1975 Zenith 9" b/w
 

This is one of those spirit of '76 sets. 9GB2X chassis, model H094X. I would have thought the H in the model number would have indicated this is a '76 model, but there is a sticker on the back which says "manufactured November 1975". Two nice things about this one are that the antenna is not at all broken, and it still has that tinted plastic lens over the CRT.

That pic shows it just how I got it, the cabinet could still use some cleaning up. And you can't really see it in the pic, but it was short about 1/4" of vertical height. I was able to adjust that out just using the vert size control. Otherwise the only other problem is a scratchy volume control. And I haven't taken the back off, but from what I can see in there it looks pretty dusty. I should probably take the back off and blow out all that dust. And I need to clean the inside of that plastic lens...

TV's are like cars. The new model year starts late summer.
That way you can get the latest for the big sales season.
Baseball, start of foot ball, tnxgivings, Christmas, new years then
the big January sell off of overstock. The rest of the year is
usually about the sales volume of Oct-Jan.

73 Zeno:smoke:

We did a brisk business in May and June selling sets - the kids are out for summer, and need a "sitter."

Repairs were steady all year, but became rush jobs at Christmas, Super Bowl, and in any Olympics year.

Didn't Philco, GE, and Zenith all make '76 specials?

That Bad Boy just MIGHT have Tooobz... Prolly a little late, but you NEVER know..

Nice catch. Set looks clean

Do you mean a U.S. bicentennial version? If so, put Magnavox on the list.

I did finally take a look inside, no tubes, everything is on one board mounted horizontally across the bottom of the set, except for the power supply which is on another board mounted vertically on the side over by the tuners.

I've seen the 76 GE which is a 12" b/w in a red/white/blue plastic cabinet, but I've never seen the Philco version, or the Magnavox.

I remember seeing a lot of bicentennial stuff for sale in the summer of 1975, marketers were getting a jump on it. Even many railroads would renumber a locomotive to 1776 and paint it red white and blue.

One of the sellers at the various swap meets had one years ago, like the early to mid-90's.
He must've had that set, for over a year at every meet. He was asking, like $20.00 for it. He finally sold it. :D

Correction! IIRC, the set was a 12". AC only. :boring:

Nope
AC/DC optional battery pack. Also had a sun screen.
Few problems. Leaky bridge rects, 12V regulator transistor,
vert outputs & yoke coupling cap in hoz. Boards arent the usual
glass that Zenith used so CARE must be taken soldering.
The set sold in the $130-$140 range.

Our shop was in Acton, Ma. so we sold tons of these. The
natives loved anything colonial & war related. Most had a
musket hanging above the fireplace and a pine or maple
Zenith color. Local hero was Capt. Isaac Davis. A good &
very accurate read is here. Few know the details of the
Concord fight.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Davis_%28soldier%29
A few years after Isaacs widow remarried to Samuel Jones.
They are my G-G-G-G- grandparents. If Isaac didnt
get killed there would be no Zeno............
Dont change the past !

73 Zeno:smoke:

Even the US government was ahead of it's time. The US Mint was striking the 1776-1976 bicentennial coins as early as February of 1975, and they were released into circulation in July of 1975.

.

I've got one of those, and one of it's less patriotic avacado green brethren.....IIRC one of mine has no sound.

I used to have one of those 12" GEs with the SF chassis in avocado green.

So I like this set more that I thought I would, been watching it all week. But it does have one problem, light and dark vertical bars across the screen. It's not as bad as the pic below makes it look though, I adjusted it to make the problem most visible. I won't have any time to look into it until December, but are there any common causes of this?

I'm not even really sure if I should start poking around the horizontal, or if this rather has something to do with video output or IF. I've seen horizontal problems show up as a single bright vertical line, or a few vertical lines (usually narrower than these), combined with bad horiz linearity. It was like the picture was compressed horizontally around the lines, or the lines were being caused by the electron beam being deflected too slowly for brief periods of time. But this doesn't look like that, the picture isn't compressed around the bright lines, which is why I think this might have something to do with video output and not horizontal.

That problem is almost always an electrolytic
feeding the voltage to the video amp. VERY
common on color sets. I will look it up later
& get the details.

73 Zeno:smoke: