Martinel 23· Spanish TV

Saw this tidy looking set on one of the local Spanish forums. Look too good pass bye. When the set was back in the shop, off with the back. It’s not a valve TV, well apart from the CRT. Nicely made. Voltage tapping was set to 125V, so that was changed. The chassis was covered in an inch of untouched dust, so that was a good sign. Quick vacuum, which pulled off a heatsink from what looked to be a video drive transistor. I think this set dates to around late 70s. I am always worried about powering up solid state sets at low mains inputs, just in case the output stages get caught in an odd nasty conducting state. Let the mains power build with current limiting in place. Got a loud burst of static through the speaker, a good sign. But that soon vanished. With the power up to full and nothing unpleasant happening, a look at the screen, showed a good blank raster.

The set has 2 tuners, VHF and UHF. The modulator set to channel 35 UHF and the set tuned in, we had an unsynchronized picture. Lots of adjustments and got a reasonable picture, linearity was bad. Height was a bit low and sound only at full volume was distorted. A quick check showed some of the Philips type electrolytic were starting to get hot. Replaced most of the blue electrolytic capacitors. I think the main smoothing capacitors will need replacing as there is a slight wobble at the edges of the screen. Now we had good audio and after the set had been on for half an hour, height slowly increased. The set had been sat for some 30 years. The neck magnets adjusted to give a centered picture. Quite a few more jobs to be done, but with a good tube, it will be worth it.

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