Zenith Mid 70's Chromacolor II 19FC45
 

I guess it's a 75 or 76? My retired Zenith dealer friend dropped this off over the Labor day weekend. This was his personal set and it's obviously had the 4 legged orange cap recall and updated vertical module. Looks to be the original CRT, and has a very nice picture. Personally I'm not too fond of the cabinet style with the plastic and particle board construction. I would much rather it had a compact metal cabinet. I'm still storing my folks 27 inch set with this same chassis, so if someone want's this 19 inch beauty shoot me a pm. Thought I'd post it here so it's documented, as 19 inch Zenith CCII sets don't surface to often around here.

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By 1976 I believe the only metal cabinet sets were 23" screen and bigger...All the 19" and smaller table sets I've seen from the mid 70's were either plastic or fake wood mini-consoles like that.

That particle board and plastic construction is what puts me off most Zeniths of the era. I'm fine with table sets in plastic cabinets, but making a console-style cabinet out of plastic just doesn't work.

Yep. And in my opinion putting a fake wood mini-console on a fake wood(plastic) pedestal stand gets double the ugly points. :nono: :sigh:

Agree it's sad but the writing was already on the wall. So at least they were still making the most of it with engineering about the best chassis on the market at that time.

That's probably the "truest" statement on mid-to-late 1970's Zenith consoles ever said. I love me some Zenith, but the fake wood is a turn-off. I know everybody got into that for a few years, but for some reason, Zenith seemed to have more than their fair share of plastic faux wood. Thankfully, Zenith returned to a higher % of decent wood in the 1980's that helped out tremendously. When I sold Zenith during the 1990's, their console line was far bigger than the competition, and generally higher quality cabinetry.

That being said, I'd still love to have the set this thread is about. It looks like a real keeper.

Thanks for the feedback! I like having confirmation that I have my head screwed on straight... well, straight enough to get by.

I had the '73 console I just couldn't be bothered fixing up because the cabinet was an eyesore. I'm guessing that's a big part of why the Avanté was and still is so popular. I had an '88 console as well with the 9-516; even with photofinished particle board it looked a lot nicer. Sure the chassis wasn't as good but it was a lot better than what I've seen in other sets of the era. Perhaps Zenith's prolonged use of the good ol' 25V CRT left more resources available for things that really mattered.

The plastic console-style cabinetry, as undesirable as it is, works okay for this mini-console and similar units. The designs of those I have seen photos of aren't nearly as garish as those of most of the bigger ones.

Well maybe these mini-consoles appealed to the little old ladies living in apartments crowd. :D Plastic or not, I just think it looks goofy to shrink down a full sized floor console design when you know it's going to be placed up on a stand.:scratch2:

This model is very easy to repair anyways . each board is easily detached . so, you can change all components on each board

True.
Earlier tin-cans came in the first 14" & IIRC a roundie. About 1970
they had a plethora of sizes. IIRC 18", 19", 20". The common table
model tin can was from then.
73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Since that is such a good chassis design and is in such good condition, it might be worthwhile to get some veneered plywood from the hardware store and build a simple but decent table top style cabinet for it. A Seventies Zenith deserves to be in a decent wood or metal cabinet.

My parents had the same chassis in a tilted-back modern plastic cabinet with a sliding varactor tuner. Man that was a great set. They traded it for a 19" GE with VIR that had a fugly plastic "early American" style cabinet similar to the one above. That was not a great set.

Well i like it! i love zenith ccii delta gun sets even if the cabinet is made of compressed dino poo! lol! too bad it is too far away to go get. :(

It may be kinda ugly (in some cases) and look very cheap once you get the back off and notice but there is one advantage to plastic consoles...Weight. I had the same flat chassis and CRT in an Avanti (that was all wood but the base) and a generic fake wood plastic console. The Avanti despite being more compact is heavier. Another thing I liked about that 'plastic' console I had was that they used real finished wood for the top, not amalgamated sawdust with a Formica 'wood grain' decal pasted over it like many 'wood' consoles from other makes of the day.

Yeah, they seemed to keep the metal cabinets till around 1970 then they phased them out in all but the 23" and 25" and let those stick around into the S3 generation...Must not have had much faith in the weight handling properties of plastic.
IIRC many of the sub-23" sizes came out in the late 60's so there are probably a bunch of different screen size tin can zenith color sets out there.

That too had been done away with in my 23V G-line plastic console. Only the edges of the top were hardwood, the rest of it was photofinished hardboard, about 1/8" thick at most.