Zenith K731, My first post

[Sandy G]

If that's the translucent plastic "T" antenna, Yeah, that oughta work fine. I try to mount mine close to a window & hide 'em kinda behind the drapes. If you are out in the country, don't expect this little guy to do too well on FM- but if you are in, or close to, a town, you should be OK.

[Blooze]

On the safety issue side, would it be prudent to put , say, a 1/2 A fuse in line with the AC coming in?

Also, what is a good way to put a new power cord on a setup like the K731 has? Just bring a new cord in through a grommett and solder directly? Kind of eliminates the safety factor they have built into this amp, though (as it unplugs the AC if you remove the back).

Here are a few pics. The one of the dial indicator came out lousy, but you can see how it points off to the left (the right from the front).

Shane

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by Sandy G

If that's the translucent plastic "T" antenna, Yeah, that oughta work fine. I try to mount mine close to a window & hide 'em kinda behind the drapes. If you are out in the country, don't expect this little guy to do too well on FM- but if you are in, or close to, a town, you should be OK.

I live some 35 miles east of Cleveland, with the transmitters for all local AM, FM and TV stations some ten miles further west of downtown (the signals must travel at least 40 miles to get to my small town; reception on car radios is somewhat iffy on certain stations because of that). My own K731 gets every station in town just fine, using only the line cord antenna in my first-floor apartment. The radio's FM dial just lights up with stations in the summer, when the FM band opens up. I get stations from southwestern Ontario, Canada, Detroit, Michigan, and Toledo, Ohio (northwestern part of the state) all summer long and into the fall.

The K-731 has switchable AFC, so you should be able to get stations very close to each other on the dial. For example, the classical music station serving Cleveland moved from 95.5 to 104.9 three years or so ago. 104-9 is right next to a strong country-western station on 104.7, about 35 miles further east of me (I am between two towns, Cleveland to the west and a burg called Ashtabula, almost right on Lake Erie, to the east, so I get stations from both areas very well). My radios with fixed AFC don't get 104.9 worth a darn, but the K-731 (and also my C-845) get the station just fine with the AFC off.

The K-731 is a great-sounding radio, one of Zenith's more popular models for the late '50s-early sixties. The '731 shows up all the time on ebay and can be had almost for a song, figuratively speaking. My '731 is in the walnut cabinet that looks like a small TV console, has a 5x7 oval speaker and a 3" electrostatic tweeter, and again, it sounds great. The only other Zenith radio I have that beats it for sound quality is my C-845.

The K-731 came in at least two cabinet styles, and was available in walnut and blonde finishes. The K-731 used chassis 7K07 or 7M07 and had seven tubes (the first digit of the model number of most Zeniths through the '60s usually was the tube count; e.g. the K-731 has seven tubes, the C-845 has eight tubes, the mighty MJ-1035 has ten tubes, and so on). The first digit of the chassis number will be the tube count as well; for example, chassis 7K07 has seven tubes, chassis 8C01 has eight tubes, etc. This convention continued with Zenith's transistor sets. The Zenith Royal 500 from the early-mid-1950s has eight transistors (I think, if I remember correctly); the chassis number, accordingly, began with 8ZT, the eight being the number of transistors.

I apologize for rambling on like this, but I am a Zenith radio collector and cannot stop talking about them. Zenith is my favorite brand of radio and entertainment gear, at least it was until the company stopped making radios in the early 1980s. It still is, however, as far as their older sets are concerned. For sound/build quality and reliability, Zenith radios and TVs can't be beat, again speaking about their older sets. The world lost a darn good brand of radios and TVs when Zenith disappeared in the nineties, to be replaced by (gasp!) Gold Star.