My eBay tragedy

[Jeffhs]

I don't know about RCA's claims as to its "Eye Witness" picture synchronizer (never saw any set with that feature actually operating), but the "Golden Throat" label on some of their radios and TVs of the '50s does sound to me like just so much advertising hooey. In the '70s I had an RCA table model radio with that so-called "Golden Throat" certification label on its back cover; the set sounded fairly good, but looking back now, I think my Zenith K731, which has a much larger oval speaker and a high-frequency tweeter, not to mention being housed in a heavy walnut cabinet and having a tone control, sounds much better than most small bakelite RCAs, the latter's "Golden Throat" label notwithstanding. Zenith, moreover, did not make any fantastic claims as to the sound quality of its radios; I think they let the sound of their units do the talking, so to speak.

Zenith's "Long Distance" claim on the back covers and tuning dials of most of its radios from the '30s to the mid-'60s, however, IMO, was justified. The company's sets from that era were extremely sensitive and selective, which was almost a necessity in radio's early days through the '50s since not every city or town had a radio station then. My 731 (and my 1951 H511) gets many distant stations in the daytime using just a built-in loop antenna, and the AM dial is full of stations at night--so I believe the sets lived up to that "Long Distance" claim.

Today, however, advertising is more overblown than ever, and not to be blindly trusted. Just look at some of the claims made for TV sets these days. RCA's "XL-100", used for their line of all-solid-state televisions beginning in the mid-1970s, used to mean the sets were 100-percent solid-state, but not today. Now, that label, which Thomson does not use on its current sets (it *is* on a line of sets made in the '90s, including the one in my apartment, however), means nothing. The sets are, for the most part, very troublesome, often winding up in service shops very shortly after they are purchased (and in the trash within a year or two, in many cases), although they do have good pictures when they are working, as mine does.

Zenith no longer uses its former signature slogan "the quality goes in before the name goes on", but then again, maybe it's just as well since today's "Zeniths" are anything but quality products. It's a good thing Zenith doesn't use that slogan any longer, as I don't think anyone would believe it now.