A pleasant morning over at @the_teleman workshop today, where he has recently acquired a number of Thorn sets, one being a 9000 in the form of a badged Baird 8773, identical to my Multibroadcast 7773. Despite mine cabinet-wise being in excellent condition, prior to my ownership it had been stored in a sweaty tin shed. This had caused all sorts of rust on nearly all the multi leg silicon components, as such it was a complete mare to get working.
How about The_telemans? Well, onne cap let out the magic smoke, C725 100uF/40v. Changed it, and with no setup done whatsoever, what a result it gave!
First photo, the Telemans set working today, the second, the offending cap, third and fourth are of mine from a good few years ago now after much work.
Maybe SYCLOPS isn't that bad after all, though I still get a nervous twitch around them. I have one waiting to be done, bet I'm not as lucky.
Oh, *those* electrolytics! I had to weed out several of those in a batch of Quad 50Es I've restored for a colleague.
I only ever had one 9000 through my hands, one with the two-button remote: it became my sister-in-law's first TV. Other than a slightly tired tube, it didn't cause any major fuss.
I sold and rented many 9000 series sets, one of the impressive things about them was their ability to maintain line and frame lock on very weak signals. I remember driving my Sunbeam Alpine down to a Wireless World advertiser in London to buy a variac to help repair them, I still have the variac. Traffic was very different then and I was there and back in an afternoon, only a couple of hundred miles round trip from Stratford-upon-Avon and no M40 in those days.
I remember that there was a resistor in the supply to the tube which sometimes went high in value and gave the appearance of a worn tube.
Best wishes, Geoffrey.
