Vintage color TV pickup and analysis watch old tv playing under LA freeway with melted cement and hot vacuum tube valves overheating with CRT picture tube in place with emissions. / shango066
He lucked out. It's good he's using it outside not just for safety reasons, but the digital signals come in well. Not a bad picture for a 57 year old set.
I have one of these in a slightly different cabinet. I got it back around 2014 and had it shipped to me through someone on Uship.. The CRT is pretty much dead.. I didn't know these were super rare.. I'll make sure to hold on to mine..
Agreed! If there's more than one left, the total might be like 5 in the entire country. And this one is in *damn* fine condition -- easily the best of the very small group. Assuming there's even a group. Very much worth saving!
As an aging TV engineer my brain is triggered to smell dust and ozone whenever I see the insides of an old TV set. Considering that set is 57 years old it's amazing, even if it is a crusty old GEC cost cutter special. I think I heard Bob Anderson scream when you threw that tuner lid in the garbage.
I started in 69 and hated them, for one thing, we never had the tubes in stock and they would not work with the RCA test jig so you have to mess with the chassis in the set. No access from the bottom, of course. GE sucked, but then so did their radios.
@@robinsattahip2376 In our area in Michigan, Zenith and RCA was the most prevalent brands. Once the K-mart type stores started selling TV’s, I started seeing lots of other brands.
In 1972 I replaced the flyback in one like this, I was 15 years old then. My grandfather was a GE repairman so I got help from him over the phone. GE 1967 KE chassis, my parents are still alive and it sits downstairs in their basement. Main power supply short, burnt out line filter inductors, and cataract on the 23" rectangular tube. Never been really interested in getting it going since I don't want to deal with the cataract removal. Was $700 new, which was not cheap back then, which was probably two months pay for a blue collar factory worker at the time.
@@zulumax1 Cool! Did your grandpa work for an authorized GE shop? They sure were expensive. Think what kind of a TV $700 could get ya today! At least a 65” that’s hundred times better!
The highest failure part replaced on these were the plastic gears in the fine tuning inside the tuner. Lots of house calls for replacing those. My grandfather, GE repairman, would always keep a good stock of those on hand.
Cleaned hundreds of those mechanical tuners like this. The cover did have an effect on interference so replacing it was standard procedure. Gotta admit I did leave a couple off when I couldn’t see too well in a customer home!
@@user-pq9ji7kt4l that was the joke, in older videos he always got mad when he came across a tuner with a missing shield, why would he toss it if it made him mad?
GE was not a house brand of ours, so we weren't overly versed in them. But the first, last, and ONLY example of *THAT* particular roundie came in for service. No color sync. It turned out to be that damn NE-2 neon bulb, even though it was lighting normally. Replaced the bulb, and problem fixed(!). Figgered the bulb must have to do with burst gating.
Yeah, when I first saw it in the beginning of the vid, I wondered if it COULD BE the one with the crazy-ass neon bulb. And it was! Only one I ever seen in 35 years in the trade. Shango musta got its twin.
Shango, thanks for teaching us novices at electronics the difference between a variac and light bulb limiter. I’ve been watching tons of electronics videos and this is the first one I’ve seen where the host thought to mention exactly why one would use either. Thanks for being a great teacher. It’s why I’ve been a subscriber of yours for years.
You're right about the light bulb being current limiting. Although there's another useful aspect to light bulbs here; When the bulb is cold it will have much less resistance. So it sort of works like a soft-breaker. When something shorts the light bulb will heat up and limit the current to a low value. But when it's not shorted, the cold light bulb will allow more current.
I use an old 750 watt camera light and veriac and outlet box with on off switch. I dont do near as many resurrection/restorations so let her rip and ill fix it if it shorts.
A variac has some degree of current limiting ability since the transformer will saturate on high loads, but it's a voltage source where a light bulb is just a series resistor that will drop more voltage if the current becomes larger.
I found an ad for this set or a similar one December 1966 and it was the cheapest color set in the circular; $299. The next cheapest color console was a 19" rectangular RCA Victor that was $389. The only other color roundie was a Zenith at $399. It's a PDF or I would try to post it here.
I did TV repair in the last half of the 60's. That Zenith roundie was a very good set. This GE with it's Compactrons is a cheap relic of the declining days of tube electronics. But it is in nice shape. Take care of it.
@@scottmorton1202 I think that was the downfall of GE; they were reverse engineering their products to a price point and your repair experience would indicate they were good at it! You paid less and you got less.
Color Picture Tubes Grade AA -Description -All new components and materials, including new glass envelope. Grade A -Description -Used glass envelope, new or used shadow mask, all other components and materials are new. Grade B -Description -New electron gun, all other components and materials are used. Grade C -Description -Used picture tube for resale, all significant components and materials are used.
Wow, thanks for the blast from the past! I was ~13 years old and already an experienced tube jockey keeping the color circuit working on a slightly older model of that same beast to watch the very first episode of Star Trek TOS. It lasted almost 15 years total and was still "working" when it was finally "retired"! I had it hooked up to an Ampex 7000 series 1" video recorder (mounted on a Flowtron) in the early 1970's. I used a Sony 1600 tuner and it's color processing to record and play in color. Wish I had a picture of the setup and that meatgrinder head drum fan blade.
They had a super nice d-i-y skate park under a freeway overpass in Atlanta, adding structural integrity to it and everything! Then the huge pallet hoard next to it caught on fire and they blamed the skaters, not the hobo culprits, and demolished the park.
When neon bulbs are used as regulators, they should be illuminated, because when they're in darkness there's nothing to ionize the neon. That's why they're usually next to the pilot light. There have been a few tests of voltage regulator tubes and some of the tubes took up to 30 seconds to strike when in total darkness. They can strike anyway by cosmic rays and radiation. This is not unlike how some geiger tubes operate.
Didn't they also use neon bulbs for relaxation oscillators to generate sawtooth waves? I suppose if such a bulb were affected by the light in its environment, the amplitude of the sawtooth would also be, so a trigger diode would probably do a better job.
Conduction current of small neon bulbs (like NE-2) is too small to be useful for shunt regulation (except maybe in some *very* high impedance circuit). To be useful, shunt current has to equal a signifigant percentage of the load current.
Incandescent bulbs are used in Wien Bridge oscillators as part of the feedback in order to get very low distortion sine waves, I know that much cos I just built one but I'm sure your right !@@pcno2832
Oh and one more thing, my parents had two of those GE Performance TV's and I'd say theirs were somewhere from 1978-1981 models, they had a 19 inch color for their bedroom and we had a 13 inch color in the kitchen, both were those performance tv's. Both of those TV's lasted many years. I'm pretty sure that 19 inch was a 1978 model because we got it when we moved in the house and of course that was a '78. They had that damn TV forever. It had a good picture and worked well until it just didn't one day. I think it croaked in '98-99 or somewhere so they got 20 years out of it.
External tinted safety glass is missing is why no cataract. They did not use a bonded safety glass tube in this chassis . GE had the coax connector going way back. I have owned multiple versions of it and I’ve never had many issues with them. I still have one awaiting a recap, but it works quite well unrestored.
man loves to bring stuff up all soft and delicate with a light bulb...off camera he has a bag of marshmallows in his hand when it catches fire..pure entertainment 🎉
(@34:09) Yeah, X19 is probably a varactor diode, as the anode goes to ground, and the capacitance was controlled by the reverse-bias voltage on the cathode (here, labeled “97” on the schematic.)
Last week I drove about 100 miles for 2 sets, $45 each. A rca ctc 38 hybrid rectangular set, and a dumont roundie. The dumont has a lot of hours on it, both the tube and the flyback have been changed, however the rca looks to be low hour. They both have good testing tubes thankfully
Now THIS is what shango is all about, love the road trip pickup videos, thanks for posting mate, just lying in bed all snuggled up watching this on my iPad. i think your last roadtrip video was about 6 years ago. Have you ever tried fitting a rectangular CRT in a roundie set? the shape of the surround around the CRT looks like it could be a perfect fit if you dremeled the plastic out where its dark grey. And shango just a heads up A friend of mine has that exact cheap radio in his caravan, the damn thing caught on fire!
Love your road trip videos! General Electric (and other makes like Motorola,) would often brag about the quality,and sometimes even the maker of their cabinets. The consoles were considered furniture. I have the General Electric console stereo you see in the later episodes of "Leave it to Beaver" and it has a tag stating that the cabinet was hand crafted by William Tell woodworkers of the finest hardwoods. It also has General Electrics "Vacu-Magic" tone arm that has a vacuum nozzle and hose built into the tone arm! The idea was that it would suck the dust off the record as it played. When i bought it the vacuum motor was seized but i repaired it.
Motorola was legendary for the quality of their cabinets, considered very fine furniture. Don't know anything about GE, but this cabinet - even on video - looks like crap. Seems the finish is disintegrating - from age - and not from abuse.
@@godfreypoon5148Yes,it is The vacuum nozzle is under the front of the headshell,there's a clear ribbed hose that runs under the tone arm and down into the console. The hose enters a beehive shaped dome inside one of the speaker baffles and the motor is inside there. I believe GE only made the vacu-magic one year. The same changer was used in their top of the line metal "trimline" portable stereos that year too,same exact tone arm,but it didn't have the vacu-magic emblem or the nozzle,hose,etc. Only the console got that.
@ericruud9328In reality it didn't actually do much and I believe they only offered the Vacu-magic for one year. I think it's cool though. It comes from a time where designers and engineers minds were allowed to run wild and manufacturers were looking for futuristic amazing new options to entice customers with.
Hey Shango. Last road trip I can remember was with Chris and you went to an estate sale from a television technician guy's house anyway thanks for the video Shango thumbs up as always
I use a VARIAC with a modified kill-a-watt to act as a voltage, wattage and current meter. I take note of the power consumption of the set, and if it reaches that value at an input AC line voltage of less than 117V, I turn the set off to investigate a possible short. Monitoring current and voltage carefully is the key to successfully using a VARIAC versus a light bulb.
@@andymouse I used a series bulb years ago before I got my VARIAC. I wouldn't go back to it though. I like to be able to precisely dial in the input AC voltage and monitor current and wattage at the same time. Cheers!
@@andymouse ideally you'd want a contraption like the one Mr. Carlson uses on his channel. It combines a VARIAC along with a anmmeter and a light bulb used as a current limiter. Cheers!
We use light bulbs when we build and service FPV drones. Like a 12 volt 1157 tail light bulb. If the drone is shorted, the bulb lights up. We call em "Smoke stoppers" It's saved my stuff more than one time. Meanwhile I know guys who were too lazy to make one, and their drones go POOF because they didn't solder something correctly.
I was just a young teenager trying to figure out car stereo wiring and had the light bulb go off in my head and used one for many activities. If you have a blown fuse in an automobile or truck it's natural to replace it. If it blows again I always go in with a headlamp instead of another fuse or circuit breaker. I can wiggle or disconnect things to see if the short goes away or use a compass or DC current hook probe to trace the circuit. If a new fuse or automatically resetting circuit breaker is used it can blow open the short and possibly prevent it's discovery until another point in time when the failure recurs or possible damage or fire result.
We had a GE COLOR tv for 1967 not a roundie with a pull down channel mechanism tuner. Loved that TV but you are right. We always had breakdowns on that set. I still miss that tv. It had a beautiful color picture. I was a kid then.
This is rare and the flyback was literally discontinued as of April 1988. The set was rare and the flyback on that set was also used in the 1967 variant. The 1967 variant didn't need the flyback for working IF but the 1966 version did. Pretty crazy. I have that same set. Absolutely no wax left on the flyback but it's still good the horizontal oscillator coil is gone. Crt is really strong still but bad cataracts. That set used either 21FJP22 or 25AP22 so this set they made a non roundie version.
I love General Electric TVs and stereos I live not far away from where they manufactured the TVs and my General Electric 17” b/w portable came from a guy who worked for GE at the time and lived in the suburbs right outside the TV plant (now Lockheed Martin). He bought the set at the “GE store” which was General Electric’s in house store at the factories for GE employees.
Even though this was one of teh cheaper made and lower quality sets from back in the day, I doubt any of the modern stuff would hold up like this has. I don't think 50 years from now there will be guys making videos repairing old LG OLEDs like you can with these old CRTs.
I do remember somebody on VK years back mention that GE sets will pull the nails out of the walls haha I have never forgotten that for some reason. Do you remember when someone said that?
I remember, in the sixties, my parents buying our first RCA color TV. It looked pretty much like that one and came with a free RCA clock radio, which they gave to me so, I could wake up for school.
How Cool! I never knew those CRT's were called "Roundys". Makes sense though. I remember watching my "RICH" Aunt's roundy TV in 1965 when COLOR was REALLY THE THING! I certainly noticed those "ROUND" corners too. This set looks just like one that Samantha had in her living room.
By the color bars it looks like problem with G-Y signal. So color demodulator is OK, but color matrix after them works wrong. Thats why there is no green color, but there is no problem with color balance set up - white, grays and black are OK.
I love it and want it!!! Lol😂 Now to watch the video. Unique color oscillator circuits as I recall... 2:22 Colonial style cabinet. Every old GE set I get works!
Wow, that was a treat. I haven't seen a CRT TV that works in years. The colour looks fine to me. Perhaps just replace the valves and the capacitors and that old TV set should easily last you another hundred years.
I'm English and amazed at the design of the 60s American TVs and especially the ones that have delusions of being furniture. The trim on the top of this is rather odd to me. The colour might be whacked but the definition and clarity is excellent.. Thanks for the look at this.
I remember working on those, I had a GE Porta Color I found in the trash, the blue was out, I worked in a shop, so I was able to replace the tube. It seemed the the blue gun failure was a normal occurrence on GE TV's
I ran across one of these once - the buyers of an abandoned house were selling it in 2009. The hipsters were insistent on $150 and wouldn't let me hook a crt tester to it. It did turn on but the crt looked tired. Probably became a wet bar in that neighborhood...
I remember very well one day I went for a Philips TV set, European style (screen leaning out, not into a frame as US tv sets). Well, I arrrived in a gypsy neighborhood, they were bungalow houses but there was no furniture, only mattresses, I remember. They are not neighborhoods like you would go alone. Greetings from 🇨🇱
Look forward to part 2. Great set worth the restoration. I would say it was a perfect video until I saw freak Newson on the set. Now the set is jinxed with future failures. Anyway roundie gas money coming your way.
My uncle brought us a 12 inch b&w GE set in the early 70s for 100 bucks. He also bought a 10 inch color for 300. Both were reliable but used compactrons, both blurry as in low resolution too wide with no adjustments, you had to overscan the vertical to make the geometry right. Just cheap sets that that the Japanese could easily blow away but my uncle was a made in America person.
Cali ramps and overpasses look like they're ready to tip over in an earthquake with the slightest seismic shift. Ohio uses three humongous pillars on their ramps and bridges and I've experienced two small tremors here in 40 years.
Even though I grew up on this tech and even fixed a few there's a side of me that thinks of it as completely r-word today. It still seems like a fluke in the space time continuum that they even worked at all. That said, we all still use technology that is even older every time we fire up an analog radio, including an analog stereo receiver. That format is still in wide use almost everywhere in the world in 2023. This set is a great specimen I'm sure you will get it to it's OG glory.
Man that’s in nice shape! I wonder if they made round tube sets that late in the game just to use up old stock and sell it off at a bargain price or if there were actually some people who preferred a round CRT over rectangular. 1966-‘67 is pretty late for a roundy.
I look at alot of videos of abandoned homes and see quite a bit of vintage electronics very interesting. You will be surprised what is still in attics and basements of old homes. I watched two videos alone today p*** video head to Vintage black and white TV sets one set was a 1953 Magnavox have the other was a 1961 zenith. In another video recorded by the same Explorer and a different house had a wind-up gramophone in the Attic as we all know francophones are worth quite a bit of money.
Correct me if I'm wrong Dan, But wouldn't the Dim bulb be both current AND voltage limiting device? Current for shorts as you pointed out, But, Also voltage with bulb wattage correlating to the sets current draw? Example; Using a 500-ish watt bulb in that set with 385 max set draw making the bulb heavier and drawing more than the set thus indirectly limiting the voltage inline limiting amount of current passing? Or, under-sizing the bulb could accomplish the same maybe? I don't know as limited experience using such thing. I would out of being over cautious; use a Variac iso-transformer with appropriately size Dim bulb in series watching both current and voltage draw simultaneously. But I also don't like taking chance on something like old electronics. I'll not care blow up new stuff just for fun, Lol. Want to say thanks to you and Robert for the great videos. Just became a member on Bobs Patreon to support him.
Authorities seemed reluctant to admit that the fire under 10 freeway was apparently caused when a tremendous and relentless buildup of non-functioning television sets spontaneously burst into flames when a homeless man ran a 450 foot extension cord from a nearby business and turned on an old Motorola set without the use of any sort of current-limiting device. Fresh "EOL" graffiti could be seen in the surrounding area, leading authorities to double down on their efforts to seek television gang-related hoodlums, perhaps a branch of the local "Noticias Malas" gang.
