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  #1  
Old 12-20-2016, 10:45 AM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Found an early 1950s Zenith AM/FM Clock Radio at Goodwill today!

Hello everyone today I found an early 1950s vintage Zenith AM/FM Clock Radio Model J733 at Goodwill where I work for $6 and some change after I used my loyalty dollars on it (it was originally $20.) Anyways it still works without humming and everything the only thing that doesn't work is the clock mechanism which contains a Telechron movement and I happen to have a spare Telechron rotor laying around that still works that I can install in it to make it work again. Anyways I'm planning on using it as my primary alarm clock to get me up for work, because its just so cool. Also the bakelite cabinet is crack free but does need a good polishing, any suggestions as to what to use to polish the cabinet with?
Pictures of the unit posted below.
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  #2  
Old 12-20-2016, 11:51 AM
Electronic M's Avatar
Electronic M Electronic M is offline
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I've got the all blue version of that and have been using it as my morning alarm for several months.

The only thing that annoys me is that it's FM tuning drifts for ~20min after warmup, and the only strong stations (which it won't drift out of tune on) that play good music have gone over to Christmas stuff for the season, and as much as a bit of festive music is nice, if I had to wake up every morning to it I'd be found hanging from the ceiling fan one morning or my radio would get destroyed...

If this model had AFC that feature would be worth it's weight in gold to me.

I've considered AM, but I don't want to wake to talk, and I suspect the one music station is too weak to survive drift...
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Old 12-20-2016, 12:15 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post

The only thing that annoys me is that it's FM tuning drifts for ~20min after warmup.....
I too have one of these "bugeye" Zeniths.

Replace the ceramics in the oscillator and FM Converter section with NP0(C0G)ceramic discs for lower drift. Surprisingly, silver micas fail to prevent the drift....

IIRC, it was hard finding all the pF values at one vendor..
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Old 12-20-2016, 01:03 PM
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I was thinking about 'borrowing' an AFC circuit for another model.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Findm-Keepm View Post
I too have one of these "bugeye" Zeniths.

Replace the ceramics in the oscillator and FM Converter section with NP0(C0G)ceramic discs for lower drift. Surprisingly, silver micas fail to prevent the drift....

IIRC, it was hard finding all the pF values at one vendor..
Interesting I may have to try that.

ATM my radio is way at the bottom of a massive list of projects....I may mod it in time for next year's Christmas music switch though.
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Old 12-20-2016, 01:17 PM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post
I was thinking about 'borrowing' an AFC circuit for another model.


Interesting I may have to try that.

ATM my radio is way at the bottom of a massive list of projects....I may mod it in time for next year's Christmas music switch though.
Christmas music from November 1st! The day after Thanksgiving day was early enough.
The stations and their Arbitron ratings. Many times around the first of the new year there is a format change. I hope, it's a change for the better!
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Old 12-20-2016, 12:34 PM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M View Post
I've got the all blue version of that and have been using it as my morning alarm for several months.

The only thing that annoys me is that it's FM tuning drifts for ~20min after warmup, and the only strong stations (which it won't drift out of tune on) that play good music have gone over to Christmas stuff for the season, and as much as a bit of festive music is nice, if I had to wake up every morning to it I'd be found hanging from the ceiling fan one morning or my radio would get destroyed...

If this model had AFC that feature would be worth it's weight in gold to me.

I've considered AM, but I don't want to wake to talk, and I suspect the one music station is too weak to survive drift...
Compare the circuitry in the newer seven tube Zenith AM-FM radios that have AFC. I know the seven tube models have a simpler AFC circuit, than the eight tube models, that have a separate tube for AFC. It's worth a look.
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Old 12-20-2016, 01:35 PM
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The question is if they will move towards the TOC or towards the same modern crap they've been moving towards (some of it was decent, but a LOT just ain't my thing)....One thing I wish they would do is can their morning hosts...About a week in to using them I renamed their "Murphy & Meg in the morning" music+idiots chatting show to "Murphy and Meg are ANNOYING"....It seems like there is more yaking then music.

it occurs to me there is a big alarm controlled power outlet on the back...Maybe I should just set it to run a audio player of some format so I can program my own wake up music.
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Last edited by Electronic M; 12-20-2016 at 01:39 PM.
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  #8  
Old 12-20-2016, 05:52 PM
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Looks like 95.7 is sitting on top of the heap... I would not expect major changes.

http://ratings.radio-online.com/cgi-bin/rol.exe/arb043

The shift over time is likely to be toward newer tunes, to stay centered in whatever their target demographic is.

jr
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  #9  
Old 12-20-2016, 06:44 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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How did this thread go from talking about a 1950s Zenith Clock radio to discussion about radio stations and what they do and do not air?
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  #10  
Old 12-20-2016, 08:09 PM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
How did this thread go from talking about a 1950s Zenith Clock radio to discussion about radio stations and what they do and do not air?
That's the way many of the threads work out around here.
It's been a little dry, regarding new topics. It's a good thing that there is a few members that are sharing their experiences with their projects.
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Old 12-20-2016, 08:33 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by dieseljeep View Post
That's the way many of the threads work out around here.
It's been a little dry, regarding new topics. It's a good thing that there is a few members that are sharing their experiences with their projects.
Well I'm having a bit of a problem with my Ol' Zenith it seems that (and I already mentioned this when I initially posted this thread) my radio's clock mechanism isn't working, tried swapping out the rotor thinking that maybe the original rotor may have seized up over the years (which is quite common for old Telechron movements) but even my known good telechron rotor didn't work on this clock and the transformer for powering up the rotor is still good as I can still hear it humming away when its plugged in, the only other thing I can think of is that the movement itself is seized up and that it needs to be oiled up but the clock is a pain in the butt to get apart because you have to actually remove the whole radio chassis itself out of the cabinet in order to get access to the clock movement and I already had it apart once tonight and I don't want to take it apart again right now, (at least not tonight) anyways do you have any ideas as to what could be wrong with the clock mechanism on my radio? Like I said the radio part works flawlessly yet, its the clock part I'm having issues with.
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Old 12-26-2016, 09:28 AM
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Tubejunke Tubejunke is offline
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I have found that there are many things that can be used as gasket material and places like Home Depot are full of them, or better yet your garage. Tire patch stuff is a good idea. Inner tubes work good for lots of things. Hardware stores have a lot of stuff for weather stripping things like doors, air conditioners etc. Simple cardboard has bailed me out a time or two. I just sort of go into McGuyver (television show) mode when it comes to things like that.

And as to modern radio programming, I just wish that I could program a radio to play The Alice's Restaurant Masacree at wake up time. In four part harmony.....
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  #13  
Old 12-26-2016, 08:18 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Originally Posted by Tubejunke View Post
I have found that there are many things that can be used as gasket material and places like Home Depot are full of them, or better yet your garage. Tire patch stuff is a good idea. Inner tubes work good for lots of things. Hardware stores have a lot of stuff for weather stripping things like doors, air conditioners etc. Simple cardboard has bailed me out a time or two. I just sort of go into McGuyver (television show) mode when it comes to things like that.

And as to modern radio programming, I just wish that I could program a radio to play The Alice's Restaurant Masacree at wake up time. In four part harmony.....
Thanks, as to what I used as the gasket material for the clock mechanism's glass bezel I did end up using tire patch material and it works pretty well albeit with a little more of a gap between the cabinet and the dial glass than the original material had but it at least holds the dial glass in place so it doesn't cause any excessive wear on the clock dial. Now if I could only figure out a way to make the radium paint they used on the hands of the clock work again (its completely shot as it won't glow anymore not even when I use a full size Maglite flashlight shone on the dial for 2 minutes.)

Other than that the unit works great, and gets really good reception and I know some of the people on here said that this particular model didn't have AFC built in, and because of that its notorious for having drifting issues on the FM Band, but it seems like mine actually might be a later model that might actually have AFC built into it (albeit a very simple AFC Circuit) as I haven't had any issues with drifting on the FM Band on this radio (except for when I first got the unit and first fired it up and went to check the tubes and I found out that the 12AT7 tube that's in the radio was at one point in time replaced with a 12AU7A tube which was completely dead when I tested it and when I replaced the dead 12AU7A tube with a known good 12AT7 of extremely high quality the FM Band came back to life and never drifted since.) The reason why I'm saying that mine is more than likely a later model with at least a simple AFC built in is because there's a date rubber stamped to the radio chassis of October 1962, and as far as I know most AM/FM radios made by Zenith by that time had an AFC circuit of some sort built in to the radio whether it was the simple circuit mentioned in some of the earlier posts on here that was used in the 7 tube radios or if it was the more elaborate AFC Circuit that was utilized in the 8 Tube radios where the AFC Circuit was had its own tube powering it. Either way it seems to me that my radio may be one of the better versions of this particular clock radio model.
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  #14  
Old 12-27-2016, 08:09 PM
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Perhaps this paint would work for the clock dial:

https://www.amazon.com/Paint-Aurora-...+in+dark+paint

not affiliated,
jr
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  #15  
Old 12-29-2016, 09:22 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Perhaps this paint would work for the clock dial:

https://www.amazon.com/Paint-Aurora-...+in+dark+paint

not affiliated,
jr
OK, that looks like some good stuff, so would I just paint this stuff over the existing paint? I'm wondering because it seems like if I were to chip off the old paint I would risk radium exposure and also I might not know where the original paint started and stopped.
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