spanish Zenith System 3
 

Hello everybody.
I just bought this beauty and unusual set through a spanish second hand site. The set is made for european Pal b/g standards and it worked on our 220v/50 hz. This Zenith arrived today and i was told it worked. Plugged it in a 220v outlet it appears completely dead. Not a hum or a flash of light or smoke. I never saw a more cluttered tv set. Our televisions of the eighties were way simpler. The only thing i can say for sure is mains arrives on the connector plugged on the horizontal chassis and the strange fuses are ok. I also don't seem to find the way to remove the horizontal board from the cabinet. Any advice about how start to troubleshoot it the best way would be hugely appreciated

Removing HV / Power supply board.

Remove metal bracket from HV transformer.
Remove plastic holder along back edge of PCB
There is a red key going through the PCB near
some connectors. Turn & remove.
Remove edge connectors & 4 or 5 others on top of PCB.
Unplug anode, focus & ground straps.
Push down on 2 plastic stops at the ends of the board
& pull out........

If the board has been out before often the key & holder are missing.
That board gets LOTS of cold solder. Go over it good.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

The USA market version lacks that big transformer behind the flyback. That transformer likely steps 220V down to 120V.

I agree with Zeno. The American version I had would make noise and hum when the power button was pushed, but do little else...Until I re-flowed a bunch of solder joints (after the solder touch up it worked great).

That looks identical to the set that I'm going to be getting on May 25th, from an estate sale.

thank you very much for the help. I can t wait to see it working again. I wonder if there is something , like a relay that must be energized to power the entire chassis. the only on off switch is a small red button on the controls board. is it a reliable chassis? there also is a small switch labeled "manual/remote" but nothing happens in either position.

The manual / remote button only turns off the remote receiver.
The on/off relay is on the micro board. Its the white square one beside the fuse. Relays also like to get cold solder joints on many brands.
For reliability 90% of fails were on the HV/PS board. In the states this
style chassis was the best selling TV of all. About 1 in 4 sets. It came in 13"
17", 19",23" & 25" screen. I still have a 13" I got new back in about 1980.
Never broke down & still works great..

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

That's cool! Odd how the only cosmetic changes from the American model are the markings on the picture control knobs.

It also losses the tint control useless for pal. I also have a similar 13 inch system 3. This is original from USA but the picture is not very good. the black level is too much low and parts that should be black are light grey. It also shows retrace lines. I should open it and adjust the G2 but i suspect there are cold joints. the picture also flickers especially on a side but it could be the different mains frequency.

...

The corners of the top are rounded too, mine had no rounding.

I know this set predates MTS Stereo/SAP, but the thread title makes me wonder if in Spain they had SAP and if it was the English audio (opposite of how in the USA main audio is English and SAP is almost always Spanish).

IIRC here in the states SAP stands for Second Audio Program, though in practice the S might as well stand for Spanish...

Hi. The cabinet is poorly made and this makes me think it is not a genuine Zenith cabinet. Also the back panel has no traces of the Zenith logo or a model tag. There is only a tag saying : 220v 50hz 90w. The unusual thing for me is it totally lacks any picture control on the remote. it has just the keypad for entering the channel number, volume up/down, on off and two buttons red and green to turn the set on and off automatically. no color or brightness or contrast controls at all, just those on the control panel. The same applies to the smaller system 3 i have.

In the United States almost no sets had brightness/contrast settings adjustable by remote, most remotes were channel and volume only. With higher end remotes you would have tint and color buttons, but by the early 70's makers were dropping them from the lines as the new Solid State sets did not need those controls adjusted very often....Those controls were absent from remotes until the mid 80's when makers did away with control pots, put those settings in a computer menu, and gave remotes menu buttons to control it.

Those sets had cheap particle board cabinets and generic looking plastic backs in the US too. The fact that they put actual veneer over the particle board (at least in the US model) was a vast step up from other makers that only offered plastic cabinets with faux wood grain paint/stickers.

The 70's wrung a LOT of quality out of American TV cabinetry*. I have late 60's zenith consoles that are all wood, a 1971 where the sides and top are real but the front is plastic, a 1973 where only the top is wood, and a 1978 where the whole thing is particle board with plastic decals that look like wood.

*The console market was shrinking rapidly, and the Japanese sets were dumping table sets at a loss to conquer the market/drive us out of business, so cabinets got cheap fast.

...

I'm fairly certain Italy and Brazil were two major countries Zenith exported sets to outside of North America.

the chassis seems absolutely untouched and original. through internet i learned there was a company in Spain who assembled Zenith parts and made their own Zenith televisions until eighties.it was named Telerasa. here in italy Zenith televisions were imported and then modified. all the few zeniths still surviving here are black and white or very old tube type televisions. i had two roundies and several chromacolor. this one in the picture is still mine despite the fact it doesn't work very well. we had color tv service quite late and the most part of color tvs were european, mostly german. all tvs with remote controls had controls for color intensity, brightness, on/off, channel change, mute, reset ( a sort of your color sentry)and on top models also controls for bass, treble, balance (for stereo sets) and teletext.

Will use board ##'s to save time.
9-151 tuner/ IF / audio/ AGC / main sweep osc
9-152 color / video / vert / comb filter / H & V count down
9-155 video out / CRT socket
9-160 power supply / hoz drive & out / HV
The 13" probably has a cover over CRT board so you dont
have to pull back. G-2 is yellow control also has range jumper.

Only difference I see is the 9-152 has a plug in IC & looks
a little different than I remember. Cosmetics very different, The back is
not at all Zenith.
Remote should also have a spacephone button. Some early remotes
from Zenith, RCA, Maggy & others did have tint. Complete control
came in the mid 80's with OSD. The first Zenith to use it was
probably the "Digital System 3" high end sets. Fantastic sets, especialy
the "Bose Audio" ones but a huge service challenge today.

I have never seen a non US / Canada Zenith. From my understanding
"kits" were sent to a few countries. They would assemble them using
local parts also to meet content laws. Argentina also was big & I
heard in the B&W days it was the #1 set in Isreal. Bottom line is US
built Zeniths seemed to cover all NTSC countries, others were kits.

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Thank you very much Zeno for the useful informations. Do you know if a service manual exist for the system 3 chassis? the original one i mean. I think i should find some sort of schematics before attempting to troubleshoot both my tvs. If i get to know the number of the service manual then i could try to find one on ebay. My original 13" system 3 has a problem with the speaker and G2 setting. it keeps changing the picture background showing retrace lines but it is impossible to obtain a dark picture.

The closest US model for your set is SM1971P
You may find a factory manual on E-Bay.
If not look for a Sams Photofact manual. The manual number
is 2010-2 for Sams. You can by from Sams but $22 US and you
get a poor PDF.
Some used Sams dealer.
http://www.theschematicman.com/
There was also a factory training manual. IIRC they called
it the XXX chassis. Zenith stopped using real chassis numbers
about 1979.

Your 13" looks good. one thing to check is a cap on the 9-160.
IIRC its 10mf 315V & on the right rear near the FBT. Very
common & causes many symptoms. Another thig is on the 9-155
look for open resistor from G2 control.

73 Zeno

Thank you Zeno! I will try to get a proper service manual as I would love to have these tvs working fine as is to expect from a Zenith product. I will try what you suggested for the small 13" tv. Never opened it so I expect an extra cluttered space inside. I noticed the 19" has the trifocus picture tube and two focus electrodes. How peculiar! The 13" picture tube has areas of discoloration you can see when the set it is turned off. It seems like water entered inside the faceplate. By the way the tube seems good working.