke in half. Both are in the High Voltage section. One of the first things I always do with a tv is to check all the tubes, and that includes the crt. I have a crt tester and therefore can tell if its bad or not. But since I already know of two other issues those will be addressed as well.

 

[kenwashesmonday]

We had 2 GE TVs just like that in our family.  They both worked into the 1980s and had a very sharp picture.  I used the one in my room until the picture tube go to be so weak that I could only watch it at night.

 

Ken D.

 

[paulg]

TV man here

I too am an electrical engineer who once repaired TVs in a TV shop but now work for a manufacturer. Ah yes, I do my fair share of tube TVs to this day. Only for myself ! Too labor intensive.
I do remember fixing some tube GE sets of the same era and they did have a super sharp picture when running well. I remember some ancient Westinghouse and Emerson TVs that just blew me away.
Every tech has their technique for repairing and none are better or worse than another I suppose.
One of my tricks is to look at the CRT to see if the brand matches the TV. If you see a non-GE CRT in a GE TV it probably was replaced before and MAY have a better chance of surviving.
I agree with the notion that tubes aren't bad as often as you think. When I open up a failed TV I determine what section is not working (ex; HV), and just test the tubes in that section. Afterward, out comes the meter, scope, schematic and a hot cup of coffee and I dig in. Not so surprisingly when the circuit is working I put the (tested) original tubes back in and the sets often work well. Why waste parts?
I suppose my method comes from working for a reputable TV shop. It was common some time ago for reporters to rig TVs with faults only to see what excess parts the shop installed. We were targeted but passed. However I was trained to only replace what was necessary and no more. I still do...

 

[whirlaway]

GE

After you get it going take the glass off of the front of the pic tube and clean it,it appears to have a seperate plate of glass in the front of it and dirt between the two.If the horizontal ocillater tube burns out,it will cause the horz output tube to glow red and burn out.Also if a cap fails in the horiz circuit and throws high voltage across the plates of the Horizontal tube,it will burn the tube or if left on long enough crack it.Any case replace those tubes,Horiz output,and damper tube and ocillater tube,please excuse my spelling.Some sets use a sandbar resistor as a fuse,they get hot and sometimes fail from age.That is a very late 59 set due to the squareness of the pic tube,most companies didnt change over till 60 or 61. Thanks Bobby

 

[tolivac]

Horizontal osc failure yoke cap failures-turn off the set right away to prevent damage to the damper and Horizontal out tubes----also prevents damage to the flyback transformer primary windings.the plate current for the HOT tube flows thru the flyback primary winding-if its too high--can burn out the flyback as well as the tube.Some HOT tubes have a pigtail fuse on the tube socket that blows to protect the tube and flyback in case of faults.Whirlcools entry jogged my mememory on that.Try to get a Sam Photofact or schematic on the set before working on it.Helps you futher in determining what parts to check.an Oscilloscope and multimeter are good tools to have on hand,too.

 

[ovrphil]

Crapstatic programming

Overall, I have to agree with Maytagbear...what happened to radio and tv programming? Commercials!

Carol Burnett once said, it would be prohibitively expensive to bring her show to air today - out of the question. So, maybe it's all about costs...and creating anything great is too expensive. The number of commercials on tv and radio is staggering, compared to the 50's-70's era.

Console tv's remind me of another time when we fought over which tv show on which station to watch. We had one tv - and my dad dominated it with watching Gunsmoke, Wyatt Earp, Bonanza, Tombstone Territory, Bat Masterson, Cheyenne, and the Rifleman, and some others.

Nostalgically speaking, they're still cool...lotta good memories, and you can rig your set to work and watch old shows on a much less refined tube image.

When Johnny Carson said "goodnight " for the last time, it seemed like the close of the great tv era programming. Reality TV? For someone else, not us.

 

[ovrphil]

PaulG : Like your style! My uncle repaired tv's, and I messed a little with tube radios, in my teens.

I'm not a tech, just willing to try and fix anything - those old tubes I had in a large Zenith AM-Shortwave console (floor model) were overall, reliable. But as anyone who grew up with tubes should know, some tubes just lasted longer than others(maybe the variable heat that some generated more than others).

My parents watched alot of tv, but no where near the amount of our neighbors who watched daytime and night time shows. Some TV's got a helluva work out, tube-wise!

 

[lordkenmore]

The ads did seem like they got more numerous as the years went by. I actually once timed a news broadcast, and if I recall right, it was about half ads. Actual content was probably less than 50% of the time, once the ads and junk material like the news anchors babbling about nothing was subtracted. One thing that really got me: they even had ads for the news programming. "World's best local news!" Seeing an actual attempt at doing good journalism would have impressed me more.

Ads aside, though, I have noticed a real decline in the quality of content of the actual programming. As tiresome as ads get, they sometimes are more enjoyable viewing than the actual program.

Of course, some older programs were not that great. I cannot remember the title, but someone described one program (short lived, I believe) in the 50s that--if the description was right--made today's programming look good, as hard as that is to imagine.

Still, overall, I find that older TV shows generally had better content. And this is not just nostalgia--I notice this on older TV shows that, until recently, I had never seen.

 

[whirlcool]

I have made the following observations in the past 18 months or so:

The dawn of synchronized commercials. When a commercial came on you could jump to another station to avoid it. Now when you do that you just see another commercial!
All stations seem to run commercials at the same time.

New shows this year have had their intro's shortened to just the title, that's it.
Reason: more time to show commercials.

An hour long program has 20 minutes of commercials in it, a 30 minute long program has 10-12 minutes of commercials.

I generally stay away from products that generate lots of commercials and usually write the network telling them so!

We have stopped watching live TV all together. We record everything on our VCR and hit the "commercial skip" button while watching. We spend so much less time watching TV but see more actual content.

And reality shows suck big time. Lots of times they are the furthest thing from reality. Lots of them are totally scripted! But they are cheap and draw a lot of advertisers.

I predict that within the next two years you'll be seeing 35 minutes of commercials in a 60 min show.