Sears Silvertone Color
 

Here is one of my latest finds, This is a 1966 Sears Silvertone 21 inch color model # 61861 , chassis # 529. I acquired this set from Steve(rcaman). It has a very nice cabinet and finish. This set seems to have a problem with the horizontal hold not wanting to lock in place. You could turn the knob to the left and then to the right just a little bit and then it would lock into place. The picture would stay in place for a few seconds then the tint would shift towards green, next, the color would turn to black and white and then the picture would start rolling sideways from left to right or right to left and then HH is lost. Adjust the HH knob, it would lock back into place only to repeat the same process. Usually there is a little room before you loose sync when adjusting the Horzontal Hold from left to right but not with this set. Last night I played around with it a little bit. I swaped out a 6FQ7 in the Horizontal Osccillator section, only seemed to make the problem a little worse. So I put the origonal 6FQ7 back in. While looking at chassis I noticed that steve did a little recaping, also changed a resistor. Im still waiting for some caps to come at a local parts store here in town so I can't really mess with that now. The replacments seem to be of good Quality so maybe it could be a another bad cap or maybe something else. For the past few days ive been tempted to adjust the Horizontal Osc Coil to see if that would lock the picture into place. Coils is something I never mess with but I gave it a try. I first turned the Horizonal Oscillator Coil to the left ever so slightly. Eww crap the problem got worse crap crap crap. So I went right with it and then Boom it locked and stayed locked :yes: . The Horizontal Hold knob now has alot more room when I adjust it now and is at dead center. Everything seems normal now. I have a nice picture on this roundie, great sound too. One little last problem If I change the channel or adjust the fine tunning out of range to the right there are a few signs of the existing problem. The picture will roll sideways for a second then lock. But it locks and stays locked, but still should not do that. Should I turn the Horiz Osc coil a little bit more to the right. Have any of you guys seen a simular problem to this. I tried to describe it as best as I could. For now Im going to enjoy it like it is. Ive got the set running now, its been on for 4 hours this morning without a problem with a very nice picture, but there could of corse be something im over looking that you guys may have come across before.

Bruce

very nice set you have. It looks to be an RCA of some kind, but then again, what do I know...

Don't overlook an AGC adjustment. This can cause horrible sync instability. Check the associated tube, as well as the sync tubes. Usually is just something simple like this.

My two cents

This set is very similar to an RCA Ctc-15.

I have a similar Silvertone roundie. Mine is very much like a ctc15. Mine had a problem that required the coil to be misadjusted to achieve lock. The natural frequency of the oscillator was wrong.

The procedure goes something like this, as I recall. There is a sync test point (look on sams) that you can ground to disable all sync. You then short out the sinewave coil (that would be the upper half of the horiz oscillator coil, the one with the movable slug).

WIth the sync and sinewave coil disabled, you adjust horizontal hold for a picture that is right side up (though probably pretty unstable). Now the natural frequency is correct. My set would not do this, the "right side up" place was off one end of the horizontal hold control.

If you could get this part right, you would then remove the short from the sinewave coil and adjust the sinewave coil for a picture right side up again. What you have done is made it so the sinewave coil adds stability, without changing the natural frequency. You then remove the short from the sync test point, and the set returns to normal operation.

I couldnt get past the first part. The natural frequency was way off, and needed a misadjustment of the sinewave coil to pull it back on.

The culprit turned out to be an .0015 dip mylar capacitor that couples the horizontal oscillator to the horizontal output stage. It had gone up in value.

Here are some other possibilities: The capacitor that mainly determines the natural frequency is a 390pf 2kv ceramic disc, I think. There is also a suspicious looking 680pf polyprop in a funky cardboard shield. RCA usually used mica here I think. My polyprop was fine. It also couldnt hurt to check the resistors on each side of the horizontal hold control.

Good Luck,

John

wells-gardner
 

most of the sets of this vintage were rca clones made by wells-gardner. similar to rca but with sears usual cost cutting measures in place.

Are you sure that number isn't 528 vs. 529? I used to do Sears service, and if I'm not mistaken, 528 was Wells-Gardner.

Hey, that TV has a really good picture on it. I've got a customer that has a very similar Silvertone in her living room. Its her main TV. Looks good, too. I remember Wells-Gardners having problems with burned solder connections at the horizontal output socket, and damper, alot.

Wells gardner not the sharpest tool in the shed
 

Although some of the Sears models started out good, the inherent quality differences between such makers as rca and zenith showed its ugly face after a few years of service, just as the previous reply stated, the pc boards were suseptible to cracks, burn thrus, and so on.

Thanks Everyone for the Information, I did try to adjust the AGC Control but it had no effect on the problem. I will try several different tubes that maybe suspect and will probably pull the chassis out and check wires, resistors, caps, and stuff when I get some time. Im thinking it might be the same problem as John mentioned. The sync test shouldn't be that hard. Today, I hooked the set into the satellite system in the living room. Wow, the picture was out of this world compared to the rabbit ears I was using. Im very impressed with the picture on this set. The Chassie # was hand written on on bottom and it says 529.6186118. It could be wrong from what it might be, I do have the sams folder for this set and it covers several model and chassis #'s. It has 528 and 529 listed. But does not list the .6186118 but this folder is correct for the set. Theres even a nice picture of a TV/AM/FM Stereo console combo on the front.

Wells Gardner, Never herd of it, Is that another brand other than Sears/Silvertone or is it the same thing with another name stamped on it.

Wells Gardner and Warwick are two likely suspects for the producer. I'm not sure who made the Sears ctc15 clones. There were also Silvertone roundies that looked nothing like RCA inside. It seems to me there was a thread a while back and we never quite got is settled who made what.

I read somewhere that during that period Warwick was selling everything they could produce to Sears, so youre unlikely to see a similar set branded Warwick. Wells Gardner? Maybe, but I've never seen one.

John

Back View
 

Here some pics of the chassis and also a model and chassis # list

Ok, I'm completely speechless. That doesn't look anything like my set, which is a shameless ctc15 copy, using RCA boards, with RCA resistor and capacitor numbers silkscreened on them, even though Silvertone used different numbers on the schematic.

There were Silvertone roundies with no power transformer. Someone posted about this in an old thread. I looked through some old schematics and found one for a Silvertone 61731. It has a 10le8 single tube color demodulator. I think this was used in Olympic or maybe Motorola sets. Does anyone remember? This one didnt give a CRT number, but the setup instructions look like roundie.

While l was looking for that, I found a schematic for another transformer type set. It is a Silvertone 5170. It has a 400kb22 crt and some weird 6r-p22 color matrix tubes. The rest of the tubes are normal american types. Could It be japanese? Theres no picture of the set, but the drawings in the setup instructions suggest it is a roundie. It doesnt look like yours either.

So, when we add yours to the mix, thats at least 4 completely different types of Silvertone roundie chassis. I had no idea there were so many. What Sams are you using? Does the circuitry look like RCA?

Thats a really cool looking set BTW, and a terrific picture :thmbsp:

John

It's the replacement RCA Hi-Lite tube that helps make the picture look so good. RCA made some great replacement tubes. What's the tube number? I'm assuming they used a "black matrix" replacement.

I forgot to include the Warwick brand. That chassis shown above, looks alot like a CTC-12 chassis that I just aquired.

I always thought Warwick manufactured for Sears and Wells-Gardner made sets for Wards. Was there really crossover?

veg

You can pretty much use a ctc-15 schematic and it will be almost identical to what is in this set. The circuit boards are Wells-Gardner or whoever the OEM was, but the circuit, electrically, is nearly identical to RCA. The only difference is really in the audio section but it still is fairly similar. You still get the same burned wiring and burned terminal strips due to resistor heat in these sets as in the RCA's.

Tube
 

The Origonal Tube would of been a 21FJP22, The Tube thats in the set now list H19VABP22 and has a bonded Faceplate, tinted like a 25XP22. Is that a "Black Matrix" Replacement? I thought a black matrix tube was like a late 70's tube with no faceplate, please explain what a black matrix tube is and looks like.

I have also read several places that Wells-Gardner never sold anything to Sears but I have never seen anything I would call conclusive. I have lists that tell you who the first 3 digits of the cat. # cross to but they don't list W-G. Would be good to know, once & for all, the truth. Warwick was apparently partially or fully owned by Sears from what I've read. As for W-G, they built Western Auto Truetones, Wards Airlines, Coronado for the Gamble's hardware chain, I think also Catalina for White's Stores...and others. Keep in mind they weren't exclusive suppliers for any of these companies. Apparently there were a few Wells-Gardner branded sets but very few. They were still cranking them out for a few companies well into the 80s before switching completely to what they do now, which is make video gaming terminals & related stuff.

Black Matrix has to do with the phosphar screen. The screen will have a black phosphar plate instead of a white one, for much improved contrast and color. ALL Zenith Chromacolor tubes are "black matrix". The tube will look the same as far as the face-plate, and you will be unable to tell the differance with the naked eye until they are turned on. (or by looking at the tube number... a "V" in the tube number is a good giveaway, but not always.)

I thought this was a 21" tube, why does that replacement # start with 19----- (?)
That face doesn't look all that black so in this case just because it's got a 'V" in it doesn't mean it's a Chromacolor or what? (It looks even lighter than the one next to it)

Sometime in the 70's a federal law came into being about picture tube size. Suddenly they were measured by "viewable area". This is how a 25" set from the 60's (25xp22 or similar) is the same shape as a 70's 23" set with a tube number starting out "23v" for "23 viewable". Later 25" sets had squarer corners on the tubes (not the same as the old 25" or 23" viewable sets).

A not so obvoius part of this confusion is that new roundie tubes made after that law became "19v" for 19 viewable. Reman tubes carried their original number. So in the 70's there were 21" and 19" roundie tubes that were exactly the same size.

I have seen one, and after looking it up in the RCA tube manual from about 1975 or so, It was not listed as a black matrix tube (though some rectangular tubes were). So if some RCA 19v roundies were black matrix, apparently not all of them were. The tube I saw was listed as having equal-brightness phosphors, though. A theoretical increase in usable brightness, even if it wasnt black matrix.

Your mileage may vary....

John

I'd like to see a nice screen shot of a roundie with one of those black matrix tubes, sounds like about as good a picture as you'd be able to wring out of one... and even the older ones look pretty darn good : )

The face of tube looking bright is due to the Flash on my Camera. To me it seems a little darker than the RCA to the left (which has green look to it). This is a 21 inch tube but the #s start with 19. The face of the Tube seems to kinda have a dark blue look to it but when the set is on the picture is much brighter than the 2 RCA sets that have 25XP22s in them. The set to the left is a RCA CTC 16 and has a nice bright picuture when running, I have not looked yet to see what its tube number is yet.

you have the newest most advanced roundie tube made.
you dont see them often.iirc they are all black matrix.
that means a black filler around the dots.
look at a v series tube that has no laminated faceplate close up with a good light and you will see it.

Which one of the sets got F.M. radio?

The black matrix material reduces the faceplate reflection so blacks are blacker - however, the net faceplate reflection also depends on how dark the faceplate glass is - darker glass reduces the brightness (light passing through once), but also increases contrast by reducing the reflection even more (light from outside passes through filter once on the way in and again on the way out).

Wow, the 19v roundie! I always thought the existance of these to be the stuff of urban legends. Now, would someone please show me a picture of the 22" Westinghouse 70 deg. rectangular tube, pretty please?

TVtommy,

Here's the 22" CBS H-265. The first rectangular color picture tube. This tube, developed by CBS-Hytron, was used in the Westinghouse 1957 color sets.
Picture courtesy of the Early Television Museum site.

CBS_H265.jpg
Address:http://www.earlytelevision.org/images/CBS_H265.jpg


-Steve D.

---

Thanks for the link, somehow i had missed that on the ETF site, it reminds me of the 19vp colortron (I did have one once :( ) Now, to find the actual set.......!

Sears TV problems
 

About 35 years ago I picked up a 1964-vintage Silvertone roundie in a metal cabinet (one of my neighbors in my hometown had it in his garage and wanted to get rid of it). Did a couple haywire fixes on it (on-off switch on volume control was bad, so I jumpered it; circuit breaker was shot, so I jumpered it too--no fire hazard, as I kept an eye on the set when it was on and unplugged it when not in use) and it worked, after a fashion. I never did get the color convergence right, though, and the video-output tube (6AW8) socket cracked out of the video PCB in 1973 when I tried to change the tube (it almost made me sick to see that happen), so I agree with your comments as to the PC boards being prone to cracking and such in these sets. Two other problems I had with that set near the end were a hum bar in the picture and extremely critical color sync. I had to turn the tint (hue) control back and forth several times to get the picture to look right, but that hum bar still spoiled the looks of what might have been a half-decent picture, again if I could have gotten the convergence right (I made the mistake of trying to eyeball the convergence using just the horizontal line produced with the service switch in the service position, rather than using a generator; believe me, if I ever get another old set, I'll never do that again :no:). The black-and-white picture was reasonably good, though, considering the convergence problems and that hum bar. When I got the set I lived in a semi-fringe area for Cleveland TV and had fair-to-middling reception on the attic antenna in my house at that time; two years later I moved a lot closer to town, and the reception on rabbit ears was much better.

I was not aware that Silvertone TVs made during a certain time period were actually manufactured by Wells-Gardner; however, I did know that some Sears TVs were made for them (Sears) by Warwick Electronics. Did Warwick and W/G have some kind of marketing arrangement with RCA, allowing these companies to make near-exact copies of RCA's CTC-12 through CTC-15 chassis for sale by companies such as Sears & Roebuck? I realize almost all early color TVs, 1950s vintage until at least the early sixties (except Zenith), used RCA chassis designs, but how long did this last? My set was made in 1964. Was the chassis manufactured by W-G or Warwick? I suspect my set may have been a clone of an RCA CTC12 or just a tad later, say CTC15, as it was in a metal cabinet with a plastic nameplate bearing the wording Silvertone|COLOR above the channel selector. I suspect that nameplate covered a hole which may have been used in other models for an illuminated channel indicator drum (my set had a plain plastic VHF channel selector knob). Also, there was a hole in the tuner bracket which I strongly believe may have been for an optional UHF tuner (my set was VHF only, although I did try to feed the output of a junked UHF tuner into the IF input of the VHF tuner--it worked, but the power transformer kept cutting out because it was a doorbell transformer with a thermal cutout breaker. If there would have been a next time, I'd have wised up and used a standard transformer).

I think Zenith color sets were very good until the company sold out to GoldStar, though some may say even Zenith's sets of '70s vintage were going downhill when the company went from hand wiring to circuit modules about that time. Zenith was once my favorite brand of TV, audio and stereo, and as far as their older radios go, it still is. However, I would not buy a GoldStar TV today, even if it had the Zenith lightning bolt on the CRT mask below the tube.

IMHO, these new GS sets bear more of a resemblance to a flounder than to any of Zenith's better designs of the late '60s or later. I read somewhere, I think it was here someplace, that Zenith only licensed their Z bolt to GoldStar so the symbol would have little or no chance of going into public domain, even though the Zenith Radio Corporation no longer exists. This symbol is still used on Zenith-branded VCRs, VCR/DVD combo units; I believe the mark is even used on GS-manufactured widescreens and HDTVs as well, but it means absolutely nothing anymore. :no:

"Z" is right. The original ZRC went to zzzzzzzzzzzzzz and died in its sleep after GoldStar bought them out, so that letter of the alphabet describes their demise rather well, IMO.

You could (have) used a fuse of the appropriate rating to sub for the circuit breaker. too often as you have seen, the CB is bad.
I have seen the ctc-15 design in an early 70's Wards set so it was in use at least till that time. They just added in the pincushion components for use on the rectangular tubes.

If that were a pic. of Poppy Montgomery (CBS Without a Trace - thursday nights) On the screen in the first post instead of Roger Ebert I'd haveta make it my Desktop wallpaper. What a great picture! Man I'm jealous. Right now I've got one 21fjp22 in a 65 vintage Zenith (the one with the Vhf and Uhf tuning knobs mounted diagonally from each other) that has a bad 3.58 to demod driver xfmr and a rough cabinet and a Curtis-Mathes entertainment center with a bad flyback and crt. That 21fj mite end up in the c-m befores the days end. I've gotta fly for it and now I've been inspired. My ctc-20 needs a companion. I still doubt though that the picture will come anywhere close to that Silvertone. That thing just looks waaaaay sweet!

(Jeffhs' post is too long to quote )- but regarding the question of "marketing agreements" - no, that was not a marketing agreement, but the companies with small design staff were buying the RCA patent license package. This gave them access to the RCA chassis design as well as the basic technology. They had varying success with copying the RCA design, especially in circuits where stray coupling could cause a problem - same schematic but different layout could give different results.
Large companies, Zenith in particular, fought the RCA licensing for years, taking it to higher and higher courts until RCA was forced to unbundle implementation patents from the basic technology patents. Meanwhile, these larger companies spent money on finding ways to build receivers that didn't require the RCA implementation patents.

I knew someone who went from Motorola to Admiral, where they basically licensed the RCA design. He learned a lesson from that and went on to become a patent lawyer.