I am in the process of restoring a 1956 Pye W101 B&W Television. It is 100% original with it's original CRT. It has the magnetic focus and Ion trap still fitted.
The cabinet is restored and the next process is to very gently fire up the chassis. I have owned the set for many years and partly restored the electronics some years ago.
Most of the paper caps were replaced and the last time it was powered up it produced a very bright and very watchable picture with good sound.
That was about thirty years ago however and it's been in storage since. I finally had the time and inclination to finish the project.
I'll attempt to post a picture of the restored cabinet with the CRT now fitted.
The only thing I'm missing is the three pin L shaped mains plug and lead. If anyone knows where I might obtain one of these I would be very grateful.
My next task is to gently wake up the power supply electrolytics with an external supply. Hopefully they will still be o/k as they are can types with several caps in one can an would be impossible to obtain now. I don't want to have to resort to fitting radial caps under the chassis if I can help it.
Stay tuned for the next phase in this restoration.

Hi Irext

Good luck with the power cable. I just checked the last manufacturer of them, HH Peaston. Gone. Bought by CMI who make stuff for mines.
Not a good idea to use an old one you may find anyway because it will almost You might have to cast a functional replacement in epoxy. I can help with that.

You can still get NOS twistlug can electros. I got mine for my AWA restoration from Tubedepot.com but they still needed to be reformed.
As I recall Pye used Ducon clamp mount cans. These were much better than the UCC caps the AWA used.

The way I normally reform electros is to use a 150v battery radio power supply that has a high internal resistance (~2k ohms) to mitigate accidental valve filament shorts to B+ when working on the radio. I leave it connected to the B+ line of the chassis (with no heaters running) for anything up to a week, until the voltage comes up to the open circuit voltage of the supply. You should ideally use a higher forming voltage but I've found this slower, gentler approach works well. My experience has been that unless there is visible evidence of leaking or venting, the electros come up just fine and you don't need to replace them.

I worked on lots of W101 and W201s in my youth, they were very popular. They work very well. So any questions, please ask.

Thanks for your response Ian. I still have a few paper caps to replace. The .1 mfd boost cap has it's insides trying to get out! As far as a high voltage supply source to reform the electros, I have an old AWA line amplifier which uses 6CA7's etc. It is fully functional so I plan to use it's HT rail via 2K ohms or so as the reforming supply, bearing in mind what the DC working voltage of the original cap is. I too worked on many of these back in the day. In good nick they are an extremely good performer and were always good at fringe area reception. They were built before the manufacturers worked out how to cut corners. When I was a teenager I had a console version of this set and it was my first foray into repairing TV's so I have a soft spot for this model.

Cheers : Ian T.

After reforming all the electros, replacing all the paper caps and associated out of tolerance resistors and general tidy up of chassis I gritted my teeth and powered it up today. No sign of life, nothing. Then I spotted the two 6N3 rectifier tubes sitting on the bench (idiot!). Fitted those and tried again. I was very soon greeted with a snowy raster and noise from the speaker. The height and linearity are very interactive at the moment so still some work to do but all in all a great result. Pictures are bright with good contrast. I'm running it off an old Arlunya generator at present but will use a VHF modulator and DVD player ultimately. I'll try and post a picture.

Photo uploaded to Post 4.

Further update. Trying to track down vert linearity fault. Replaced all paper caps and out of tolerance resistors. Still has crushing at top of frame. After much measuring and re measuring tried swapping the 6BM8's from Audio O/P and Vert O/P. Problem completely solved. Vert linearity can now be adjusted to perfection. Audio O/P is fine also.

The Vert O/P stage doesn't seem to like the NOS Trigon 6BM8 for some reason. The only fault left is some Hor pulling floating through. It's very slight but I reckon it's floating through at 50Hz rate. I'll try bypassing the supply filter electrolytics and hopefully nail that one. Otherwise it's perfect. Just need to source some tapered timber legs now. I'm running it with a DVD player via an old VHS player which has a CH1 modulator.

As I recall those Trigon valves (the British made ones anyway) were not that good. The audio amp isn't so fussy about its 6BM8.

Re 50Hz hum, have checked that your signal is good? You might have an earth loop in your DVD to VCR link.

Heater-cathode leakage in V21, the 6AL5 horizontal discriminator, was a relatively common fault in the W101 - W201.

If the displacement is 50Hz (one band) it's not going to be the electrolytics, that would give you 100Hz (2 bands).

If you suspect 50Hz hum on the HT rail, it's possible one of the rectifier 6N3s (V10, V11) is O/C - commonly a bad connection at the valve socket. If so, you will notice its mate getting a bit of colour on the anode at it's forced to carry the entire load. If you don't see that, look elsewhere, 6N3s will be OK.

I got the legs for my AWA from Bunnings, of all places! I had to cut them down (it was an AWA 209C) but I just stained them to match the cabinet (Feast-Watson stains work well, diluted) and then a few coats of Estapol.

Thanks for the tips Ian.

The discriminator sounds promising. I'll swap the two 6AL5's and see what happens.

I've tried several sources of vision with the same Hor pulling occurring so I don't think it's an earth loop. If my memory serves correctly this was an issue when I first acquired the set many years ago when it was then viewing the analogue TV band.

It's quite minor but annoying nevertheless as it is the only outstanding fault.

Regarding the legs, a friend of mine has just given me four suitable tapered legs from a discarded coffee table of the same era.
They will require stripping and staining etc and a new thread of the correct size and pitch inserted but will look the part.

It will be quite a handsome unit when finished.

I just hope the line output transformer holds up. I don't plan to leave it running for any extended periods so it should last o/k.

It's more for demonstration purposes. A replacement LOPT would be an impossible find I reckon.

I found a DVD of the Three Stooges in 4:3 which comes up quite well and is period correct. I was quietly chuckling to myself in the workshop.

Cheers : Ian T.

Breathe easy, I don't recall ever having to change a line transformer in a W101 or W201.

T19, T20 yes, but they were a different design. Got fixed part-way through the T21 run.

Nice result you have there! Marrickville Pyes were always well engineered and performed well.