Lost In The 50's
 

Just to give you all a brief introduction of myself ( hard to be brief when you have such a tendency to be long-winded ) I am a 26-year-old musician who plays in a rockabilly duo called "Ritchie Mars & the Big Dipper." I'm what many people would probably call an "old soul." I'm a huge Buddy Holly fan, I collect vintage records, I love cars with fins, and pretty much everything that was cool about the 20th century... or well, the first half of it, anyways.

I ran across this forum while looking for information about my 195(4)? Zenith L1846R television set. I have a small collection of old radios, mainly Zeniths, which all work fine, although I rarely turn them on. They include an early 50's Zenith H274, a Zenith K731 from the early 60's?, and some little all-transistor type Zenith which has no visible model number. The only non-Zenith I own is an Admiral 4215-C7 which my great-grandmother gave me. It's from the early 40's, I believe. It's a big console with a 78-rpm record changer. It definitely needs work. But, most recently I acquired this Zenith television and while I really just wanted it as a nice piece of furniture, I rather like the idea of getting it to work like it's supposed to. So, I'm now beginning to dwell into all the information I can find about replacing capacitors and such.

Not that it's probably going to tell you much, but my Zenith will turn on and all the tubes glow. It doesn't get hot or act crazy, but the picture is very dim and at first all I got was a gray line across it. I also heard a soft crackle from the speakers once or twice, but past that no sound whatsoever. I hooked up a VCR to it a few days ago and put in "The Fighting Kentuckian." I did manage to get something of a picture... I could adjust the vertical height and the vertical and horizontal hold enough to make out John Wayne, but for the most part, everything was slanted, flying across the screen, and overlapping at the bottom as if the image were scrolling along a curved ribbon. Eventually I turned it off since an LSD trip wasn't exactly what I had in mind. I noticed that when I shut it off, I got a couple of blobs of light that swirled around before eventually fading away, rather than the single dot of light I had been seeing before when it was just the gray line. Huh... maybe I screwed it up worse?

Well, that's what's got me interested in this sort of thing and until I have some specifics on this television, I'm leaving it off and unplugged. I figure that even if I don't manage to fix this thing like I'm wanting, I'll at least learn enough to work on my other radios. It would be nice to get that old Admiral running again...

Welcome to VK :wave:

That's some nice stuff you have there. It doesn't sound like you did any serious harm to the set, but best to leave it off like you said. If you can dig up the model #, I'm sure someone has the service info for it. Same goes for the radios.

Bob

Hey Bob, it's nice to hear from you. Yeah, I found a site called SMC Electronics that has my model listed. It's Model L1846R, Chassis 19L25. I have a couple pictures I took of the television's chassis when I pulled it all out for cleaning. There was a huge amount of dust I had to sweep and vacuum out of there, and I noticed this black material around the back of the yoke that had deteriorated. I'm not sure what the gray coating on the CRT is called, but it's peeled off in several places. Other than that, it's kinda spiffy in there.

I picked up this television in a bit of a rush last week when I ran across it on Craigslist. The man told me that it had been his grandfather's television and that it had worked the last time he'd checked. But alas, all he could get on the screen at this point was the grey line and so, he told me he'd take $25 for it. And so... I brought home my first vintage television set. All of it's issues aside, I'm honestly thrilled that I finally found one!

Aquadaq is the stuff that's peelin' off the CRT. You may have a bad tube, but I'd wager a re-capping would do WONDERS for the ol' gal...Welcome !

Wow - that is spiffy. Not bad for $25. I'm usually scrapping off grime and rust.
That's a cool tube layout diagram. I like how they trace out the path of the signals with different lines.

You can pick up some stuff called Aerodag to recoat the CRT.

Ritchie, you've got a nice collection there. You got a nice deal on that Zenith (Most 50's tvs are worth about 50 bucks max) and it looks like a relatively easy one to work on. That being said, just diving into one of these can be a nightmare for a beginner. I would practice on repairing the Admiral first-it is the same concept-replace the capacitors, power it up, and trouble shoot from there. The Admiral's service info is probably online for free though Nostalgia Air.

You are lucky in that all of the basic systems on that Zenith are working. With a bit of luck, a simple recap will bring it back to life.

Welcome to the site. I am an old soul type and catching up the old quite well at 52 years old. I dig most anything from the mid 60's back. I too am a huge Buddy Holly fan.

Yeah, as much as I'm wanting to get that Zenith going, I've been thinking that I should start by working on the Admiral, seeing that there's considerably less deal with inside that than there is in my television set. I figured it would be a better place to learn the basics.

Hey Dan, it's good to hear that you've got such great tastes in music. It was Buddy and the Crickets that initially inspired me to sing and play guitar. I'm told that I sound a lot like him, especially when I sing songs like "Oh Boy" and "True Love Ways." As I've learned more about music, I've naturally branched off into so many other artists and styles along the way like Johnny Cash, Elvis, Carl Perkins, and dozens of other rockabilly and doo-wop groups. But always in my mind, Buddy's knack for simple, catchy tunes along with his innovative style, make him second to no one.