[RCAZenith]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

It seems like that in the '96 to '98 models, the green gun would short and smoke the green driver transistor, leaving you with no green in the picture. I never will forget the first one of these that I got. I quickly found the bad transistor, replaced it, and the set had a nice picture. I sold the set to a friend and about 3 days later, he was bringing it back with no green. After a little investigation, I found that the CRT was intermittently shorting.

The slightly older ones ('90-'95) would blow the STR regulator IC and support components when the CRT would short. Pretty much the same story as above. You could replace the fried parts and the set would work until the CRT decided to short again (either in minutes, hours, days, or weeks). It got so that when I saw one of these with blown apart components in the power supply, I'd condemn the set.

About '98-'99, Zenith pretty much stopped using their own crappy CRT's and started using either LG-Philips or RCA-Thomson bonded yoke CRT's. These CRT were much better and I don't recall ever seeing a bad one. I believe it was in '99 when LG fully took over Zenith and that was pretty much the final blow for the old Zenith company.

A couple of years ago, an elderly lady that I know put in a request for a console TV (it had to be a console). As you know, they are no longer made; but, I found her a 25" Zenith from 2001 and it had an LG-Philips tube in it. The last time I saw it, the picture was still very good.

Yep. The green gun was definitely the culprit. It went out In December '09 or January '10. Mama and daddy kept it until right before the 2010 Daytona 500. I will tell you this though, if it was a total peice of junk like you say, it probably wouldn't have lasted for ~12.5 years @ ~5 hours a day. I challenge any flat panel to make it under those conditions. It would still be running today with a good RCA CRT.