This is where your zenith tv was built!

[Jeffhs]

Originally Posted by rca2000

That C-845 Zenith radio in your Avatar is MUCH more "bark than "BITE". It does have a nice speaker system--but a VERY piss-poor, single 35C5 tube to drive it !! I have one or two just like it around here...and have LONG wondered--WHY Zenith did not make it REAL--with one or even a PAIR of say--6BQ5 outs or P-P 6V6's--THEN--it would have PERFORMANCE--to match its LOOKS !!

The C845 in my avatar is one of the vintage Zenith radios I own (the picture was copied from an antique radio website several years ago). I've never turned mine up full blast (couldn't if I wanted to, since I live in an apartment building), so I did not know until now about the audio distortion at maximum volume you mention.

I suppose, however, this could be a plus for teenagers listening to their favorite loud FM rock station, distortion and all (until the amplifier and/or the speakers burned out or blew a fuse, or the kids' parents not-so-politely told them "Turn that #$%@! thing down!"), since most rock music today is mostly noise--the more distortion, the better. (!) I don't know how much undistorted audio output power the 35C5 is capable of producing at full volume, but from what you mention, it probably isn't good for more than a watt or two at best before the entire audio stage goes into severe distortion.

I wonder if any of these radios had to have one or both speakers replaced because they were run too long at full volume, burning out the voice coils. If an audio amplifier is driven into distortion it will, more often than not, produce even more output power than the speakers can safely handle. I had a Zenith integrated stereo system, five watts per channel, with this warning posted on the backs of both speaker enclosures; however, I never ran the system at full volume in the 17 years I owned it.

BTW: I agree with your statement that Zenith could have made the C845 a real hi-fi radio, even at full or close to full volume, if they had designed the set with push-pull 6BQ5s, 6V6s or other high-power audio output tubes rather than a single 35C5. I have a Zenith MJ-1035 (currently waiting for a new volume control) that uses two 50EH5 output tubes and a 12AX7 driver stage. When that radio was working, it sounded great. But the volume control was damaged in shipping (I got the set in 2008 from an antique radio collector and former VK member in Arizona), so I was constantly dealing with intermittent sound and other problems until the control eventually fell apart. This radio uses a special 2-megohm dual potentiometer as a volume control, which I have not yet been able to find. Is this value so rare that it cannot be found anymore, or would I be better off trying to find a junker set on eBay or CL with a good volume pot? I'm in no hurry to get the radio working again, but some day I'd like to do so just for the ducks of it.