[drh4683]

Spent some time on the zenith roundie today. Pulled the chassis, tested the tubes and esr on the filter lytics. Had a few shorted 6Kt8's which is typical as well as weak tuner tubes. The vertical was way to short caused by the 40uF@475 in the vertical circuit. The cap was basically open. One of the filter lytics got replaced too at one time, but the quality of soldering was pretty poor as well as melted wires. That got corrected. Had to install a new thermistor and varistor on the degaussing coil assembly too. Fine tuner nylon gear was cracked down the middle too which is so common on turret tuners. You find that you can adjust the fine tuning in one direction, and not in the other as the gear slips on the serrated shaft.
The chroma circuits were in good shape as was the rest of the set. It was more or less a simple tube change/clean up to bring the set back to life. The CRT is dated October, 1975 and is a General Electric rebuild. It tests 100% on all three guns, so the set must have been taken out of service shortly after the new CRT installation. The guy I got it from claims they stopped using it in the late 70's-early 80's when the tech said the CRT was shot......this was obviously not the case. The service outfit "Certified Television" used only GE tubes in this set.
Seeing the picture on a zenith with a strong tube is unbelievable. The picture quality is crisp and very pleasing to the eye. This is why I like analog! 42 year old TV with a picture that can rival most of todays newer sets. Another quality zenith product.