Pye B18T found, how did I do?

[12jslater]

I saw this the other day at an antiques shop and asked for it to be put to one side as I was using the bus and have collected it today for £55 it is complete. How did I do on the price?

[HamishBoxer]

Very fair I think.

[G6Tanuki]

That's cheap! *really* cheap!

[assuming they're all OK the EF50s are worth a fiver apiece!]

[line sync]

You did very well indeed assuming that was £5.50p you paid.
That model is either the BV20 or LV20.

Robin

[12jslater]

Sorry, its me being stupid and not checking what price I put £55 I meant.

[G6Tanuki]

When doing that particular job the Pye designers must have rubbed their hands with glee at the range of truly top-notch valves and CRTs they had available from Mullard/Philips.

And had a quiet sense of warm Schadenfreude when looking 'over the fence' at those designers contractually obliged to implement a TV using Mazda's second-rate tubes and even-worse HT rectifiers [U801 anybody?]

Will be interesting to see what you have to do to get "First Light".

Picture two, don't throw away the Christmas pudding container!

[12jslater]

I shouldn't imagine much (hopefully anyway) my 83 year old next door neighbour was a television repair man and he saw me offloading it and i was speaking to him and he remembered that they were quite reliable sets

[mark pirate]

I have restored a few of these little sets, they work well once restored.
There can be problems with the EF50's making poor contact, and the LOPT can give problems with EHT decreasing due to damp ingress, but seem less prone to failure than a TV22!

Picture two, don't throw away the Christmas pudding container!

Wise words, these make an excellent replacement for the missing "Bowler hat".

By the way, your set is an LV20 circa 1949, the B18T is the 1948 model with slightly different cabinet.

Mark

[12jslater]

One immediate problem I have found is that the Mullard PL38M valve has a crack in the glass and thus needs replacing I shall have to put up a wanted post.

Everything else appears to be fairly good under the decades of grime, I shall start electrical work tomorrow, tonight has just been spent cleaning the massive amounts of dirt from the chassis.

[1100 man]

Everything else appears to be fairly good under the decades of grime, I shall start electrical work tomorrow, tonight has just been spent cleaning the massive amounts of dirt from the chassis.

Hi,
You obviously get the same sense of excitement when a new TV project appears, and just have to get stuck right in!
It's a miracle that the tube has not got broken considering the bowl is missing: that neck is just asking to get snapped off in an antique shop!

I guess the R&D budget got used up on the electronics and there was none left when it came to cabinet styling!! Mind you, the War had only recently finished and there was still rationing, so to produce TV's at all was quite an achievement!

Hope you enjoy the restoration: Do you have a standards converter yet? If not, what are your plans for 405 signals?

All the best
Nick

[12jslater]

Funny story actually I had been looking for an early post war Pye for a while with no real luck so last week I purchase a gorgeous 17" 1957 Stella television with a good strong crt and walking into an antique shop this little bliter was staring me square in the face, it was one of these dreadful shabby chic antiques centres and this, bless it was just past some awful scented candle and "retro tea rooms" aghhh!!! I was with a friend (we're both 16 and I asked my friend to help me fetch the poor old thing down from a glass shelf and I finally agreed on a price and when I came back upstairs to remove the for sale sign as it had been reserved for me to collect, a man was talking to my friend and saying how it would make "a lovely prop" I soon stepped in and told him what's going to happen to it

The chap also thought that the screen magnifier combined with the purple sheet of Perspex would make it show the images in colour??!!??

A standards converter is needed I am currently saving for one.

[Freya]

A good set, the rear sliders might need replacement which is common. You will be lucky to find a metallised PL38M, the standard PL38 is easier but try to get NOS.
You can work on the chassis without the speaker / transformer plugged in but the output valve will get rather hot if left on for a prolonged time.

[McMurdo]

You did well considering it was in a shop. Not a criticism of shops by the way!

[Boom]

You can use a PL38 instead of a PL38M but you might suffer some Barkhausen oscillations. There's probably no reason why you can't wrap kitchen foil around the bottom bit of the valve.

I have a NOS boxed one around here somewhere that I bought for my B18. I got fed up looking for a set with a good CRT so sold the sets and kept the PL38M.

Other nightmares were the rear sliders, low emmision EF50s' and the EF50 holders. Not one of my favorite tv's.

[12jslater]

I know what you're saying about those valve holders, it is one of those sets that is simple in theory yet can be awkward in practice.

I feel like in some places the chassis is too crowded and other places it seems fairly sparse. It is all fun anyway haha

[Graham G3ZVT]

That's a lovely set Jake, and a fair price. Its unpretentious looks and small size really endears it to me, and that cabinet should scrub up well.

This set is a TRF receiver, so a little simpler than many.

I hope you get as much enjoyment as I did restoring and viewing your set as I did with my Cossor 916, which has capacitors date-stamped 1949 but was probably built in 1950.

It was also bought for £50 from an antiques shop, it was untouched apart from one thing, someone, perhaps the shop proprietor had already fitted the plastic pudding basin!

https://www.***********/gp/g3zvt/612SEJ

Obviously you will need a source of 405 line pictures and sound, but you don't need to spend £200 on a standards converter if you don't want to, I've just put this together to show you an alternative way.

https://youtu.be/ahzdx4KgWBg

[12jslater]

Obviously you will need a source of 405 line pictures and sound, but you don't need to spend £200 on a standards converter if you don't want to, I've just put this together to show you an alternative way.

I cannot thank you enough for this I am 16 and I didn't want to spend £200 on an aurora however I feel eventually will get one (due to sheer convenience), at this age £80 for an AM transmitter hurt me enough

[Graham G3ZVT]

The modulator I built was this one.

http://www.earlytelevision.org/405_modulator.html

The picture it produces is excellent but I was really impressed with the sound. The designer has used a second MC1374 just for the sound, which seems like overkill, but it really pays off. In fact, if I was to build an MW Pantry transmitter it would probably be based on this circuit, plus a PA stage, as I can't see any reason why, with appropriate values of C12 and L2, it shouldn't work.

[Brigham]

What would you use to obtain the 405-line video for the Early Television Museum modulator?