Something different: Stella ST8314.

[Tazman1966]

My Stella version of the 17TG100U is also easily my best 405 line set Mark.

Meanwhile back on topic, well done David. A super result!

[Heatercathodeshort]

Do I detect a bit of shading on the left David? Could be the A1 decoupler. Looks great. fantastic linearity. John.

[FERNSEH]

Persuant to my policy of glasnost (openess) I have to report the Stella TV has developed a frame oscillator fault.
I just hope that the blocking oscillator transformer has not gone faulty.

DFWB.

[FERNSEH]

How do you like that? This set fixes itself!

DFWB.

[Heatercathodeshort]

Hello David,
The ST8314U is fitted with 'Autofix.' You turn the brightness to minimum, contrast to maximum and all other controls mid way. Disconnect from the mains and after five minutes turn volume control to maximum and switch on. The controls will reset to their correct positions. You may have done this without realizing. J.

[brianc]

Great picture David. These early Philips are certainly capable sets.. You didn't post any under-chassis pictures of the ST8314. Was it the normal Philips arrangements with vertical tag strips and lots of linking wires between them. The 385A I did and the 563A which I am working on used this technique and I found (finding) them quite hard to work on. Could we have some pickies?

[FERNSEH]

Hi Brian,
I found this picture of the underside of the timebase chassis before any work was attempted on it. Construction technique: There is another set of tagstrips below the ones that appear on the picture so the the components on them are positioned perpendicular to the chassis. Some were easy to get at and others not so easy.
Since this picture was taken just about all the black pitch capacitors have been replaced, they all had leakages to some degree. Some were right down to 50Kohm and others as high as 5 to 10 Megohms.
I'm not sure if all the extra line sync pulse clippers and shapers are worth all the bother. Later on Philips did not incorporate such circuit refinements, just opted for the simple sync circuits as found in other makes.

DFWB.

[brianc]

That looks even more difficult to work on than the 385A which I did some while ago David. That construction method reminds me of early EMI broadcast TV equipment - their telecines in particular. It was almost impossible to get to the valve holders even just for measurements!
This is what I meant by the vertical tag strips and the myriads of interconnecting wires. To me, it shows lack of thought during the mechanical layout design stages!

[Mikey405]

Originally Posted by Heatercathodeshort

The ST8314U is fitted with 'Autofix.' You turn the brightness to minimum, contrast to maximum and all other controls mid way. Disconnect from the mains and after five minutes turn volume control to maximum and switch on. The controls will reset to their correct positions. You may have done this without realizing. J.

That is very good John.

I wish some of my sets had this feature. Perhaps it's unique to Philips-derived models.

[Tazman1966]

The Austrians also make use of a similar feature. My Korting has some intermittent brightness variations from time to time but all I have to do is give it a bit of a hard stare and it stops playing up, hehe!

Sorry rather OT :/

[FERNSEH]

The chassis has been reinstalled into the cabinet. Since doing that a minor fault has manifested itself, a rumbling noise. It turned out to be a large electrolytic capacitor on the RF chassis having a bad earth connection.
The capacitor is one of those types with the twist on lugs to attach it to the chassis. A standard capacitor clip should solve the problem. Otherwise the set is truly excellent. Switch on any time and a locked picture appears, no fiddling with hold controls necessary.

DFWB.

[Mikey405]

Well done David. That's a lovely set.

Kind regards.

From Mike.