My first antique radio - 1952 Zenith H723Z1 AM/FM

[Cleve]

I won a Zenith 7 tube AM/FM radio on Ebay a week ago Tuesday. It arrived safe and sound on Monday. it was electrically restored, and functions wonderfully...



I find myself playing this radio a lot. I had a cheap set of rabbit ears which I hooked up for an additional antenna (I live in a quite rural location) Last night, instead of watching on TV, I elected to listen to the Buffalo Sabres/Montreal Canadiens game on the Zenith. It was funny, listening to the radio when I could have watched it on the big screen in HD with surround sound in the 'theater' room.

It was very pleasurable listening to the game, though. The radio gives off a nice, nostalgic "tube" aroma that brings back memories - when I was a kid just about everything was tubes.

I bought the radio to take to my office... but now I don't want to take it from home. Guess I'm going to have to buy another radio.

[Sandy G]

"Guess I'm going to have to buy ANOTHER radio"...Mbwahahahaha...The Sickness starts....(grin)

[7"estatdef]

Congrat on your Zenith!
You may enjoy listening to AM 740. Most week nights they play a few old radio shows starting around 10:00 in the evening.
Terry

[compucat]

Congratulations on your find. I have a similar model and they are great performers and well made. If restored properly they are quite dependable too. I have had mine for about 12 years. I also have another set exactly like yours that needs restoration.

[DaveWM]

Those are good solid radios. My favorite is the 8 tube series (has a tube based AFC vs a variactor diode) looks like this model Y825. The AFC is very strong will really reach out and grab a station. You can of course switch it off for DXing...

http://www.radiomuseum.org/images/ra...y825_72053.jpg

[Cleve]

Maybe it's a passing fad, but first thing this morning I flipped on the radio to "DX" WFAN 660's Boomer & Carton Show from NYC (about 300 miles from me). Now I've flipped to AM550 out of Buffalo to listen to the Buffalo Sabres morning show while I work. Coming in crystal clear. I've tried newer radios in this house (it has a metal roof) that don't pick up squat on the AM band.

Were radios actually better made 60 years ago than now? Could be!

[DaveWM]

based on the failure rate of pretty much everything I buy new, I would say yes, things were built better 60's ago.

Tech has advance, too the point of where robots build stuff and in that regard its prob better, but that final assy, plastic junk and sloppy workmenship means junk still.

the last new piece of tech I bought was a DTV converter, 1 year later the caps are going bad...

New luggage (carry on) 1st time I use it the handle pulls right off...

Toasters that toast uneven....

It just seems to go on and on. Sure take it back and they will give you replacement, big deal just means another return in 6 months...


so now if I want a something (which is rare) I look for something vintage.

I hope to find a rotary dial phone (if it will work with new tech lines).

[Reece]

Agree with you, Dave. I'm sick of new junky stuff. A few years ago I had had it with cheap hose nozzles. I bought the best one that WallyWorld had, Nelson brand, but made you-know-where. It fell apart in a month. Then at a flea market for a buck I found a solid brass old made-in-USA nozzle from the 1930's. I took it apart, wet sanded the valve seating surfaces, greased the adjusting threads, and have been using it ever since. It's already 80 years old but will last another 100 at least. It'll be in my will.

[DaveWM]

yep I must have a dozen hose nozzels, all junk, I just gave up and use the old thumb on end approach. I like the idea of an old one.

[radiotvnut]

I think many of the older radios are more sensitive than newer sets. Back then, there wasn't often a radio station within 2 miles of the radio; so, these sets had to be more sensitive in order to receive distant stations.

I just fixed an 83 year old Atwater-Kent radio for a customer and, even though it doesn't sound that great or have the best sensitivity, it is still nice to bring an 83 year old piece of equipment back to life. I'd like to see someone fix some of this modern garbage in 80+ years.

[DaveWM]

yea those Zeniths were advertised as "long distance" the one I mentioned had a tuned RF and 2 IF stages for both AM and FM (FM also had a limiter stage).

Interestly I do know the AM radio in my Chevy Truck (2000) has a pretty darn good AM front end as well. Its just too bad the FCC is more interested screwing up analog and not doing ANY thing about protecting the AM band from noisy RF emitting electronic garbage.

[compucat]

I think in many ways radios were built better years ago. I marvel at the simplicity of my five tube Bakelite radios and how well built they are. They require very little maintenance from year to year and I just know I can depend on them. I do have some modern radios but if you want quality you have to buy high end. For portable sets I usually go for the higher quality shortwave portables because they provide good AM performance and are generally solidly built. It is very difficult to find an ordinary AM/FM radio of good quality these days. The best built modern stuff seems to be computers and related equipment. IPods, cellphones, laptops and that sort of thing seem to be the best built modern consumer electronics today. Radios just don't get the same love from an industrial design standpoint. That said, I do think the new Sangean ATS-909X portable shortwave radio is going to prove to be a high quality modern radio.

[Jeffhs]

I have a Zenith C845 and like it, a lot. They don't make them like that anymore. Mine will bring in stations from 100 miles away on AM in the daytime, further away at night, and the FM is quite sensitive as well. I live in a small town 33 miles east of downtown Cleveland, but my C845 receives every station in the city just as well as if I were just five miles from the transmitters (the transmitters and towers for most Cleveland AM and FM stations are over 30 miles southwest of here). Zenith really had a winner in the 800 series of table radios from the '50s-'60s; it's a darn shame today's radios can't hope to perform at least as well, as today's one-chip portables are doing well if they can receive stations 15 miles away. I guess, however, with so many local stations on the air today, radios don't have to be as sensitive as the old Zenith and other sets needed to be 50+ years ago. As was stated by another AKer in this thread, the reason the old radios from the '30s until perhaps the seventies were built for DX (distance reception) was because they had to be -- not every town had a local station in those days. Today, that sensitivity can be put to good use to find music stations on AM, as most AM stations these days program non-music formats. My C845 gets AM stations from 70-80 miles away that play older music (not rock), and FMs from at least that far away when the band is open.

I am also impressed by the C845's ability to handle very strong signals without overloading. There is a 1kW AM station about two miles from me that can be heard at two points (its fundamental frequency of 1460 kHz and 0.9 MHz down the dial) on the AM radio tuner in my stereo system, but on the C845 and every other Zenith radio I own, I hear that station on 1460 and only 1460. A new FM station in the same area went on the air last year; like the AM station, the new FM is only perhaps two miles from my apartment but it comes in only on its fundamental frequency, 88.3 MHz, on every one of my FM radios, including my 11-year-old Aiwa stereo, without overloading. However, the 845 handles this station very well, no overloading or spurious responses across the dial, something I attribute to the excellent signal circuitry this radio has.

This type of circuit design, unfortunately, will never again be seen in today's radios; the AM sections of today's portables are made about as cheaply as the manufacturer can get away with--and have been for decades. A prime example of this is the AM tuner section of a Zenith stereo system I owned in the '80s. That system's AM tuner has to be one of the worst I have ever seen in a compact stereo; it worked well enough in the daytime, but at night I could hear shortwave stations between roughly 1120 and 1160 kHz. I often describe the AM tuner in this stereo as not being much better than a crystal set, and that's being kind. The thing that baffled me about that system, however, is that the FM tuner was very sensitive, bringing in every local FM station in Cleveland noiselessly with just a line-cord antenna (I lived in a Cleveland suburb at the time that was perhaps 25 miles from the stations' towers). Why was the FM section of this unit so much better than the AM tuner? The only thing I can figure is that, since most AM stations today are talk or other non-music formats and many AMs are going off the air permanently, the manufacturers of today's stereo systems and portable radios very likely don't see the sense in going to the trouble (to say nothing of the expense) of designing the AM tuners for wide bandwidth and/or high RF sensitivity, so they channel that expense and R&D work into the FM circuitry. The result? AM tuners as bad (or worse) than that in my Zenith integrated stereo.

One of the best AM/FM transistor portables I have seen to date is my Zenith R-70 from 1980. Though built in Korea to Zenith's specifications, this radio could very well outperform any 21st century one-chip portable many times over, IMHO. The R-70 has four IF stages on FM, two IFs on AM and ceramic filters on both bands, push-pull audio output -- and its performance is excellent, better than most portables of that era. (The only thing I wish Zenith had designed into this set is an AFC defeat switch, to aid in tuning in stations close together on the FM dial.) Today's one-chip wonders cannot hope to perform nearly as well, since they are built so cheaply -- again, with just enough sensitivity to receive an area's local stations, and some of them don't do that very well.

[jr_tech]

Originally Posted by compucat

I do have some modern radios but if you want quality you have to buy high end. For portable sets I usually go for the higher quality shortwave portables because they provide good AM performance and are generally solidly built. It is very difficult to find an ordinary AM/FM radio of good quality these days.

Indeed, there are plenty of high performance radios available today... I too favor the more expensive shortwave portables, which have excellent selectivity and sensitivity... Models like Sony Sw-7600, Tecsun Pl-600, Grundig G-5, Kaito Ka-1102, are good performers. Sangean and Sony produce some nice table models as well.

Remember, a $50 Zenith or other brand from the mid 50s, adjusted for inflation would be about $400 in todays dollars. It is somewhat unfair to judge todays technology by comparing these sets to the $10 (or less) very low end "one chip wonders".

jr

[jr_tech]

Oops! double post!

jr