incredible sound...

Yeah, Those Zenith AM/FM radios are some of the best out there in terms of sound and quality, always point to point wiring and a metal chassis. They made the same basic chassis from the early 50s to the end of tubes. With the addition of an AFC for the FM in the mid 50s. I have one of the earlier ones from the 50s, my first old radio, had it for years and it works great, I use it almost every day. I'm still amazed at how good the tuning and sound is on it. I believe many of these sets had two electrostatic tweeters to compliment the huge main speaker.

Enjoy!

I still am having truoble downsizing pics for posting...mine does have the AFC....
mine is the X338 model...

radio insides

better pic

label

;)

Found the X338 in the Sams Photofact index, #725, which would be 1964. I don't have any Sams that new...

Why the U.S.A. radios had only AM (MW) and FM, and not LW and SW too? The European radios had LW-MW-SW-FM.

By the 1950s, shortwave had pretty much disappeared from consumer radios in the US. It WAS popular in the '30s and '40s. Longwave was never used for broadcasting here - only aiport code beacons can be heard there.

I went to an antique flea market, and had to be restrained by my GF as they had like 5 great tube radios, including a Transoceanic.....

In Romania (especially durring the Comunism regim) we used to listen foregin radios on SW. No with the FM and the internet...

Originally posted by maxm
Yeah, Those Zenith AM/FM radios are some of the best out there in terms of sound and quality, always point to point wiring and a metal chassis. They made the same basic chassis from the early 50s to the end of tubes. With the addition of an AFC for the FM in the mid 50s. I have one of the earlier ones from the 50s, my first old radio, had it for years and it works great, I use it almost every day. I'm still amazed at how good the tuning and sound is on it. I believe many of these sets had two electrostatic tweeters to compliment the huge main speaker.

Enjoy!

Max, your set and the K-731 were among Zenith's best AM/FM tube radios in the late '50s-early '60s. My '731, an ebay score last spring, in many ways sounds and works better than my Aiwa bookshelf stereo. The '731 has a 5x7 oval speaker for lows and an electrostatic tweeter, connected directly to the plate of the 35C5 audio output tube (this is the first radio with an electrostatic tweeter I've seen in four decades of electronics experimenting).

I like the hand-wiring and all-metal chassis of Zenith's early (until the '80s) radios and TVs as well. I had a 12-inch Zenith solid-state b&w portable TV in the late '70s (bought new in 1978) that lasted 22 years. It was still working when I got rid of it four years ago (no room for it in the apartment I moved to a year earlier, and it didn't work well on its monopole VHF antenna as I live in a fringe area for Cleveland television). This TV, ironically, had one large circuit board which contained the entire set, including, IIRC, the flyback, but I had absolutely no trouble with it in all the years I had it. The only thing wrong with it when I finally gave it up was the detent on the UHF tuner broke or jammed, locking the tuner on one channel (as bad luck would have it, the thing wound up on a blank channel in our area, but it didn't bother me at the time; the CBS station in Cleveland didn't switch to a UHF channel until years later, I wasn't watching PBS much in those days, and the one [at that time] independent UHF station in Cleveland didn't have much to watch back then either [years before there were any such networks as UPN, The WB, etc.]).

I saw a 1982-vintage Zenith hi-fi radio on ebay last night, solid state, wood cabinet, tuning meter, the whole nine yards. The seller described this one as one of the last radios Zenith ever had manufactured to its own specifications, although the radio had been built offshore (their radio/audio division was already based in Korea by the '80s; I once owned a Zenith integrated stereo system of late '70s-early '80s vintage which had been made there). By this time Zenith had stopped using its famous lightning-bolt Z and the crest emblem on its TVs and audio gear, but the lightning bolt resurfaced for a short time on GoldStar-built Zenith-branded television sets (though I understand it was dropped again not long ago, this time probably, even likely, for good).

i have the same model exept the neighbors kids doodled all over the front with permanent markers before they set it on the curb.
all it needed was a couple of filter caps and it sounds better than the bpc they are using.
guess i will tear it down and paint the grille with some bright yellow imron i have here.
at least they didnt mess up the dial scale.

Originally posted by kc8adu
i have the same model exept the neighbors kids doodled all over the front with permanent markers before they set it on the curb.
all it needed was a couple of filter caps and it sounds better than the bpc they are using.
at least they didnt mess up the dial scale.

Ouch! That's a shame that those kids had to mark up the front panel of your set as they did. I just saw a pic of one of those radios attached to another post, and it looks very nice with its white front, black and white vertical sliderule dial and all. To deface a radio this nice looking is, IMO, outrageous. This sort of destruction is almost like the guff some kids pull on trash day when they throw rocks at the screen of a TV set on the curb (I've seen sets damaged this way--it's a wonder the kids who pull this aren't hurt badly), or knock the neck off a CRT of a set with the neck exposed (no back cover). The only thing worse than that, again IMO, is for thoughtless kids to take a screwdriver or other sharp instrument and permanently gouge or scratch a nice-looking walnut, cherry or other fine wood cabinet (or punch holes in the speaker grille cloth, often damaging or destroying the speaker when the cone gets punched through). Again, I have seen console TVs and stereos with cabinets disfigured like this, and it makes me cringe every time I see such a thing. I like the warm look of wood furniture; just the thought of such deliberate destruction of, say, a well-made 1950s or earlier vintage Early American walnut radio or TV cabinet makes my heart sink.

Glad to hear, however, that you only had to replace the filters to get your set working again. The radio will probably play for years now; after all, those older Zeniths were made to last. I'd keep a set of replacement tubes around just in case. It's much easier to replace a bad tube than a defective filter cap.

BTW, I can only hope that the kids who marked up the front of that radio did not also do the same thing to the wood cabinet. The C845s, as well as many of Zenith's better table radios of the '50s and early sixties, had very nice walnut or blonde wood cabinets; if marked on with (especially) a permanent marker, the finish, of course, is as permanently disfigured as if the cabinet had been deeply scratched.



Kind regards,

I looked at the pic of the tube layout chart for kc8adu's Zenith C845, and noticed the chassis number, 8H20. Wasn't that the same chassis used in Zenith's radio-phono consoles of the '50s? The chassis number rang a bell in my mind because I remember seeing this chassis in at least one Zenith RP console of that vintage...or am I thinking of the 8H20Z? What was the difference, if any, between the two chassis? I did notice that the 8H20 had one more tube in it (a 6AB4) than my K-731 (and others like it) with 7K07/7M07 chassis. Was the 8H20 a high-performance chassis with an AM RF amp as well as the 19T8 FM amplifier? I notice the tube layout is otherwise identical to that of the K731 and its plastic-cabinet cousins.

Did the 8H20 chassis have a phono input as well? If this was a true hi-fi radio, and especially with two speakers, it should have; after all, many radios and television sets of mid-1950s vintage had such an input on the rear chassis apron, and a switch on the front panel to activate it. (My folks' first TV was a 1954 RCA Victor 21" console with a phono jack; they even had the matching 45-EY-3 45-rpm changer to go with it. In fact, my dad kept the changer for years after the TV went to the junkpile, although by the '70s the cartridge was missing.)

As good as the K731's audio system is, with that electrostatic tweeter, it should have been equipped with a phono input as well, but it wasn't--at least mine doesn't have such a jack, or if it does I haven't found it yet.

I picked up a Zenith tube clock radio the other day. I was thinking of hooking it up to a 12" Goodman speaker since I have no mono tube amp to run it. I posted this in the tube amp section but then stumbled across this area. What do you guys think??

Here is more info as posted in tubes...

Picked it up at Goodwill, works fine. I'm wondering if I can use it to drive a fullrange 12" Goodman speaker and how well will it do?

the current speaker is a little 3-4 incher and the speaker wires seem to be single strand , bare copper. It looks like they may be touching each other and parts of the chassis??

Tubes include a 12be6, 12ba6, 12av6, 505c and a 35w4.

chassis 5LO2

The speaker leads may look like bare copper but actually have an enamel coating so there is some insulation on them.

CAUTION: This radio has the powerline connected directly to the chassis. If you are going to use it as an amp, connecting it to external equipment, you need an isolation transformer on the power input. You can cause a shock hazard or short out external equipment if you don't.

The speaker leads are usually isolated from the powerline but sometimes one is grounded...making the speaker leads possibly a shock hazard, if you don't have an isolation transformer on the power line.