Quote:
Originally Posted by Fisherdude
Hi Logan!
Thanks for that extra detail. I have several tube T/O's, and I've sorta had the hots for one of the later SS models. I have the Bryant & Cones "T/O Book", and it gives a lot of details, but it never really comes out and says: "This is the one you want!" about any single model.
I was thinking about a last version of the R-7000. Do you really like the 1000 better, all things considered?
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All of Zenith's T/Os were excellent radios. All but one were made in the U.S. by the original Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago; the exception is the R-7000, one of the last if not
the last TransOceanic portables. It was made in Taiwan for Zenith so it was not hand-wired, as were all other prior versions. The R-7000 is built mostly on a PC board, as were all offshore-made T/Os and other Zenith AM/FM sets of the 1980s. I have two Zenith radios which were manufactured (in Korea and Taiwan, respectively) to Zenith's specifications, a nine-transistor model R-70 and an H480W clock radio, both 1980 vintage; in the early eighties I also owned a Zenith integrated stereo system which was made in Korea as well. All three had the lion's share of the circuitry on a PCB.
Zenith, which by this time was building all its radios offshore, also introduced a small, wood-cased AM/FM radio in 1982, which had bass/treble tone controls and a tuning meter. This was absolutely the last radio the company made and marketed before it got out of the radio business for good; as the expression goes, the rest is history.
The tube T/Os were good sets. I had one (H-500, chassis 5-H-40, 1951 vintage) I got at a hamfest about 25 years ago for $20. It worked well, but the cabinet was in bad shape. I would have held on to it if I hadn't gotten concerned as to where I'd find tubes for it; since it had 1- and 3-volt tubes (all but one of the tubes had 1-volt filaments; the audio output, IIRC, was a 3V4) I thought I'd be up the creek if one or more tubes burned out or shorted. This was years before I knew about AudioKarma and about 15 years before I discovered the Internet, so I knew I'd probably be in a bind if I needed any kind of obsolete battery-radio tubes; the only radio parts store near me at the time (which has long since gone out of business
) didn't have tubes that old. I didn't know about the technique of wiring ten 9-volt transistor batteries in series to get 90 volts (to replace the B-battery pack in the tube T/Os or
any tube-operated battery radio, for that matter) at that time either, so I would have been at a loss to get my set going on batteries.
If I knew then what I know now about AK, however, the chances are I'd have held onto my 1951 T/O for years. Oh well. That was one reason I bid on and eventually won (on ebay) the Royal 1000-1 I have today. It's seven years newer than the H-500, but it is solid-state and works just as well as, if not better than, my tube set ever did. Probably should have held out for a Royal 3000, however, as that model (and all others to the end of the T/O series) had FM. Would it have added that much more to the price of the Royal 1000 (which sold for about $250 when first introduced in 1958) to have included FM on it as well? There wasn't much on FM at that time, but I think most major cities had at least one such station by the late fifties, so most listeners within reasonable listening range (read urban or near suburban) could get something (if only one or two stations) on the then new postwar 88-108 MHz FM band. The Royal 3000 was introduced, IIRC, in the sixties, at a time when FM was relatively new yet as well, but many owners didn't like the idea of the back cover bulging out about an inch or so due to the FM subchassis; presumably this problem was corrected by the time the R-7000 came out.