Zenith 5311U / 24MC32 restoration

[DaveWM]

biggest issue with Zeniths was the coil forms, the plastic is an issue, other than that they pretty much just work, even with the old caps. Sometimes you may find a cold solder joint on a tube socket, IIRC the video out on later models had this issue, maybe not a prob on the roundies, but it would manifest as a overly bright pic esp near the bottom, solved with a smack of the cabinet. A good socket cleaning of all the tubes will get you 90% of the reliability back, and that's assuming it was stored where corrosion could take hold. Zeniths were built to last, the other plus is the HV was very robust with no flyback issues.

[compucat]

Originally Posted by DaveWM

biggest issue with Zeniths was the coil forms, the plastic is an issue, other than that they pretty much just work, even with the old caps. Sometimes you may find a cold solder joint on a tube socket, IIRC the video out on later models had this issue, maybe not a prob on the roundies, but it would manifest as a overly bright pic esp near the bottom, solved with a smack of the cabinet. A good socket cleaning of all the tubes will get you 90% of the reliability back, and that's assuming it was stored where corrosion could take hold. Zeniths were built to last, the other plus is the HV was very robust with no flyback issues.

Best of all is no printed wiring, no production shortcuts. You can run a Zenith all day without cooking it to death.