Inter TV-356B hybrid black and White TV
I came across this rather stylish early ‘70s TV being sold locally for 20€. Did I want another vintage TV? I am told not.
A Spanish made set by Inter. Looking inside the set, you get a feeling that there was a liaison between the Spanish designer and a German Fraulein from Grundig, judging by the components and layout. The story was that, the set had been repaired in 1996, put in a cupboard and left. As with all these early Spanish sets, always check the mains voltage setting, as in the ‘70s 125V was common. And yes, the selector was set to 125V. Change that and clean out most of the loose dust and rubbish from inside. Visual check seemed to suggest there was nothing nasty waiting, so power up slowly with current limit in place and monitored the HT rails. Left it cooking for 30 minutes. Switch off and the HT very slowly dropped, indicating the electrolytics were not too bad. The current being drawn from the mains was low and no heater activity around the valves. I hoped that the set had not been plugged into 220V whilst set to 125V. A bit of time spent showed that there was a dry joint on pin 4 of the PCL85 field output valve opening the heaters. With that sorted, left the set running at 170V with the limiter bulb in place for another 20 mins. Things were getting mildly warm and thinking that surely the line oscillator would not have started, I touched the top of the line output valve. I can say for certain, we had EHT. Looked at the screen and we had a dim narrow raster. Wow.
With excitement reaching fever pitch, we slowly wound up the supply to full 220v and switched out the current limit. We had a good bright raster and lots of pops and crackles on the sound. Connected up a UHF modulator and satellite box to see what we could get. These sets are dual standard, in as much as they have both UHF and VHF tuners. 625 line only. Tuning the set around showed some spurious noise, but nothing else. After spending 20 mins checking supplies to the tuners etc, I realized I had not connected the output of the RF modulator to the antenna socket. With that sorted, we had sound, but the line timebase frequency was way out. The slug in the line oscillator coil was very loose and had to be wound in 2 turns to get full lock. Frame height and linearity was sorted after a couple of open circuit resistors were changed.
Now had a very respectable picture and sound. The pops and bangs on the sound started to disappear after time as the capacitors healed. The picture has quite a wobble, so I reckon we need replacement Farads in the PSU at some point. The screen has a darkend glass front, increasing contrast, bit like those KB sets in the late ‘60s. The tube however does appear to have a rimband.
So, lots of remedial work to be done and a good clean up, but a lovely TV. Cabinet is great and 2 large elliptical loudspeakers give a great sound. As with lots of Spanish sets, these have bass and treble controls.
