Here's another Zenith SC I found on the 'bay last night:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3638&item=3286178690&rd=1

Don't know if you like this particular model, but it's a Space Command:D

Yes, IVe been keeping an eye on it!

Heres the other one (yes, I got it afterall!) Actually, I had to recap the set last night. The sc chassis wasnt working and the agc would drift as the set was on for a while. The black beautys were shot.

Too bad that set on ebay is kinda beat up, however its still a space command set with the newer style remote. I'll still go after this set. It makes me wonder why this set was never fixed if a tv guy had it? Either the fly is shot or a pin on the crt is broke off. Zenith sets with the bakelite crt plug are notorious for poor pin contact. Could be as simple as that. I see it all the time.

Originally posted by drh4683
Yes, IVe been keeping an eye on it!

Heres the other one (yes, I got it afterall!) Actually, I had to recap the set last night. The sc chassis wasnt working and the agc would drift as the set was on for a while. The black beautys were shot.

Too bad that set on ebay is kinda beat up, however its still a space command set with the newer style remote. I'll still go after this set. It makes me wonder why this set was never fixed if a tv guy had it? Either the fly is shot or a pin on the crt is broke off. Zenith sets with the bakelite crt plug are notorious for poor pin contact. Could be as simple as that. I see it all the time.


You have a good point, Doug. Why, indeed, didn't the TV's previous owner (a TV technician) fix the set's problems before he listed it?

Seems to me the set you just won the auction for had a blue million bad capacitors, both in the TV chassis itself and in the Space Command receiver as well. (In fact, it sounds almost like just about every cap in the set was bad!) In a TV set of that vintage (1962), however, I'm not surprised. That's 42 years; how were the power supply filters? If I were a betting man (I'm not), I'd bet those were long gone as well by the time you got hold of the TV.

I learned something tonight reading your post. Was not aware that Zenith TVs with black bakelite CRT sockets had inherent contact problems. I once read in an old TV repair book that bad (corroded, etc.) contacts in CRT sockets can cause problems galore, among them weak or no picture, brightness fluctuations, even interference from nearby AM radio stations if one or more contacts are badly corroded (the poor contact acts as a diode to detect the strong radio station signal; however, this usually only happens in areas very near powerful stations).

I had a Space Command 300 19" b&w portable (1968 vintage) in the late '70s. The TV worked beautifully on all stations in my area just using rabbit ears; however, I never found out if the SC receiver worked or not because the hand unit was missing when I found the set. :( (I honestly do not think, however, the power tuning was working, as I could not find a power tuning button or bar anywhere on the set; besides, I could turn the channel selector by hand with no resistance whatsoever. I think the gear drive was shot and the previous owner just removed it when it went bad.)

I only had the set a year, as the horizontal output tube went gassy in the summer of 1978 and I couldn't find a replacement. When it went bad I just put it in my basement and bought a brand-new Zenith 12" b&w portable. That one lasted me the next 22 years; I'd still have it today (it was still working when I got rid of it), but I already have two color sets in my apartment, with no room for a third. Besides, TV reception in this area with monopole or dipole rabbit ears is terrible, at least on VHF channels (the NBC station on channel 3 doesn't come in clearly or, in some cases, at all using any kind of indoor antenna; a friend of mine who used to live just up the street from me could only get one station, the CBS affiliate on channel 19, on her set), so that little set would have been of little or no use to me here, especially since the detent mechanism of the UHF tuner broke in the '80s and jammed the tuner on one channel (apparently a vacant one in my area, as I did not see anything but snow on whatever station the tuner was jammed on). This made the set useless here, since one of the major network affiliates for northeastern Ohio is on channel 19, our PBS station is channel 25, UPN is 43, and so on.

I'm curious. Do you collect Zeniths from the late '70s, like my small 12" portable or any of their small sets, such as those bright orange and red ones from the middle or latter part of the decade or the Spirit of '76 model from, of course, 1976? My set was model J121Y, an all-solid-state b&w set (down to the HV rectifier) which, as I said, was working very well (except for the jammed UHF tuner) when I got rid of it a year after I moved here.