Color converter on ebay

[Dave A]

Barry,

You have picked up one of the best oddities of the early television era. Color for $200 instead of $1000...in 1956!

There is a very good thread on Col-R-Tel from a flurry of activity on this model in 2006. Several owners tell their tales of this curiosity. There are others if you just search Col-R-Tel.

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/sho...ight=col-r-tel

You can find some photos of my set in operation and on the last entry you can find the owners manual and schematic. You will need this to wire it to any set. There are two different wiring schemes for a cathode fed or grid fed CRT.

You will find that the drive belt has gone bad if not split and laying on the bottom. The motor runs hot no matter what you do. I remember another thread that lists a subsitute motor from Grainger. Be very careful when you dis-assemble the drive hub. It has three stainless steel spring wire brushes that may have gone bad and are screw mounted in to the fiber hub directly. One of mine has recently cracked to a bare end tip instead of the curved wire. I shut mine down until I can find the wire to fashion new ones so it does not scratch the commutator. Even when in good condition, the brushes and commutators need to be cleaned otherwise the pix will get noisy.

But you have only won half the battle. You have to find a good set to connect it to. You are looking at finding the best combination of a useable set and bright CRT's. The best set to use will be a set that passes the full video bandwidth including the color information because the Col-R-Tel picks up its information at the CRT. No color information there...no Col-R-Tel color. I tried RCA. No good. Bandwidth was ok through the tuner but slashed to B&W at the video amps. I ended up with a Philco which does the trick.

It's probably easier to get a CTC-4 working than a Col-R-Tel but much more satisfying. There are only about 23 of us. Good luck and keep us up to date.

Dave A