Zenith Royal 2000
 

Got this radio from a local antique mall the other day. I’ve been looking for one of these for a long time and I was quite ecstatic to find this radio, and for only $15. This set is in excellent condition except for some dents and scrapes and it works and sounds excellent. Only thing wrong with this radio is the band switch is very dirty.

Thease things were sorta the "Little Brothers" to the T/Os & as such, they usually are excellent performers. I had one, stupidly gave it away to some guys who worked out in the plant where I worked, they hacked it up w/an AC adaptor. Somebody oughta plant their foot up my heinie.... I think the kludge actually worked, but then someone sprayed shaving cream all over the radio, & that killed it. I dunno WTF happened to it after that.... This was a good 20 yrs ago, long B4 I REALLY got into vintage electronics, but I still didn't appreciate what happened to that poor set. No excuse for low-rent shyte like that...

I have one with almost no audio... one day I gotta make it work.

I have a T/O 3000 (AM, FM, SW) and, as Sandy said, it is an excellent performer. I never had a Royal 2000, though, but from what I just read they are every bit as high-performance as any of the T/Os, tube or SS. My T/O 3000 will get FM stations from 80-100 miles away, using just the whip antenna stored in the handle. (I live in a small town about 45-50 miles from most Cleveland FM stations; the TO 3000 gets every one of them, to say nothing of other stations in northeastern Ohio and even northwestern Pennsylvania.)

The standard AM broadcast band on my T/O 3000, however, is dead silent, and has been from the day I got the set (I won it in an eBay auction a few years ago). I've been told the problem might be an open AM oscillator coil, but since I use the radio mostly on FM, I haven't done anything with the AM section yet. The shortwave bands all work very well, so the open coil must be one that is used only on the standard AM broadcast band.

BTW, Zenith was planning to make and eventually market a multiband portable radio to follow the Royal 7000. However, the set, which was to be known as the "Royal 8000", never made it even to the prototype stage before the company went out of business in the late 1990s. I read an article somewhere, I don't remember where, that said the Royal 8000 was to include stereo FM in addition to AM and SW, and a digital frequency readout.

The 7000 had stereo FM (only thru the headphone jack) so it sounds like the only thing new world have been digital tuning.

These radios were built way beyond any other portable PERIOD
Using PTO in the FM is unheard of except in car radios, super
high end HiFi & maybe some mil spec stuff. Rock solid stability
but expensive. A true tank.
Only problems were dirty transistor sockets ( TO's also) battery
boxes & dirty controls. Everyone should have one.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Zenith had a long tradition-at least until they went under & became under the thumb of the mighty Itchipuse' concern of Japan, Korea, China, whatever- & they produced radios thatoften advanced the state of the art. Too bad this tradition died not too long after Cdr Eugene F. McDonald, Jr succumbed as well in 1958. STILL would have loved to have seen/been there if the Commander & David Sarnoff had ever gotten to take their gloves off & "Had At It", they neither one could STAND the other. McDonald was sort of a patrician mid-westerner, Sarnoff was a hardscrabble Jewish immigrant boy who'd pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Pretty sure BOTH were, to say the least, NOTORIOUSLY difficult to work for-One of Sarnoff's reputed quips was "I DON'T GET Ulcers-I GIVE Them", & w/his military naval background, the Commander had little trouble turning the air blue, as well. But both, arguably, kinda bet their companies on ideas that were little more than dreams-The commander on the Trans-Oceanic, & Sarnoff-on color TV.

Up until the rise of transistor radio imports, you could say the transoceanic was the flagship of Zenith innovation. Their patents in television remote control, electromagnetic convergence, and their dodges of RCA's color patents kinda took over in the 60's...In the 70's the Chromacolor Black matrix CRT was a great innovation (it was as big a leap in color CRT tech as the contemporaneous trinitron)...They kinda started grasping at straws from there...Acquiring failing Heathkit mostly for their computer line but not growing in to a lead there and later dumping it, letting the FCC con-them into investing tons of money into a NTSC compatible HD format the FCC ultimately dropped compatibility requirements for....The last sound thing they did for the consumer electronics industry created the wireless data transmission format that is in ATSC DTV, but by then they were on their last legs.

I have a 2000, but yours is in better shape. Mine did come with a metal cased wall-wart AC adapter. I believe the 2000 was the first American made
all transistor AM-FM radio. I haven't gotten around to working on mine.

My Royal 2000 had almost no audio when I bought it at a garage sale for 50c (!).

It had three in line caps branded Nashville that seemed to be made of a ceramic that appeared to be porous, and I think that caused them to dry up.

I had a pair of 2000's at one time; it's hard to believe how many they sold when you consider what they cost when new; as I recall, from an ad in National Geographic, they were around $200. A portable radio for the price of a decent b/w TV.

I seem to remember mine working fairly well as found, aside from the typical noisy controls & flaky battery holders.

Mine also had weak audio. I finally pulled the chassis out and replaced all of the electroyltic caps and now it works great.
It seems hard to find out without a dent in the that front metal edge.
More audio with the 5x7 speaker than with the 4x6 in the TO.
Bob

The more I read about this set or the T/As the more I want one! I have a Royal 51 which is a good performer but sounds like crap due to it's tiny speaker. It also has a "hair trigger" volume pot that blasts you out of the room that I can't seem to fix

I have, and love, my 7000. To really shine she needs a good antenna.