Recaping a 1937 Zenith 6S299
 

Last month I got an old Zenith Black Dial Radio (Model 6S299) from 1937. I had to rebuild a new cabinet for it because the old one was beyond repair. I had been looking at pictures of the old Westinghouse Columnaires and thought they were graceful looking and well designed. Zenith made consoles but nothing like the Columnaire so I decided to make one and I am attaching a picture of how the cabinet turned out. Over the last week I have been cleaning up the chassis and replacing all the capacitors and resistors. With each new one added, the sound returned and became stronger as I went along - until I came to the last item. I don't know what this is - it has the color bars of Red, Orange and Silver - only the 3 bars. the body is brown like a plastic or baklite. At first I thought it was an old molded capacitor of .023 ohms but when I replaced it with an orange drop the radio stopped working. Can anyone identify this thing and tell me what I can replace it with?

sent the wrong picture
 

ops - I sent a picture of another radio's dial, here is the correct picture of the part in question

Wow!
 

That cabinet looks oustanding!!! Excellent wood working skills!-Ray>:thmbsp:

Resistor :

1(brown), 2(red), 3 zeros (orange), 10% (silver) : 12,000 ohms 10% perhaps 5 watt (judging from the size). Beautiful cabinet work!
jr

Another Zenith will return to glory
 

Thanks guys for the comments on the wood. I am happy with the way it turned out too. I used Birch and some white Maple for the stripes. I'm going to give this to one of my boys for Christmas - he likes tube stuff. And thanks Jr-tech for your answer, I had a suspicion that the first band may have included the case color and now you have put me on the right course. 5 watts sounds about right, this thing is about 2 inches long.

That cabinet is in the flavor of ultra-moderne which was going on in the thirties, turned out very nice. Does that have a top-firing speaker, with a hinged lid?

Did you measure that resistor? I would not be too surprised if it were within spec.
Nothing wrong with keeping an original part like this if it's good. Good luck with the
project!

Zenith 6s299
 

Hey Guys,

In answer to the last couple of posts, I mounted the speaker to one side of the cabinet as I wanted a hinged top for a small storage compartment. In one of my pics you can see the multicolored laminated bottom of that compartment. Since I was giving this to my son, I knew he had to have a place for an ipod. To allow charging, I have a surge protector inside the cabinet and that also has 2 USB jacks on it to charge an ipod and whatnot. Back to the speaker, I wanted the new grill cloth to mount flush with the outside so I cut a 1" wide ring from a large diameter pvc pipe and placed a piece of double stick tape around the outside diameter of that. Next, I took my new grill cloth and stretched it over the ring and then put that into the large circle hole that I made in the side of the cabinet. It was a snug fit held in place with some screws on the inside of the ring.

About that resistor, it was a little out of spec but I had to replace it because one of the leads broke off when I moved it out of the way to replace a cap. I soldered a new piece of wire to it but it will not hold. Funny thing, I dont see the value of this resistor listed on the Rider Schematic but I'm still new at this. I will keep trying.

Beautiful work, Gino! I'd love to see/hear it playing. Any way you could make a short YouTube vid?

Zenith 6s299
 

I can post a few more pics but the vid has to wait until I get some storm problems out of the way - no time for this project right now but I will make one as soon as I can.