Indesit T12 SGB

[mark pirate]

I picked up this rather sad looking 1970's set for a pound, as the owner did not want to take it home again!

Having had one of these many years ago (that I could never seem to get working properly) I thought I would give it a go, also I wanted to confirm my recently acquired CRT tester was working properly before trusting it with a more valuable CRT.

As can be seen from the photos, it was really filthy, it was also missing it's special mains lead, but as these sets go, it was in reasonable condition cabinet wise, they were made of a really thin and nasty plastic that tended to crack with little provocation, this one had yellowed quite badly and was covered with white paint spots.

On removing the back, I was pleasantly surprised with the chassis, there were no signs of any previous repairs, so I decided to hook up the CRT to my tester.

The tube is a Philips A31-410W, looking it up in the setup chart told me I had the correct base, and to set the heater volts for 11v, with this done I let the tester and tube warm up for a few mins, then carried out an emission test, it was almost to the end of the scale indicating the CRT was excellent

I worked out which wires were for the mains input, and soldered in a temporary mains lead and connected it to my variac set at 150v.
There was no signs of life, this was traced to the power switch not making reliable contact, a good dose of Servisol and a few rigorous presses restored operation, this time the set came to life, so I connected it to a freeview box with modulator and managed to get a reasonable picture, but no sound.

After tracing this fault to cracked solder joints on the volume pot, I reflowed all the pots and gave them a good dose of Servisol, I now had sound, but a bit distorted.

I decided to fully strip the set to clean the cabinet, with the tube removed the main part of the cabinet was tackled first.
I have found that Flash kitchen spray with bleach works wonders on discoloured plastic, so it was soaked and scrubbed with an old nail brush, it came up quite well, but still on the beige side of white.

I gave the same treatment to the back and control panel, then polished it up with T-cut, the tinted screen cover took a bit more effort, as it had a few scratches and lots of paint spots to remove.

The tube was refitted, the tuner was given a good clean as it was a bit touchy, and the chassis refitted.

On powering up the set, I was greeted with a cracking picture, all controls were now working fine, but I still had distortion on the sound.

Removing the speaker cured the problem, on these sets it is held to a plastic insert with a piece of springy metal, this was twisting the speaker frame causing the voicecoil to rub, rotating the speaker 180 degrees cured it totally.

The last thing was to sort out a mains lead, I drilled a hole at the bottom of the mains socket away from the pins, and threaded through a new lead, if I ever find the correct plug the lead can simply be removed.

These sets use a special plug for the aerial connection, luckily it was still present, albeit hanging on by one of the leads that went to the inbuilt loop aerial, (which was long gone) so I made up an adaptor to suit a standard aerial plug.

The set is working very well with no issues, not bad for a set around 40 years old that was not known to be reliable with all original parts, although probably helped by the quality of the ITT components used.

I do like the look of this set, shame it is not the orange version!

Mark

[mark pirate]

The finished set...

[Lloyd 1985]

Nice work on the little Indesit

You got that for a very good price too, I paid quite a bit more for mine! I have the original power lead with mine, but not the aerial plug!

They do give a good picture, for some reason mine came with some green plastic stuck over the tube face, I guessed it had probably been used with an old Sinclair ZX81 or similar!

Regards,
Lloyd.

[alanworland]

Thats come up a treat!
Great to think all this 'old' stuff is still being used.
Nice looking set.

Alan

[Hybrid tellies]

Nice looking set. They had an unusual PSU and was the only battery/mains set that did not use a mains transformer

[mark pirate]

I am sure this set has had little use, the guy I bought it from told me it had been in the loft at least 25 years, but the power lead could not be found.

Apart from a couple of bad solder joints and dirty pots, this set needed no other electrical work, the picture is excellent and needed no adjustment, I have run it for over 4 hours with no problems, maybe the sound fault was why it was put in the loft all those years ago?

I do like the style of this set, it is very lightweight as well.
From what I started with, I think the cabinet has come up well, it is at least a uniform colour now, I don't think the orange cabinet version suffered from colour loss.

As far as I am aware, there were three versions of this set, one had a rotary tuner, followed by the four pushbutton version, and the last of these had an eight button tuner.

I have not tried it on 12v yet, but I have worked out the correct polarity.

Mark

[Lloyd 1985]

There's also some that had a chrome handle too, I'm sure I've seen them on both orange and white ones.

Lloyd.

[Tazman1966]

Very nice indeed and I think nicer than the orange version. I see you left the "Dymo" tape labels that someone has fitted...

[mark pirate]

I left the dymo labels intact, as they are part of it's history, and removing them would have exposed the real colour of the cabinet

It must be over 30 years since I delved in to one of these, the chassis certainly bought back memories.

Lloyd, I think you are right about the handles, I am sure I have seen an orange one with chrome handle, but I think it was the later version.

Mark

[michamoo]

I have not repaired one of those since 1982, id quite like one now .

[Welsh Anorak]

Hi
Good little set! Odd how some people never think that a little cleaning will sell their set for a much better price - still, their loss is your gain.
I have mixed memories of these - I repaired an orange one for a work colleague of my Mum's while still at school. The repair was successful, but on tightening up the last screw there was that dreaded click - hissss noise. Fifteen pounds plus carriage later the set was working - my first 'real' repair and a loss-making one at that. Should have taken that as an omen!
Never seen an eigh-button one - the early models had a rotary tuner at the bottom right.
There was a GEC without a mains transformer as well, I remember - not a welcome visitor to the workshop.
Glyn

[Steve_P]

There is also a similar looking set made by Unitra. I must get it out and have a look. Thr controls are different and there is no strange mains lead fitting.

Now, a circuit....

Cheers,

Steve P.

[mark pirate]

Hi Glyn, The tube does look very vulnerable, I was very careful with mine when removing the base, the evacuation pip looks very fragile.

I have found a photo of the 8 button tuner version, spoils the nice symmetrical design in my opinion.

Mark