[Jeffhs]

Zenith has always been my favorite brand of TV, radio and audio gear. I've had several Zenith radios (I still have a few), Zenith televisions, and Zenith stereo phonographs, all of which worked and sounded great and gave me many years of excellent service; unfortunately, I had to give up most of my collection, including all but one of the televisions, and start absolutely fresh when, 21 years ago, I moved to a very small apartment from a 3-bedroom house with a basement.

BTW, Zenith was one of the best makes of TV, radio and audio, IMHO. It was a darn shame the company decided to leave Chicago for Korea. However, in the early '80s until I moved, I had a Zenith four-mode stereo system (their model IS-4041) which had been made in Korea. It worked great the 17 years I had it, but again, when I moved to an apartment, I had to give it up since it was too darn big for my new place (the main unit was almost as wide as my desk, and the speakers were in large walnut-grain wooden boxes). I replaced it with an Aiwa CX-NA888 4-mode digital stereo system, which is actually much better than the Zenith (50 watts per channel, while the Zenith was only 5 WPC). The Aiwa bookshelf system also has a CD player which can play up to 3 disks sequentially (the modern-day equivalent of a record changer). The system sounds great to me as well, even though each enclosure only has a 3" tweeter and a 6.5" woofer. (There may also be a midrange speaker in each of those enclosures as well.)

The only thing I don't like about this system is the selectivity of the stereo FM tuner. Since this system's FM tuner has fixed AFC, it will pull the tuning toward the strongest station(s) on the dial, which irks me because there is a strong FM station about eight miles from here on 104.7 MHz. That station completely drowns out a classical music station 0.2 MHz up the dial, at 104.9 MHz; I am sure I could hear that station very well were it not for the tuner's AFC locking the tuner on the stronger station. I am not a dyed-in-the-wool classical music fan (I grew up listening to rock music), but I would like to hear the classical station on 104.9 once in a while.

I hated like anything to hear of the end of the Zenith Radio Corporation, and have no idea what led to its downfall, but I do feel it was a tremendous loss to the hi-fi and television industry since, as I said, Zenith was one of the best if not the best brands of hi-fi stereo, TV, and transistor radios.

I am all but amazed no other company offered to take over Zenith to keep it going in the 21st century and beyond. To see a company like this, which had been founded in 1918 and had many, many followers, just throw in the towel after all those years and move from Chicago to Korea is just too darn bad, IMHO.