Quote:
Originally Posted by old_coot88
the very first thing I would determine is whether its 'efficiency' coil is wound on a brown phenolic form (good) or the later whitish, semi-translucent plastic form (bad). If the latter, I would absolutely pass on the Zenith. .
|
This problem was the first of a line of heartbreaking events that came along with my bringing home a Zenith 5111. Looking back now, nothing was any real catastrophic failure. I believe that the crusty (brown) form did cause several other issues which had to be addressed due to the high current in the horizontal output circuit.
The big problem was that at the time there were two possibles of retailers with replacement coils known to exist; one being Moyer Electronics and I can't recollect the other which is who I ended up getting mine from for ten bucks more than Moyer wanted. When I began posting about this problem Moyer had three in stock. I waited about a week to order and someone had bought ALL of them. They told me they hadn't sold one in years till that week! Luckily they were nice enough to give me the name of this other place who had one and I had to jump through hoops to get them to send it to my house. Turns out that they had quit sending out small orders to jobbers like TV repairmen years ago and had evolved into some larger business model, but they still had the inventory and were nice enough to accommodate me.
Now what they sent was an N.O.S. Thordarson replacement and it was the "whitish, semi translucent" part that OldCoot said are bad. Being new like it is, I don't have a fear in the world of it breaking apart on me. Will it last as long as the original didn't? Who knows, but I am happy beyond happy to have what seems now to be nonexistent on the market. The true sad part is that there must be tons of these chassis sitting around in people's hoards and I couldn't get anyone to yank me one and bail me out of what was a big mess. The VK community really never works that way at all. Many nice folks have helped me here and I have done the same in return. One or two did look and theirs were no good. These chassis were around the better part of 10 years! Somebody has a bunch. Maybe not here, or looking at that time.
Even so, RCA or Zenith? I still would say Zenith. Everyone seems to have an RCA because they are talking about repairing them. Less is mentioned about Zenith because quite often they are in the corner playing. No crappy PC boards to deal with and MUCH better flybacks with Zenith. So I wouldn't let one little coil stop me from owning one. We VKers need to put this coil thing to a think tank and come up with a solution!
It can't be that hard...