Ctc9f

[Charlie]

After being gone on the ship for 3 months and freezing my nads off in Alaska, I finally got to come home and start playing with this CTC9 that was in Houston. The guy that had it bought it as a package... he found a 50's Philco b&w set that he wanted (just for the looks) but the people that had it said he had to take the color set as well... it was a package deal. So, he really didn't know any history behind the set.

Everything was there... the set was super clean. There was only a thin layer of dust in there. The owners must have had a super-clean home.

I got really sick after getting the set home. The channel selector knob came off during the drive home! There was just a big hole there when I got out of the truck. I never thought to take it off, or to see if it was loose. In the meantime, I found a knob from an 11 that works, but it isn't the right one.

Someone had already changed the CRT. The 21CYP was replaced with a 21FBP with a date code of 1966. At first, it didn't test very well, but after cranking up the heaters a little bit, the meter jumped way up into the green and all was well. I let it cook like that for 30 minutes, and the tube woke up just fine. The blue gun is a little slower to come up, but it does and the emissions are almost as good as the other two guns.

At first, I found a blown fuse on the B+ line. I suspected the rectifiers, but they seemed okay. I tried to find any shorted lytics, but they seemed fine as well. I only have one spare fuse (pulled out of another CTC9), so I connected my meter across the fuse terminals and brought the set up and monitored the current. After two hours of slowly bringing the mains up, and monitoring the current, everything seemed okay. The current on the B+ never went above .7 amps (with the HV disabled). I wasn't able to get any sound thru the speaker... only the static associated with a unused channel. So, already it seems there are problems in the front-end.

After several hours, I plugged in a fuse and enabled the HV. Everything seemed fine. I got a bit of crackle from the HV starting up, but no raster. The B+ voltages were only 10 volts shy with HV running. I have not comfirmed my HV reading yet due to can't remember where I put the damn probe... been a while since i last used it.

Checked all tubes and all was good except one of the tuner tubes had serious grid leakage. Swapped it out. No change of any sort.

At one point, I had pulled a color amp, and later forgot to put it back in. It was the G-Y amp. When I turned on the set, I got a green raster! What the hell? Then I realized the tube was sitting there on the floor. Plugged it back in and the raster went away. For giggles, I pulled the R/B-Y amp... I got a purple raster. Plugged it back in... the raster went away.

I'm assuming I'll find a bad cap in there somewhere. Of course, they will all get changed. I'd first like to find the culprit that keeps me from getting a raster and why I get one when I pull those color amp tubes. If anyone has thoughts or ideas on the subject, speak up.

Also, if anyone happens to have the pretty channel selector that goes on this set, I'm willing to sell my soul for it!