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Old 04-23-2008, 11:30 AM
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Jeffhs Jeffhs is offline
<----Zenith C845
 
Join Date: Feb 2003
Location: Fairport Harbor, Ohio (near Lake Erie)
Posts: 4,035
Zenith's older televisions were great (I had a 23" K2739 [1963 vintage, VHF only] b&w console over 35 years ago, trash day find, no tubes except the 1J3 HV rectifier and 23ANP4 CRT, but it was well worth the money I spent on new ones--the picture was fantastic, even with rabbit ears in a Cleveland suburb 33 miles from the transmitters, and even better yet on the attic antenna in my home at the time). I hated to get rid of that set but I moved three years after restoring it and had no room for it in the new house, especially since I brought my Sears Silvertone roundie table model (21") and two other sets with me.

You won't be disappointed with the results when you're done restoring the radio/stereo in your console (recapping, especially around the power supply, will eliminate the hum you mention; the electrolytics now in the set have to be over 40 years old, and probably long overdue for replacement). High-fidelity sound was a hallmark of Zenith radio and stereo (including the stereo components of their fabulous three-way consoles like yours) throughout the company's history, until they got out of the radio business in the early 1980s; their older radios have sound quality I consider to be unmatched by most others. I have two high-end Zenith radios (C845 and MJ1035) that, IMHO, sound very good (I'd say excellent for table models) owing to their two-way speaker systems (using a real speaker as the tweeter, not plastic-cased electrostatic ones as were used in smaller Zeniths such as the K731) and 35C5 (two 50EH5s for stereo in the MJ1035) output tubes.

My K2739 Zenith TV was a 23-inch b&w console with a fantastic picture (owing to a 3-stage IF amplifier strip), as I said above, and downright incredible sound that most modern televisions cannot hope to match, owing to a 6BQ5/6BN6 audio stage with tone control and a 6x9 oval speaker in the base of the cabinet. The sound was so good I eventually patched an old Knight-kit (Allied Radio Corp., now long out of business) FM tuner into the audio stage by connecting the tuner's preamp output across the TV's volume control. The results were gratifying. Great sound on every Cleveland FM station, again just using an indoor antenna, though I think I did connect the attic antenna to the tuner briefly as a test. If I had kept that TV I probably would have tried to patch a stereo turntable into the audio channel as well.

BTW, the Zenith roundie console in your avatar reminds me of a similar set we had in our electronics shop in high school 35+ years ago. The only difference between that set and yours, IIRC, was that the one in our lab was a table model, VHF only, in a faux woodgrain metal cabinet; TV only, of course. I don't remember ever seeing that set working, though, and it's probably (almost certainly) long gone by now.
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Jeff, WB8NHV

Collecting, restoring and enjoying vintage Zenith radios since 2002

Zenith. Gone, but not forgotten.
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