Iberia T-2161 tube TV

This TV came into my hands through a local online ad — I saw it at a good price and immediately thought it had to be mine. A valve (tube) TV is a great and uncommon restoration challenge. There are plenty of tube radios out there, but TVs are a whole different story — for obvious reasons, they’re incredibly hard to come by these days. So I set myself the goal of restoring it.

I haven’t started the restoration yet, which will likely take some time, as the circuit is quite large and complex. Many components have deteriorated over time — resistors have drifted in value, electrolytic capacitors are dried out, paper capacitors are cracked and leaky, and so on. Still, I couldn’t resist the temptation to power it up in its current state.

As expected, it didn’t work properly — only a horizontal line appeared on screen (unfortunately I didn’t take a picture), which indicates that the vertical deflection stage isn’t working as it should. Also, when turning it off, a bright dot remains in the center of the screen and slowly fades away, which is a clear sign the anti-spot circuit isn’t working correctly either.

After that quick power-up test, it was time to open the TV and check the circuits — here are a few pictures:

As you can see, the circuit is in pretty rough shape. There are lots of capacitors that need replacing, and a lot of work ahead before I can get any kind of image on the screen. I’ve also noticed that it’s been repaired several times over its lifetime — which is to be expected, really.

One of the things that caught my attention about this TV is the presence of what seems to be an automatic contrast control based on ambient light. On the front panel, there’s an LDR (light-dependent resistor) that handles this interesting feature. It also uses an American picture tube — the 23CP4 — which is even rarer to find around here. For instance, its filament requires 6.3V at 0.6A, which isn’t compatible with the P-series valves, so there’s a dedicated transformer just for powering the picture tube’s filament. There’s also a set of warnings attached to the tube that must be taken into account:

The television has 17 valves, with the following functions:

Without a doubt, this is an entertaining project that will take me some time. I will be sharing updates on the blog.