Preventing TV Damage

[vintagecollect]

What does everyone use for surge control for all of their own old TVs. Open to suggestions. Wouldn't this prevent undue wear not only to caps, but to all tubes- including CRT?? Do modern surge protectors power strips just regulate surge current when the set is first turned on??? I'm going to use a variac whenever turning my older sets on as a precaution. Gradually adjusting voltage to 100% over several minutes. I know people use these to wake up TVs after a long hibernation------, good idea to use all the time????

[3Guncolor]

Running any equipment at reduced voltage can be a bad thing and may do more harm then good..Audio equipment would be more able to take it then a television. May be hard on the fly etc... The best thing to do is have the tubes heat up with B+ off then do a soft start with the B+ over a second or two.

Myself I just plug them in and turn them on (after they are safe and repaired).
Never really had any problems.

[Chad Hauris]

Surge protectors are not designed to protect against a current surge into a device when it is turned on...they protect against very short duration high voltage tranisent pulses on the power line.

I agree it is not a good idea to run reduced voltage to a TV, you will not have enough horizontal drive signal and can damage the flyback. The best precaution against power supply failure is to replace the power supply diodes and filter caps in the set with new ones and make sure you have an appropriate sized fuse on the AC line.

[andy]

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[John Folsom]

If you are really concerned about the turn on surge of an old tube TV, use a variac to bring in up slowly. Start at 50-60VAC, and bring it up to 105-110VAC over a period of say 30 seconds. This will eliminate turn on current transients, and minimize the peak voltage on the filter caps.

I do like to buring up my rare set somewhat gently, it could not hurt.

But as mentioned earlier, for the most part, if the set has been re-capped, it is designed to tolerate the turn on transient currents and voltages.

[frenchy]

Another option on some sets, if the line voltage jumpers are in the set anyway, is to set them to high line voltage, as long as you do have at least between middle and high line voltage in your home. However I did this on my ctc-16 with average line voltage and though I have plenty of horizontal width to cover the screen, and it reduced the measured current in the flyback, I am stuck with the picture squished a little horizontally, and the set does not have a 'width' adjustment that I know of. Will probably just set it back to the other tap it was on before when I have time. So obviously it's not a magic cure but if you DO have high line voltage, and the hi/low jumper is there in the tv, give high a try and it can be easier on the set.
As for raising voltage gradually with a variac, don't see why this would make any difference one way or the other as to wear and tear on the crt or the other tubes (?)..Frenchy

[oldtvman]

in today's electronics just about everything used switch-mode power supplies, basically these pos's use descrete components that are always supseptable to voltage surges. the tv's of yesterday had something they didn't ( a big honken power transformer) i dont know that the vintage sets would really benefit from expensive power management systems.

[reeferman]

If I could just find that "surgistor" that I had back in the '60's... How many of you remember seeing/having one? Phil