I have a Zenith Royal 1000-1 AM/SW radio (no FM) from 1958; won it in an eBay auction several years ago. Still works well and even has its original metal-cased wall-wart that also works well -- even after 54 years. However, I can't believe the Royal 7000, which was introduced, IIRC, in the '60s or '70s, was built even better than any of its predecessors, except possibly the Royal 3000 series of the early 1970s. The '7000 has one advantage over most of the earlier models in that it has FM (a band not included in any other versions of the T/O except the Royal 3000 of the '70s), but other than that I don't see how the '70s models of the T/O could actually have been buillt better than the '50s-'60s ones; for example, the older T/Os had all-metal chassis and socketed transistors. Just before the 7000 went out of production, a version of it (model R7000-Y, once again IIRC), was in fact made in Taiwan -- but the 7000 (no suffix) was made here and was probably the last American-made T/O before Zenith sold out to GoldStar. The 7000-Y was probably loaded with plastic and had the transistors soldered in. Please correct me if I am wrong about any of this, but I seem to remember reading somewhere (likely here) that Zenith's radio plant moved from Chicago to the Orient about thirty years ago, which was the beginning of the end as far as the company's radios (and very shortly thereafter televisions) were concerned. The Zenith name and famous lightning-bolt logo now exist only as marketing symbols on flat-screen televisions not even built by Zenith.
