PYE 36

That does look nice, hope she comes up trumps for you

In the line compartment, just make sure there are no EHT leads close to metalwork, TC to EHT rect. especially

Hi Andrew , I'll look out for that , should be more posts later I hope

Chris

Hi Chris,
I had a Pye 67 many moons ago in my bedroom and left it on whilst away for a bit. Came back and the room was filled with thick black smoke and a terrible noise from the Pye. Looked inside, and the wire from the LOPT to the EHT rect had been arcing to the metalwork. All the insulation had burnt away, and was a right mess. There was nothing I could do and chucked the set in the end
Got a right earfull off mum because the whole of upstairs stunk for days afterwards!

I decided to apply voltage to the set to see what would happen but didn't want to shock the main smoother into life .so I used the variac at about 50% for about an hour then increased the voltage gradually over the next couple of hours .
The EHT came up with a nice bright raster but with short frame . I decided to replace the capacitors in the frame stage C88 .022uf , C89 .1uf, C90 .1uf & the cathode bias C87 200 uf . & was rewarded with full height .
At this point I decided to apply a signal just to see what the picture was like .
Test card C was rather out of shape ( a bit like me ) too wide round the middle & not tall enough .
A bit of adjustment of the frame presets got the height ok but the width controll would not work. Checking around the width circuit came up with nothing amiss , time for some serious head scratching then it's that moment when you know your barking up the wrong tree. Of course! I had the same fault on my ferranti 16 inch set some years ago, it was the coupling capacitor for the line drive C111 .01 uf it was reading twice it's original value .
This seemed too easy , a bit of setting up then all was well.

Well, look at that ! Like new it is

There's still a couple of things I'm not quite happy with , the Lin pots seem to be a bit erratic , the 2 meg one is the worst & getting the sides straight is taking a bit of fiddling with those little magnets on the side of the scan coils, apart from that the set run well for about 3 hours with only a little shrinkage in height . The width stays solid no moisture in the lopt then

Over all this is a nice set , no flywheel sync like its brother the 40f but a nice set .
I'm going to have to find one a bit more challenging next time .

Very nice !!

Looks very good Chris.
Nice job !

Marc.

I am trying to remember which set this is, does it have the IF strip attached to the back of the tuner unit?
If you could post some more photos of the chassis etc that would be good.
The Cathodion CRT's , when in their service life I found them excellent, of course I have no idea how they be after 50 years.
Thanks for posting, brings back many memories.
Frank

I am trying to remember which set this is, does it have the IF strip attached to the back of the tuner unit?

The tuner is of the integrated type with the transistor I/f panel strapped to the back of it.

I know the one now, thanks for the update.
Something in the back of my mind says this was the first solid state front end/IF strip that Pye produced and was rushed out at the behest of Mr Stanley the MD of Pye, although that could well be wrong. It was not one of my favourites for performance or reliabilty in this assembly although yours seems to be performing very well. The later S/S one with the IF strip attached to the main chassis and the D/S switching removed proved much more reliable.
Still you have got it working and saved another bit of history.
Frank

Thanks guys for all your comments , reading them made me wonder what model first used the integrated tuner with the I/f unit fixed to the back of it ?

Chris

It could well be this model. I have an Olympic (368) in which the If is mounted on the chassis so it doesn't look as if Pye did it for long .
This is the tuner and IF panel used in the Television magazine project TV, the IF/tuner could be bought surplus from one
of their advertisers. It seems they ran out quite quickly. I had a small screen version, possibly 17" given to me back in the Mid 70's but the IF panel was missing so I never did get it going. Well done finding this one I bet there's not many left!
I never had a problem with Cathedon Tubes. My Invicta 11U has it's original still fitted and it is still excellent. I think I read somewhere that they were part of Mullard.

Rich.

Hi Rich , I thought I read somewhere that the cathodion crts were part of PYE , my 11u has a mullard crt fitted , I have a pam that uses the 11u chassis that has a mullard fitted & the Ekco that uses the 11u chassis has a Mazda crt ,it seems they used whatever was available at the time.
As far as the I/f panel is concerned the PYE 31 had a I/f strapped to the tuner, I have a 32 that has one & as you have seen the 36 has one too .
Both my Olympics have chassis mounted I/F panels
Correct me if I'm wrong but the 31is the earliest I can find & the latest was the 36. The 40f also had one but this was before the 36......now I'm confusing myself
If anyone would like to prove me wrong ..please do because I feel I'm loosing the plot somewhat
Cheers
Chris

Yes they did seem to change the chassis type fairly regularly after the 11U, and produced a few short lived variants between the 11U and settling on the Olympic chassis. It's a wonder they made any money!
I have a few sets with the 11U chassis, an Invicta 7070U, (which was my bedroom set in the mid 70's) two Ekcos with plate glass implosion screen and push button uhf tuner, a Pye with rotary uhf and a Pye Tv - Radio - gram which is like a long sideboard, it takes about 5 minutes to walk past it! the Ekcos have Mullard tubes the Pyes both have Cathodon tubes with fenbride guards. the Invicta has a Cathodon with hard plastic implosion guard.
I would say you are right and it was a bit pot luck what tube you got, I have never seen an 11U fitted with a Mazda that I can remember but there were a few Thorn 950's fitted with Cathodon tubes in the 70's thanks to me! .
Did Mullard make a twin panel tube? I can only remember seeing Brimar (in the KB VC series) and Cathodon in the Pye Ekco Ferranti 11U sets. Mullard seem to have gone from unprotected/Fenbrige guard straight to The Panorama rimguard tubes?
Rich.

Hi Rich , I forgot about the PYE trio , I had one some years ago I must try & find another .
My Ekco set has a Mazda crt & all Mazda valves but the PYE 11u has a mullard crt & all mullard valves . I wonder if the chassis was shipped out to Ekco & they put there own twist on things .

Chris

I'm sure that Cathodeon was a Pye trade mark - you never see them in other sets. Whether they actually had a small plant making them - they obviously couldn't satisfy demand for the entire Pye Group output - or it was a branding used for batches of tubes bought in from other sources from time to time, I don't know.

I'm sure that Cathodeon was a Pye trade mark

It was. You also see 'Cathodeon'-branded crystals used in their R/T sets.
For crystals, see https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00000816311

For the rest, the name is now owned by Heraeus Noblelight Analytics Limited:
https://www.ipo.gov.uk/tmcase/Results/1/UK00000701717