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Old 05-26-2017, 06:22 PM
decojoe67's Avatar
decojoe67 decojoe67 is offline
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Join Date: Apr 2011
Location: Long Island, NY
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tubejunke View Post
Not to be contrary, but I see more sailboats on Praybay than bombers. Either way, it's a great score and I'm glad to see some general tube Transoceanic interest here at VK. I don't have either of the WW2 versions, but I have examples of most of the rest of the tube line. My earliest is an 8G005YT which was the last with Loctal tubes. I notice here and there the same model # with Z1 on the end. Not sure what that means, but Zenith did a lot of minor changes throughout the run, so no telling.

I don't have the next model, the G500, which is where 7 pin miniature tubes come into play including the rare 1L6 which by the way some smart individual is making a solid state sub for. As much as I hate solid state junk, this is a great idea and much needed as the original tubes are all but depleted which is (of course) driving prices way up. I'm not looking for a G500 to babysit as it is nearly identical to it's predecessor. Then I have a decent H500 which in my opinion is the ugliest one of the lot, but I do like the new clamps they added for spare tubes. I have a few B600s and all I can say on those is I haven't found one yet that doesn't work at least on the Broadcast band.

The king of the lot is an A600L. L stands for leather as they have the brown leather case. One mystery I've found is that I have seen 2 distinct shades of brown. One is almost reddish orange. Either way it goes, they are hot with collectors as most people didn't bother paying an extra 20 bucks or so to get brown. The smart way to sell one is to part it out as all of the trim and knobs are brown and even harder to find than a complete unit. So if you need a knob or a handle and don't want to pay a couple or three hundred for a complete unit to rob of its knob, then you have to luck out and find someone parting. I see them doing it all the time with the normal black sets on Praybay.

I'm thinking of letting mine go as I just enjoy radios and have 2 other examples of the 600 line. Might pay for some caps, dial string, and a solid state converter tube replacement.
Thanks for your comments and interesting info. If you go by actual production numbers the "sailboat" version is by far the rarer of the two '42 models. Remember too that it's common knowledge that "bombers" have been switched over to "sailboats" with collectors becoming aware of it's rarity. Anyway, with eBay finding rare sets like the Zenith "Walton", Sparton "Bluebird" or multi-tube Scott console radios is as easy as shopping at Walmart, but it doesn't make them any less rare.
I personally like the H500 over the 600 models because in my opinion the airplane style dial gives it a little more vintage look than the big slide-rule style. I have a very nice H500 and it plays flawlessly. I particularly like the brown leather military issue 500 with it's copper-like metal multi color dial, but it's pricey!
I wanted to add too that I have purchased a "batpack" (http://www.batpack.com/) for my '42 7G605. The one thing to remember is that you need to use the extra supplied single D-battery pack for the 7G605. On my set it just looked like two cut wires off the battery plug. I guess they had clips on them originally, but it is necessary to have these going to extra D battery. It's quite an expensive set-up with the cost of the pack and batteries, but the set plays like a champ with no AC line interference!

Last edited by decojoe67; 05-29-2017 at 08:27 AM.
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