15GP22 Latest News!!!!!

[ohohyodafarted]

I wish there had been an easier road to get where we are now Charlie.

Out biggest obsticle has been that we are now at the end of the crt era. There is almost no one left in the CRT industry. We have one company that can rebuild the guns, and they are getting near the end of doing business. There is one company that can make stems for us in the US. And we are down to one crt rebuilder, Scotty.

Scotty has worked with us every step of the way, and I can't tell you how dedicated he is to winning the fight to be able to restore these crt's. Without Scotty, we would be SOL. We are also fortunate that Scotty is not to far from Milwaukee, and I can drive there in only 8 hours. When we get to the stage where we are actually attempting to seal and rebuild the leakers, it will be necessary to work hand in hand with Scotty at his plant. We will be performing the sealing protocall experiments and Scotty will be doing the usual crt rebuilding things.

I know that it has been an agonizingly slow road getting to where we are today. But most of the difficult work is done now. We have special tooling and equipment to remove the old cathode assemblies. We have a company to make stems that work. We have a gun rebuilder to install new cathodes and mount the guns on the stems. We have Scotty on board to do the rebuilding and we have even machined some special parts for Scotties equipment to accomodate the unique parts of the 15GP22. We have special equipment built for our experiments in sealing the leakers, and we have developed special techniques for preping the tube for the sealing process.

It seems like it should have been a lot easier than it actually was, but you have to understand we are not working with a tube that anyone has ever tooled up to rebuild. So everything had to be custom made. Every step in the process had to be painstakenly researched and developed.

It has however been a labor of love, on a quest to do something of spectaular importance for all tv collectors interested in this very historic color tv artifact.

Please...everyone think good thoughts and say your prayers, and perhaps we will finally be rewarded with success.

[stromberg67]

Thanks for the info Bob. I'll start selling some vintage hifi gear and plan to get that tube rebuilt. It is an early version with a gamut much like the 15G, it seems. The blues are electric, and the reds deep and beautiful. If I ever figure out how to post pics I will send a few.
Kevin

[stromberg67]

I'm going to try to load some screen shots of my CTC-4. I re-sized the pics, and hope they make it to this post. Here goes!
Kevin

[stromberg67]

Made it! BTW this is the tube with the small crack in the neck. I guess you can see why I want to have it re-gunned!
Kevin

[jhalphen]

Hi Guys,

Boy is this exciting! i wish you All the Luck in the World and hope to read a historic announcement right here on monday.

Bob, did you or someone else photo/video document this historical attempt?

Best Regards

jhalphen
Paris/France

[ohohyodafarted]

Hi Jerome,

No, Scotty was on his own this time. Nobody filmed it. However when we go back next time we will document on video and stills, the procedure as a re-enactmant of the actual event, when we rebuild the next tube.

I know it won't be authentic, and it loses some of the excitement, and that it will not be the genuine article, but it's the best we can offer. We have been down this road before, and there have been several filmed attempts that failed. So I guess our attitude became, that we would wait for success before making another trip to document another failure.

But fear not, we WILL have documentation to show the world how it was done, if and when we are successrul.

Perhaps NOT being there this time, will add a extra measure of success. Perhaps our constant pressence, pushing for success in the past, may have been a jinx. :-)

[Charlie]

Originally Posted by ohohyodafarted

...you have to understand we are not working with a tube that anyone has ever tooled up to rebuild. So everything had to be custom made. Every step in the process had to be painstakenly researched and developed.

Don't ya know that those folks back in the 50's would have never imagined anyone would be attempting to rebuild such a tube... especially so many years down the road!

The 19VP22 tube that followed... is it a closer sibling to the 15G, or to the 21AXP?

[ohohyodafarted]

The 19V is closer to the 21AX. The 19V was the first tube to use photo deposition of phosphor dots directly to the inside face of the tube.


Kevin, Georgeous screen shot of your 21AX. I would want to save that tube too. The color saturation is fantastic. I hope my CTC4 looks that good when I get around to restoring it.

Bob