Just arrived this morning - an uncommon late Zenith tube AM table radio. Model Y135 (Y135W) Chassis 6N05. Hardwired six-tube chassis with a huge ferrite bar antenna. Marked "High Performance" and has a "Dial Lite" and tone control.

The best part is that it still works perfectly and based on the dust and original tubes I'm probably the first person to ever open her up. I dated it 1968 based solely on the date codes on the tubes.

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That is indeed a '68 model since it's from the "Y" line. X='67, Y='68, Z='69, A='70, etc. I had a very sililar radio around '90 and it was a nice performer. I don't think there were that many tube radios being made in '68, let alone higher performance models. So, I'd say this one is a keeper.

BTW, I think '69 ("Z" line) was the last year for Zenith tube radios. I remember seeing a cheaper Zenith AM/FM set from the "Z" line. I don't know if that one was the only tube model for '69.

Is the extra tube the RF amp? Does the tuning cap have 2 or 3 gangs?

Yes, it is the RF amp and it does have a three-gang tuning cap (hadn't noticed until you asked) :)

I also learned this is the same radio as the earlier N615C N615L N615W - the only difference I can see thus far is that those had "Filter Magnet Antenna" where mine read "High Performance."

I also learned this is the same radio as the earlier N615C N615L N615W - the only difference I can see thus far is that those had "Filter Magnet Antenna" where mine read "High Performance."

Yours has a shield over the antenna loopstick, which should reduce noise. Idea being that most noise is electrostatic, and radio stations produce both electro and magnetic waves (light at radio wavelengths). Radio stations will be weaker, but noise even more weak, to add up to lower noise reception.

I didn't know that - thanks.

That must be some kind of Faraday shield over the antenna. I have a Zenith set from around 1940 (stored away right now) that has a regular loop antenna with a Faraday shield around it.

L'il guy SHOULD be a pretty good performer, though..

Oh, it's a great performer - beyond my expectations! And that shield does work - I have the set plugged in next to my computer - I can only run battery sets this close because of interference. This guy isn't bothered by all that :)

Nice. Those Zenith AM only table radios from the 50s and 60s are among my favorites. I already posted about that clock radio I have, this is my other Zenith.

I have several of those zenith 6 tubers, all great performers, not that late mine are mostly late 50's with the big loop antennas on the back. they also had nice big 10" speakers (IIRC) sound very nice.

I don't know if you can hear station CFZM "Zoomer Radio" AM 740 in Chalmette but if you can, it will sound great on your Zenith radio. This is one of the few AM music stations left in North America (its studios and transmitter are in Toronto). I would think that, with its 50kW signal, you should hear it quite well after sundown. I don't know how many stations are on or near 740 kHz in your area (I'll look on RadioStationWorld.com after I write this), but if that frequency and nearby ones (700-730 and 750-780) are quiet, you should hear AM 740 just fine. You might have problems with interference from 50kW flamethrowers such as WLW Cincinnati (700), WGN-AM Chicago (720), WSB-AM Atlanta (750), WJR Detroit (760), WABC-AM New York (770) and WBBM-AM Chicago (780), but since your Zenith is very likely quite selective (since it has an RF stage it almost has to be), interference from these stations shouldn't be too much of an issue.

Your radio is probably a variant of Zenith's "Filter-Tenna" wedge-shaped receivers, which as you noted also have RF amp stages ahead of the antennas. I think these receivers were very popular in areas with few or no local AM stations, or areas some distance from big-city stations. The shielded antenna helps a lot as well (especially if you are listening to weak or distant stations), to prevent interference from such things as fluorescent lights, motors, sparks and the like. I believe this type of antenna is a huge improvement (because of the shielding) over Zenith's original "Wavemagnet" loop antenna, mounted on the back covers of their older AM and AM/FM sets. I have a Zenith C845 with a Wavemagnet loop that works very well (I have heard New Orleans' WWL on this radio more than once), but the loop is not shielded, so I get quite a bit of interference between stations from horizontal-oscillator harmonics when my neighbors are watching TV. I was tuning around on AM on my C845 last night, however, and heard a snatch of the Phil Hendrie syndicated talk program over a station about 80 miles from here. The station sounded like it was right next door. :yes:

Thats a neat radio. I never saw that one before. Yes, it is indeed a '68 model by production, but it uses a chassis introduced first in 1966.

As for the last tube type zenith radio, 1969 was the last year with the model Z316, which is a very plain basic AM FM table radio. One of my personal favorite zenith radios happens to be their first solid state set form '66. They are hard to find in nice shape. Its a model N890 which had two individual side by side slide rule dials for AM and FM. That was a great radio and every one I've ever found was beat to hell.

I don't know if you can hear station CFZM "Zoomer Radio" AM 740 in Chalmette but if you can, it will sound great on your Zenith radio. This is one of the few AM music stations left in North America (its studios and transmitter are in Toronto). I would think that, with its 50kW signal, you should hear it quite well after sundown. I don't know how many stations are on or near 740 kHz in your area

Ironically, about 4:30 this morning I went outside for a few minutes with a Panasonic portable to see what would come in under the heavy cloudcover. I picked up KTRH 740 out of Houston, but there was a Mexican station bleeding over. I did hear about 30 seconds of music coming out of a break, pretty faint, but thought it was too long for a bumper. CFZM may have been it.

750 WSB normally comes in; 730 (WASO) is a low-watt station about 40-50 miles from here that's been silent since 2003 or 2004 when the FTC seized the station. I would probably catch CFZM if it weren't for the stations south of the border bleeding over (a common problem this far south.)

Thats a neat radio. I never saw that one before. Yes, it is indeed a '68 model by production, but it uses a chassis introduced first in 1966.

As for the last tube type zenith radio, 1969 was the last year with the model Z316, which is a very plain basic AM FM table radio. One of my personal favorite zenith radios happens to be their first solid state set form '66. They are hard to find in nice shape. Its a model N890 which had two individual side by side slide rule dials for AM and FM. That was a great radio and every one I've ever found was beat to hell.

That N615 was the '66-'67 model using this chassis - like I said earlier except for the wording under the "Zenith" label they appear identical. I wonder if there were any other significant changes that warranted a model number change. Sometime this week I'm opening her back up and comparing her to the N615 schematic.

Thats a neat radio. I never saw that one before. Yes, it is indeed a '68 model by production, but it uses a chassis introduced first in 1966.

As for the last tube type zenith radio, 1969 was the last year with the model Z316, which is a very plain basic AM FM table radio. One of my personal favorite zenith radios happens to be their first solid state set form '66. They are hard to find in nice shape. Its a model N890 which had two individual side by side slide rule dials for AM and FM. That was a great radio and every one I've ever found was beat to hell.

I've been wanting one of those N890's myself. Mainly due to an article I read in ARC about handwired solid state AC radios and this Zenith is one of them. I did, however, run across a '67 white plastic Zenith AM/FM "x" line clock radio with a hand wired chassis w/ socketed transistors. I suspect Zenith was probably the only company that made a non-PC board AC only solid state radio. I did see an N890 on ebay a long time ago; but, it was way overpriced and looked like it had been run over by a Mack truck.

I just want to add that I've researched some advertisements through Google's News Archive Search to see if Zenith made a large solid state table radio. As far as I can tell any AM table radios after this one were all smaller - the size of a standard alarm clock. These include the Z212 ('69) and the E210 ('74.)

Zenith had an AM/FM stereo clock radio in the early 1980s, model H480W, solid state and quite large. I have one, works well on AM but extremely weak on FM. The trouble started immediately after I cleaned the slide pots. I think I must have been in too much of a hurry to test the set after spraying the controls; some of the stuff must have leaked onto one of the FM circuit boards and shorted a transistor or an IC (this radio has only one IC that I can see, the stereo FM decoder). Never did find the problem. What puzzles me is why I'm getting any reception at all on FM after the mishap (you can hear some very weak sound on FM with the volume all the way up, with a slight hum in the background) -- if that spray damaged the FM circuits, I would have thought it would have killed the entire section so that all I would hear would be...silence. :scratch2:

For Ryan (AUdubon5425): Zenith began to shrink its radios, I think, in the mid-1970s as you noted. The company had begun to manufacture its radios offshore by that time; by then large radios were going out of style in favor of table models. I'll have to look in that Google archive myself, as I'm curious to see just how small Zenith's radios became before the company got out of the radio business in the early '80s. I probably won't be too surprised, however, if I do find some very small sets, as by the '80s radio manufacturers were making widespread use of ICs; it probably wasn't too long afterward that companies with names no one on these shores ever heard of were turning out radios in which the entire set was on one chip. I once had a Radio Shack "Flavoradio" which might have been a one-chip design; never did look inside the thing to see how it was made. I also have a belt-clip stereo-FM scanning radio that I am almost sure must have been designed the same way. The radio is in a very slim case with the belt clip on the back, so I cannot imagine this set having been built using discrete components; the single IC (if there is one) that contains the entire radio may be on a small board as slim as is the case. As small and skinny as this radio is, it would not surprise me one bit if it is a so-called one-chip gutless wonder; however, mine seems to do a decent job picking up Cleveland FM stations using just the headphone cord as an antenna.

If you are interested in a company that designs and sells the single chip FM receivers, check out the Silicon Labs website.

http://www.silabs.com/products/Pages/default.aspx

The design center and company headquarters are based in Austin, Texas, my hometown. I am not sure where the chips are actually fabricated.