Bell TV202 Bellini 23" TV ** This set no longer exists **

Here is set number three. This is a Bell 23 inch Model TV202. The owner of the Bell company

Al Bell was a pioneering manufacturer and was making prototype television sets while the NZ Government was trying to decide whether to use the UK 405 line standard or step straight up to 625 lines. 

According to local legend Al Bell set up a studio and transmitter, and built some 405 line sets so that he could have an audience. When 625 lines was decided upon he was quick to get sets underway and off production line, and this is one example of that. 

Quite a stunning looking set and rather retro with its styling and Formica cabinet. 

The chassis is very well laid out and Bell used printed circuit boards when most other NZ manufactures were still using point to point wiring. Again he used quality Philips capacitors and resistors so these would have been fairly reliable and good for servicing as well.

The picture tube in this tests almost dead, but it may respond to a cook on the heaters or a quick blast with the rejvunator, I only use this option as a last resort, and if the tube is totally useless I do have a couple of good spare picture tubes I can put in, but will attempt to get it going first before I go that far.

Here are some photos of it for now...

Ultimate TVG 23" TV

Here is number two out of the five sets I got recently. Its a 23 inch Ultimate TV Model TVG. This is an earlier set has it has a non bonded picture tube, so has safety glass in front. In very nice condition overall and looks good. Ultimate were tied up with Pye at this stage.
I have not put any power on it yet but will do at some stage with the variac to see what it does. A nicely laid out chassis and easy to service and quite surprising that it has nearly 20 valves in place. Thankfully it has those long lasting reliable mustard coloured Philips capacitors all the way through so probably won't take much to get going providing the picture tube and flyback lopt are ok.
Here are some photos of it for now.

Pye 4436P/5 British TV

This is my first post for 2012 and the past couple of weeks has been rather interesting on the TV front as I've have managed to acquire at least seven more sets! Five were from a collector who wanted them to go a good home.
This is the first one out of the five and its the "gem" of what I brought home two days ago as finally I now have an English assembled Pye!
The cabinet on it is totally stunning in regards its look and the deep gloss finish on the outside.
Turns out that this was actually made by Ekco and was rebadged, so its not really a a true "Pye" but close enough for me.
It appears to be an export model from what I can tell and has series wired valves and no mains transformer, is live chassis.
Apart from the dust inside, its all original and virtually untouched from what I can tell and I reckon this thing hasn't had much use either as the picture tube tests 100%, one of the best I've seen in a while on my tube tester.
There are a lot of capacitors to be replaced though, Hunts and TCC waxies all the way through. I will be changing the crucial ones in the flyback section before applying any power as the last thing I want to do is damage anything major like the LOPT. Once I have that area running I can then see what the rest of it is like.
Just some photos for now will update this as I work on the set. Just love that cabinet!

Update 7/6/2013  - After some requests by a member from the UKVRR forum for some photos of the IF board/component/valve layout and a recent long weekend, I decided to have a go and getting some life out of this via some gentle mains power.

So I swung the the thing around, removed the back and refreshed myself with its innards....Hmm.... look at all those Hunts/TCC's scattered about the place.  I decided to replace three caps to start with, a TCC near the flyback on the board that had obvious signs of heat/stress, another by the PL504 and one up on the IF board next to the EF85 that broke away when I looked at it in a funny way.

Didn't see a mains filter cap lurking anywhere to go 'bang' so I plugged it into the variac at about 150 volts flicked the switch and waited...not much happened initially, but after a short while rustlings were heard from the speaker, then I increased the mains up to around 200 volts....That woke up the vertical which followed by some arcing noises coming from the flyback area...A quick glance at the DY87 revealed a purple light show inside which meant that valve had succumbed to some misfortune.

With a new DY87 in place, we switched on again and this time was greeted with a compressed raster on the screen... A bit more mains and next minute we had off station noise from the audio so I played around with the channel selectors and managed to get an actual picture!

So not bad for a first attempt and considering the rest is pretty much original, I know it needs work and a total recap, the vertical will be the first area I'll tackle as the picture shown is with the height pot maxed out. Was checking some of those little dog-bone resistors and a few seem to have gone high, so I guess this will be another long project, again will just pick away at when time allows. See Photos added. Thats all for now.

First light on reduced mains power

Full mains for the first time in years...Not a bad start :-)

Shot in the dark..The CRT on this tests 100%

All that was replaced to get it going so far...Theres so much more to do though!

La Gloria Fringemaster TV4A 23" TV

This 23 inch La Gloria set uses the same chassis as the Majestic TV4A that has been featured here on this blog. It has a logo beneath the tube which says -  La Gloria 'Fringemaster'
Made by the same company but looks totally different and is an early version of the TV4A as it has a non bonded picture tube.
I bought this about a year ago for very little money, it does work and the picture tube is good, but the tuner has issues. Quite a nice looking set and is quite small for a console on legs.
Another project on that list...

Front

Rear

Back Off

Philips Z23CZ327A 23" Console TV

Here is another Philips 23 inch set using the S8 chassis. This console is responsible for starting me off again seriously collecting old black and white TV's. I got this back around 1998/99. It came from an old retired electronics technician who had worked at the Philips factory here in Wellington and was on the production line while these sets were being made. He also worked in the design division for radio sets as well. I only met him once and we talked for hours, he was a nice old bloke.
All I've done on it is replace a few crook electrolytic capacitors around the vertical area,  replaced a valve or two and re-soldered some dry joints on the horrible early printed circuit boards that they used.
It goes well and the sound is so good, it has two six inch speakers down below and the bass that gets delivered would put any modern TV to shame.
This set is a later version as it has a bonded picture tube, there were many variants of this set and it was also marketed under the brand name "Fleetwood"
I use this from time to time and fired it up today to take some pictures and its still going well, and that sound... just awesome.

Front

Rear

Set Going...

Philips 23TZ323A 23" TV Set

This Philips 23 inch TV is one the earliest sets that I have. It is based on a European/English design and I have seen very close copies of it on the Internet.
The NZ based chassis is called the 'S8' and it was used in various Philips models. This does not have a bonded picture tube so it has safety glass in front hence why its the oldest TV in my collection to date. I'm picking the date to be around 1961/62.
In typical Phillips style its has a live chassis with series filament chain and P series valves.
The S8 circuit was well designed and these were a very good performer, far better than the later F2ZN and they worked very well in poor reception/fringe areas and were pretty reliable, although they had their fair share of faults, but overall they were pretty good. Line output transformers were again probably the biggest failure with the S8.
All the old TV technicians that I have spoke to over the years have always held the S8 in high regard. Another thing these were praised for was the sound quality being the Philips Hi-Z design, so there was no output transformer, just a high impedance speaker coupled across the output valve where the primary winding would have been.
I'll never forget a story I was told about one of these sets getting literally kicked down a flight of stairs and it ended up at the bottom rather battered but it was plugged back in and still worked! Now that is one TV the passed the "Drop Test"!
This one here I got back October of 2000 and used it briefly and started to replace some of the caps but stopped for some reason, I seem to recall there was a sync or width fault that developed.
Another cool thing is that it came with the original owners handbook and these are quite hard to find as I've never seen any apart from this one in all my years of collecting sets.
So hopefully I'll get back to this one, just another on the long project list...

Front

Rear

Back off chassis view

Valve location chart

Original Owners Manual - Rare!

Vintage Digital Casio & Seiko Watches ** Updated**

This is really a sideline to what I collect and restore.

Its another little hobby which I sometimes indulge in, haven't really of recent times but thought I'd mention it here anyway and add some pictures of my watch collection. All are either Casio or Seiko.

They are all digital dating from the late 1970s to 1990's

Most of these watches I've picked up from watch repair places and jeweller's that were in their junk drawer or about to be thrown out.

I've managed to get some of them going by making one out of two and some have just needed a battery replacement and a good clean up in general.

One good thing about Seiko's is they can be easily dated as the first digit of the serial number indicates what year it was made. Not too sure about Casio though, most of the information I have gotten off the net.

I do have more watches like this so will try and add photos of them when time allows.

***UPDATE*** October 2012-  A recent resurgence with the watches has kicked in again for the first time in ages (don't know why..mad!). But I have acquired a few more new watches and the gem amongst them all was the famous James Bond Seiko G757! Scroll down too see.

Stay tuned...there will be more watches appearing on here....

Lotto Watch WL-703

Got this cool looking watch in the post this morning. Its called a Lotto Watch model  WL-703.  Its rather unusual and I've never seen one before.
Looks be of a Hong Kong origin from 1980's but the build quality of the watch is actually quite good. It has a random number generator for the Lotto Generator which I haven't worked out how that bit operates but everything else is easy to use. Has dual time/countdown timer/stopwatch/alarm etc. The number chart also acts a calender and displays the current day. I like the LCD layout it looks good. Overall a neat watch and in nice overall condition too.

Seiko G757-4000

This wee gem arrived very recently, I got this for not much money, it was advertised as not working, so took a gamble and won the auction. Fortunately it didn't take much to get it going, just needed a module strip down and clean plus removal of some very minor old battery leakage which luckily wasn't starting to corrode anything.
I have read the circuit boards in these can be very temperamental and generally what seems make the 757 module redundant, but in my case I got lucky as its working fine.
Such a cool watch to look at and love the digital-analogue readout! This example has been worn and used but I'm not bothered by that, just thankful to finally owning one of these sought after Seiko's. It also came with the original owners manual and a date written on the back when it was purchased - 16/2/1984.

Seiko D409-5010 (1985) & D138-4010 (1981)

Seiko A259-5050 (1979) & C359-5010 (1979)

Casio 81CS-36 & 60QS-20

Casio DBC-600 & DB-520

Casio ATC-1000 & DW-9700

TC-600 & 79UC-50W

Casio

Casio AX-250 & 79CS-51

60%

Casio W-760 & DW-280

Philips Z17T519 17" Portable TV

This Philips 17 inch b/w set is another later variant of the F2ZN series it has the same chassis as the Philips Z19T532. A nice looking set and made in the the later 1960's. I got this back in 2002 and it does work but has vertical issues, last time I tried it the mains suppression capacitor started smoking so it was turned off rather quickly. Since then it hasn't been switched on since. This is also on the project list to do sometime.

Rear

Back cover removed

Chassis hinged down

Chassis view

Chassis

Line output section

Control panel/speaker/tuner

Valve location chart