Zenith Spotted
 

The shortest lived TV set in my family's household between 1966 and 1981 was a portable circa 1971 Zenith. When my sister moved out in 1973, her roommate had the same set. It crapped out shortly after the move and our set followed suit not very much later. I believe the set in these screen caps is the same one. Can anybody identify it by model number? Was it a lemon, or did we just have really bad luck?

A little bit of both! I worked on a few, the picture was only so-so.
The early model had the low focus volts CRT, so it was just like any of the other ones, with a similar CRT.
I have the last run of that model, that uses a high focus volts CRT and the picture quality is much better.

Wrong TV.
Picture is a Panasonic.............

73 Zeno:smoke:
LFOD !

Was it one of these?

https://c1.staticflickr.com/2/1493/2...6ac16fa9_n.jpg

If it is I can get you the chassis number (set pictured is mine), and possibly the model (though if there was a black cabinet version I can't readily get that model number).

Moved to rectangular tube tvs, hope ya don't mind!

The picture is rather blurry.
Those P'sonic hybrids were a treat to work on. Also, the Bradfords and the Penncrests.
Were they slightly ahead of their time. :scratch2:

The Zenith in the picture was a very reliable set. A friend of mine bought every one we got in! Really good color! They did eat an occasional horizontal output tube but were otherwise good sets. Oh, the color IC plugged into a 9 pin tube socket.
20LF6?

I knew someone who was an engineer at Zenith, and he told about the cause of reliability problems with such ICs. Seems the assembly line workers were using a rubber mallet to plug the ICs in the tube socket, and the ICs would suffer momentary stresses when they did that. and those stresses would create small cracks which would let moisture and whatnot in, eventually ruining the IC.

Sounds akin to the GE griplet problem. At a training meeting for GE the instructor revealed the griplets were coated with lubricant by the assembler that made the solder wave machine ineffective in soldering the griplets completely.
We changed a good number of the color IC's.
Murphy never sleeps!

Even all these years later I can recall the Zenith having a very substantially better picture than the RCA that just wouldn't die. The latter was the first set I had living on my own in 1981, back when it was still something of a feather in your cap to have a color TV.

But...what is the model number of that Zenith?