People have called me "a couple of capacitors short of a whole TV set" myself. :D

Well bad news with the CTC-5, put all the new tubes in it put everything back toghter powered it up with the variac running it at 115V and got sound and the 6AW8 was glowing so I'm assuming the tube is making contact. But now the big thing is NO HV I let it run for a minute and nothing so I went to get alittle closer to the HV cage to see if I can hear the HV and just as I was going to do so two big flashes came from it talk about a scare! I jumped back and immediately unplugged the set, nothing looks fried and filter caps and transformer where still cool I double checked everything and all the tubes are right and every thing is in place. I'm pretty sure this set hates me! I just even bought a NOS channel selector knob for it I'm into this set for around $500 now with not much to show. At this point I would be willing to trade the CTC-5 for a good working later round screen color set. I like the 5 but it's becoming 1 issue after another Lol :(

If I am not mistaken...the 5 has an un-pluggable anode lead...I THINK it plugs into the HV rect socket. MAYBE..that has become loose...and arcs every once in a while. Such would explain BOTH the flashes and the NO hv problem !!

Already checked that and it's not loose, The set was on for around 2 mins before the flash so the HV should have came up before then :( also it was only drawing around 200 watts from what the kill a watt meter says, when it was working with hv before a few days ago it was useing close to 300w.

If you changed any horizontal/HV tubes just prior to that power up try going back to the previous set.

Color TVs don't like to go a year without malfunction under regular service, that is life.

All of the tubes got changed in the HV area the old ones where weak or completely bad. And that's understandable I expect some problems but just not evey single time I turn on the set Lol

Welcome to early tube color television ownership :D

They're like old cars. You have to expect everything to break or go bad until all the marginal parts are replaced.....sometimes you don't see them till it's getting used regularly.

Ditto. A lot of the time the trouble is with the horizontal section, because it's got the most stress to deal with. But once you get it straightened out, they run for years.

It don't matter if the tubes are bad! If last time it worked was with those bad tubes PUT THE BAD TUBES BACK IN and see if you get it to produce HV. If it works with the bad tubes back in then try the "good" tubes one at a time powering up between each one, until it don't work. The last good one put back before it craps out is a bad tube....If it don't work with the old bad tubes or the good new ones then the problem is likely elsewhere. The horizontal stages put voltages and loads on tubes that NO tester comes close to accurately approximating so NO tube tester CAN tell you with certainty that any horizontal tube is 'good' or 'bad'....All a tube tester can do in the case of horizontal tubes is give you a crude qualitative guess as to good it is.

Exactly. Ever a mutual conductance tester that actually passes some current though a tube won't tell you how it will behave in a given circuit, frequently a tube will work in one circuit well and fail miserably in another. Hence the expression 'tube rolling'.

I think I see a couple of wax/paper capacitors in your set's HV box. Those should be replaced before other tests are done.

what the others said (use the old tubes, replace those paper cap in fly cage) AND check the fuses. also use the correct fuses if not already doing so.

Oh, what a frustrating and rewarding hobby we're in.

Well took a break from working on this set, before I did I got HV to come back although still have to measure how much HV it's putting out, unfortunately no raster but that may be due to the bad tube socket as I believe it's a video amp tube. Going to replace the wax caps in the HV cage before anything else, I believe I found someone with an extra tube socket that will work I just need to wait for it to get here before I start working on it again :)

Hmmm- interesting. I got into early color sets for the same reason people get into British cars- style, certainly not reliability. My first mentor made me SWEAR I'd never leave the room while a CTC7 or earlier was running even for a moment. My CTC4 draws an arc at the drop of a hat. It took me years to build up the courage to tackle it. One slight error in wire dressing- ZAP!

SO I suppose part of it is one's point of view. These sets should probably not have been sold until 1960 is mine. I have vivid memories of our Zenith's flyback in flames even in 1968. Perhaps that prejudiced me.

John H.