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Old 01-17-2016, 12:34 AM
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1950's Zenith radio from an estate sale

I picked this little gem up today with the RCA TV for $15. It's in near mint condition except for the gold paint wearing off the knobs. I cleaned the controls, and now it sounds really nice. I can't find a model number on it, but the chassis number is 7C02-7C06.

Last edited by TUD1; 08-07-2016 at 10:24 PM.
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Old 01-17-2016, 12:48 AM
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Interestingly I find the Zenith's work with little effort and the electrolytics hold up. The sound quality(quality in general) is very good. I got a Zenith clock radio(50's model) from a friend that had it in his pawn shop basement for 30 years covered with coal dust. I removed the guts, cleaned the cabinet, sprayed the controls. Works perfect and keeps great time. No work was ever done to it either.
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Old 01-17-2016, 07:20 PM
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Sometimes, these can be a little
harder to tune up than a traditional All-American Five. It has more tubes and a lot of other circuits, but if you can bring it up to spec, it will be worth it.

BTW, I suspect your radio is from the 1960s.

Last edited by Robert Grant; 01-17-2016 at 07:34 PM.
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Old 01-17-2016, 08:49 PM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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I had a radio just like that, its a pretty common model, I believe its from the early 1960s, and the one I had like it worked pretty well too when I got it, except for the phono jack on the back, it seemed to have a bit of a hum to it when you hooked up an iPod or a tape player to it (its a line level phono jack meant for use with a mono ceramic cartridged record player) and I could never figure out why the phono jack on mine had a hum to it, I ended up junking mine out, and salvaging the tubes from it. It is a hot chassis design so when or if you do have to work on it unplug it from the wall (it has an interlock style plug so when you do work on it it would be dead anyways but that only means you shouldn't try using a cheater cord with it either unless you're done working on it and need to test it out, even then I would reinstall the plastic knobs so that you don't risk electric shock!)
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Old 01-17-2016, 09:57 PM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Captainclock View Post
I had a radio just like that, its a pretty common model, I believe its from the early 1960s, and the one I had like it worked pretty well too when I got it, except for the phono jack on the back, it seemed to have a bit of a hum to it when you hooked up an iPod or a tape player to it (its a line level phono jack meant for use with a mono ceramic cartridged record player) and I could never figure out why the phono jack on mine had a hum to it, I ended up junking mine out, and salvaging the tubes from it. It is a hot chassis design so when or if you do have to work on it unplug it from the wall (it has an interlock style plug so when you do work on it it would be dead anyways but that only means you shouldn't try using a cheater cord with it either unless you're done working on it and need to test it out, even then I would reinstall the plastic knobs so that you don't risk electric shock!)
Zenith radios of that type were designed properly and passed strict U/L standards. The tuner, bandselector, volume and tone control were isolated from the chassis, so the shafts wouldn't be hot, without the knobs. If the cabinet is on, there's no way to get shocked.
The phono jack has an isolating capacitor on the low side to prevent shock and minimize hum. After all this time, it was probably leaky.
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Old 01-17-2016, 10:30 PM
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I used to have a gray version and a wood version. They worked well and were later resold.
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Old 01-18-2016, 08:52 AM
Captainclock Captainclock is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by dieseljeep View Post
Zenith radios of that type were designed properly and passed strict U/L standards. The tuner, bandselector, volume and tone control were isolated from the chassis, so the shafts wouldn't be hot, without the knobs. If the cabinet is on, there's no way to get shocked.
The phono jack has an isolating capacitor on the low side to prevent shock and minimize hum. After all this time, it was probably leaky.
That makes sense, but I definitely don't have that radio anymore so I couldn't look for that isolation capacitor and replace it, I still have the back cover of mine yet, but that's about it, once I get the cord off of it (so I can have a second cheater cord if needed) I'll just recycle the case.
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Old 01-18-2016, 09:42 AM
dieseljeep dieseljeep is offline
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I used to have a gray version and a wood version. They worked well and were later resold.
I probably have six examples of the seven tube models and at least that many of the eight tube models.
Of the seven tube models, they made several variations of them. Some of the plastic ones, one the low end, didn't have a tone control or AFC and only had a 4" speaker. I had a FM only model with six tubes.
I don't know how many of those radios Zenith made, but they were very common.
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