Quote:
Originally Posted by Electronic M
You're confusing your eras in Zenith history.
Zenith stopped building TVs in the USA around 1980, and they had EXCELLENT CRTs in the made in USA era. It wasn't until the 90s when the sets were made in Mexico and Korea that the CRTs went downhill.
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I consider the Mexican built Zenith and RCAs to be "domestic" as the chassis were identical to the ones built in Kentucky, Indiana, Chicago etc even as the ownership of both companies was transferred to overseas. Until LG started supplying Zenith with LG built product, Zenith TVs were still Zeniths.
The last RCA chassis made in Mexico were absolutely identical in every way to the Indiana built chassis - the only way of telling them apart was from the label on the back of the cabinet. The machinery was literally picked up and moved to Mexico, and since the construction of the chassis was all done by automation, there was no dropoff (or increase for that matter) of quality when the plants were relocated south of the border.
Mexico never supplied Zenith and RCA with home grown rebadged TVs (I don't know if Mexico even had that capability then).
Zenith tubes were still excellent through most of the 80s despite the movement to Mexico. The crappy Zenith tubes of the 90s were still built by Zenith regardless of what side of the border the plant was located. A Zenith engineer told me that Zenith had stopped making the gun assemblies themselves in the 90s and sourced the guns from elsewhere, probably Goldstar. It was Zenith's decision to outsource the guns, so I'm not inclined to give them a pass on this unless it was an LG directive. RCA was still making top quality tubes during the 90s, and Zenith should have had RCA/TCE supply the guns for them or just outright buy the tubes (there were actually a few Zeniths with 25" and 26" RCA pre-yammed tubes). The 31" inch and above Zeniths came with tubes not built by Zenith at all (I recall RCA, Toshiba, and Philips) and they were all good tubes.
John
06-03-2023, 10:33 AM
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