Starting on a Zenith 17" Bugeye

[Eric H]

I've finished up the 14" RCA as well as two other RCA's so I decided to work on something different.

This is a 17" Zenith Bugeye I got from Goodwill for $5 or something like that.
The set works well as found with only a little vertical shrinkage, most of the tubes seem to be the OEM Zenith tubes, including the CRT, they are dated toward the end of 1956, 47th week of 56 for the CRT so possibly this set was in the store in time for Christmas 1956.

The main filter was replaced with a 1962 dated Sprague, who knows when but probably in the 60's at least.

It's very easy to take apart, four screws two on top and two on bottom of the rear edge and then the chassis and face and chassis slides out of the Aluminum cabinet, I had to unsolder the speaker wires but I'm not sure they were originally soldered or if that was done later during a repair.

For a Zenith this is a fairly low end set, series string, voltage doubler power supply, but it has a very good picture, even unrestored. It does not suffer from yoke rot like all the RCA's do.