Quote:
Originally Posted by Console User
Looking for any information on the following:
I purchased a used 1999 Zenith Console Set Model B25A74R last year. I decided to take the back loose and look inside. I see it has the following CRT in it: A63AFW36X made by Phillips. I had a parts sheet for this particular set along. It shows in the parts list A63AGD01X. Can anyone tell me did Zenith also use the Phillips CRT in these late 90s-early 2000s sets or does this show that the CRT has been replaced in this Set? Also, how good of quality and lifespan did these two particular CRTs have? Thanks.
I had the 27 Inch Console Set Version of this particular Model, but unfortunately it literally fell apart when moving the set out.
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I hope you can restore your Zenith B25A74R TV, as these were very good sets made when Zenith was still in Chicago, IIRC (I don't recall exactly when Zenith left Chicago for Korea) and still making excellent televisions. I don't know, however, why it has a Philips CRT. It seems very unusual to me why a TV made by Zenith would have been built with anything other than a genuine Zenith CRT, unless the tube in yours is a replacement for the original. The latter seems very likely, considering how poorly made Zenith CRTs were toward the company's downfall in the late '80s, not to mention the problems the last Zenith TVs had, such as HV regulation failures and other problems too numerous to mention.
BTW, I cannot imagine why the cabinet of your 27" Zenith TV literally fell apart, unless it was poorly made to begin with or suffered some kind of serious damage while being moved. I am sure the original Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago would not have allowed any of its consoles to leave the factory with a cabinet that poorly built, unless the cabinets, like the chassis and other parts of the set, were made offshore.
This whole thing speaks very poorly for Zenith (what is or may be left of it, anyway) in the 21st century, which for many years was one of the best brands of televisions, IMHO, there ever was; the company had been founded in 1918. Their slogan for many years was "the quality goes in before the name goes on", to say nothing of their other slogan which referred to their TVs, "Zenith. The Royalty of television."
Zenith was my favorite brand of TV, stereo and radio for many years. (I had a great-uncle, now deceased, who used to call me "Mister Z" because of my liking for Zenith radios and TVs.) I still have several Zenith radios and one Zenith color TV, model SMS1917SG; that set is 27 years old, and it still worked quite well the last time I used it. I also had a Zenith J-121-Y 12" b&w portable for twenty years; it worked exceedingly well during that time (never had five minutes' worth of trouble with it, save for the detented UHF channel selector jamming on one channel some time in the '80s or '90s) but I had to get rid of it when I moved to my current residence, a very small one-bedroom apartment, in 1999. As small as this apartment is, I simply have no room to collect old televisions as I did when I lived at the other house, which had a large basement.
One Zenith TV I hated like heck to get rid of was a 23" b&w console I had rescued from a trash pile in my old neighborhood in the early 1970s. All but two of the tubes (the 1J3 HV rectifier and the 23ANP4 CRT) had been removed, so I had to put all new tubes in the set, but it was well worth it. When I turned the set on after installing the last new tube, I was greeted by a very good picture on all three (at that time, early 1970s) network TV stations in Cleveland. One other thing I liked about that Zenith console was its excellent audio system, which used a 6BN6 gated-beam discriminator and a 6BQ5 output tube, not to mention a rather large speaker mounted in the base of the cabinet. I liked the sound so well I eventually connected an FM tuner to the set's audio system, by connecting the tuner's preamplifier output across the TV's volume control.
I enjoyed this setup, not to mention the TV itself (the picture was great), for about two years, then I found out I would be moving (long story/OT) and would have to get rid of the set, not to mention every other old TV I had in my basement at the time. This bothered me mightily for at least two reasons: one, the amount of work I had put into the Zenith set to get it working as well as it was, and two, I would have had to give up this TV anyway in 1972 (again, long story and OT).
Believe me, I would have liked to have been able to keep that Zenith console, as well as I had it working after I put the new tubes in, not to mention installing the FM tuner I mentioned, but circumstances at the time just did not allow it.