The Perishable Zenith Royal 820

[Jeffhs]

I had a Royal 820 Zenith about 20 years ago, but a few things went wrong with it (dial cord broke, etc.) and I got rid of it. The '820 was a good radio, wonderful sound for having only a 4" speaker and no tone control. With such great sound, they should have put a tone control in it. Should have held on to mine. Even with the dial cord broken, I would have had a collectible set by now. To make up for the loss of my Royal 820, last year on ebay I scored a Zenith R-70 11-transistor AM/FM portable (1980 vintage) that sounds great as well, even with its 3.5" speaker. This radio has push-pull audio output, four FM IF stages and two ceramic filters, one for AM and one for FM. It is one of the best sounding small portables I have heard in a long time; it's a keeper here for sure. I connected a pair of Sony MDR-24 headphones to the mono earphone jack awhile ago and was impressed with the improvement in the sound. I have a 5" speaker somewhere around here; one of these days I'll put it in a box and run a short cable from it to the R-70. I'm sure it will sound a lot better. Given its push-pull output stage, I believe this radio can perform a lot better than its internal speaker lets it; all it needs is a good pair of headphones or a larger external speaker. The same goes for radios like Zenith's H480 AM/FM/FM-stereo clock radio, also of 1980 vintage. I have one that sounds good through its internal speakers and fantastic through a good pair of stereo headphones; at least it did while the FM still worked (it quit one day about a year ago after I cleaned the slide pots; must have shorted something out somewhere ).


I was browsing ebay a few minutes ago and saw the "Royal 76" stereofisher is bidding on. That radio is in fact a Royal 820. I don't know, either, why the seller refers to it as a Royal 76. Certainly wasn't made in 1976. Oh well. I see this quite often in ebay ads; people with little or no knowledge of radios, antique, vintage or otherwise, just try to describe them to the best of their ability, and sometimes this means getting things wrong like model numbers, model names, etc. I have seen radios advertised on ebay as "parts sets" when the only things really wrong with them, besides the usual bad caps and the like, are little things like dry-rotted line cords. Replace the cord on one of these, use a Variac or a 100-watt bulb in series with it, and you'll at least have an idea of what else has to be done to the radio, etc. to get it playing again. Most ebay sellers are afraid of being shocked (or worse) from bad line cords, so if the old radio or TV they are selling has a cord with crumbling insulation or bare wires, they don't bother testing it; they just sell it untested or for parts. Some item descriptions are extremely vague as to the actual condition of an item. I saw a 1947 Zenith radio-phonograph on ebay tonight with an item description: "Radio works great, phonograph needs service." What type of service? Bad cartridge, missing or worn-out stylus, turntable not turning or turning at the wrong speed...? I guess the seller is pretty much leaving the buyer to determine what type of repairs the phonograph requires to be restored to normal operation because, as I mentioned, many if not most ebay sellers (except, of course, those of us here at AK) know little or nothing about radios, phonographs or anything electrical or electronic. I've said this before but it bears repeating: these are the old sets we AKers can and indeed should save from a certain death in a landfill, if at all possible. Their former owners have given them up for dead in many cases; we can get them working like new again, using our expertise in this field. One person's trash is another's treasure. These old radios/TVs/phonos, etc. worked well when they were new; with some work, we AKers can make them work again, even if it takes some time and effort to find obsolete parts, otherwise often referred to here as unobtainium. To me, there is no such thing. There are always ways of either repairing broken parts or fashioning a replacement that will work, maybe not as well as the original, but it will work anyhow until a correct replacement can be located. In computer circles these techniques are called workarounds; the same term may also be used to describe the methods we use to get a radio or TV, etc. working until we can find a proper component, or to replace obsolete ones. A circuit that has worked will work again. We AKers know this (and how to make a defective circuit work as well as or better than it once did), but most folks who sell old electronics on ebay don't. Their loss is our gain.

Long live AK! I've been a member here almost four years and I've enjoyed every minute of it.