picked up a zenith metal cabinet remote set with a vertical chassis at a moving sale today.swivel stand and the hand unit.manufactured in may 1977.what is amazing is that,it is dead!not a whimper out of it!i have never seen one that didnt do something.no breaker tripping,no buzzing,nothing!have never seen this in all my years.i bought it for a parts set but now i am curious.shaking my head in disbelief!

MOST Un-Zenith-like...

MOST Un-Zenith-like...

I bought a 1972 or thereabouts 12" black and white Zenith that is completely dead like that. No tubes light or anything. That is very unlike a Zenith. I have not tried to find out what is wrong with it.

At first, I thought you were going to tell us that you found a flat chassis SS Zenith. Still, what you found is well worth owning and I hope you get it fixed. On those sets, I've seen issues with the remote power supply chassis that would keep them from powering up. I think some of those had a remote/manual switch that may be dirty or in the wrong position.

wish it was a flat chassis with a 25v crt.i have another identical set with no high voltage.can take 2 and make one?one has a green lable crt and the other a purple label.not sure what the difference is.

A year or so ago, I fixed a CCII with not HV and it had an open horizontal driver transformer. There's also a big power resistor on the flat part of the chassis that will open and kill B+ to the horizontal output circuit. I've also seen defective horizontal oscillator modules kill the HV, as well as the cap/resistor in the HOT emitter circuit. Last; but, not least, the HV triplers were high failure parts in these sets.

this set doesnt have any voltage anywhere!breaker not tripping,no indication of anything.i have never seen a completely dead zenith.i have seen these sets trip breakers,tuners light,something.i will pull off the back sometime this week if we dont have a power outage.there is a switch in the front panel that is marked main off/on.i will check voltage there first.my other set has no high voltage.both fuses blown and looks like a cap behind the flyback is swollen.owner said it did work but had a slight vertical issue.not enough to fill the screen when cold.after it played for hours it would expand and almost fill out the screen.i put it away until i got a parts set.any idea on the picture tube label?my 25v chromacolor has a purple label 25vdmp22.it has a fantastic picture!

i got it working!baffled me but for some stange reason,the wires on the on/off switch came loose and the set wouldnt power up.i resoldered and it still didnt power up.exchanged the on/manual switch and the same result.found a blown fuse in the remote module.replaced and bam!set powered up with a dim,blurry picture.looked like a bad crt.after 15 minutes,the crt came to life.working well but then a flickering and now it has a loss of contrast.i turned up the agc and it has a very good picture for now.the contrast control doesnt work very much and its backwards.it was working properly when i first powered up.now it has a slight range and again,it is backwards.convergence is so-so with room for improvement.glad crt came up.now to fix the damn contrast issue!windy,wet and very cold today.had to abandon the set in the garage.here are some screen shots

update-turned it on this morning.set played flawlessly for 5 hours straight.contrast worked properly and overall very satisfied with this set.remote is operating as it should.crossing my fingers and hoping it will give another 35 years of service!

Holy cow that's a great picture! I bet emissions are great on that thing!

it looks pretty good but the crt didnt test all that well.it was even with all 3 guns at 7.5.in the green but barely.i have an identical set with an outstanding crt.may swap out the chassis.i also need a zenith crt for my hybrid console.it has a sylvania rebuilt crt with severe cataract.it will pop off easily without any heat.that crt is extremely good but i like a zenith to be all zenith.