Quote:
Originally Posted by Titan1a
They don't make them like this anymore. If they malfunction or break you throw away and buy new. Not my tube sets: not EVER!
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Zenith did make their radios to last (at least until the 1980s-'90s, when the D7000Y series, the last "good" TO in my opinion, was made in Taiwan with a PC board), and not just the tube-powered TOs. I have three solid-state TOs here, all eBay finds. One works on all bands (AM and SW), but the dial cord broke; the second is the AM/FM/SW version, which currently works only on FM (I never did figure out why) and was modified by its previous owner to use a rechargeable battery pack; and the third is the same as the second, except my third TO works on all bands except standard broadcast, but the alignment on all bands is so far off it isn't funny. The set's former owner must have been fiddling with the alignment adjustments without benefit of a signal generator and alignment instructions.
(I was recently informed by a VK or ARF member that the failure of the BC band in my TO is due to a shorted transistor.) The set uses a standard Zenith 12-volt wall wart with the tiny plug at the end of the output cable, and has the matching jack on the left side of the cabinet, looking at the radio from the front.
You are so right--they
don't make them like that anymore (metal chassis, socketed transistors in the SS TOs, etc.), and I for one, being a Zenith radio collector, was sorry to see them go; all the more reason for those of us with well-built tube and SS T/Os to keep our sets in working order. These radios represented a level of build and sound quality we will never, ever see again, especially from Zenith, which no longer exists.