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Originally Posted by drh4683
This is a royal C52Y, which includes AM FM and PBS (150-174mhz) This receiver is from 1972, however its made in Japan, so its really not a true zenith IMO.
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Doug,
I have two Zenith radios (R-70 and H480W), made in 1980, that were also manufactured offshore, in Korea and Taiwan respectively, so these technically are not "Zenith" sets. Neither radio has plug-in transistors or metal chassis (in both the entire receiver is on one large PC board), which is a dead giveaway that the receivers were manufactured when Zenith's audio division was starting to change--I regret to say for the worse. By the '80s the company's televisions had had circuit boards for about three years, more or less; a small Zenith b&w solid-state portable I bought in 1978 had everything except the tuners, speaker and control cluster on one large PCB. My point is that Zenith was already using circuit modules in TVs by the late '70s; their audio line went fully to PCBs from about 1980 going forward.
The company's radios (including your C52Y and my two solid-state receivers) made from 1980 on were branded "Zenith" probably because they were built to the specifications of the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago on Korean or Japanese assembly lines. In the early 1980s I owned a four-mode Zenith integrated stereo system which had been manufactured in Korea to the ZRC's specifications, as a notice on the back panel stated. The unit had a Zenith nameplate just to the left of the metal tuning knob, on the front panel, but no Zenith "crest" emblem (the company probably did away with the latter some time around 1980).