Trash find Zenith tube console
 

Well, one of my good friends in West Seneca NY from facebook knew that I was into old TVs, and sent me pictures of 3 sets a neighbor was tossing. Two were late 80s sets, then she showed me a pic of what I *thought* was a B&W console.

Turns out it's not. It's color. Hi-Fi, in fact :)

Zenith model 25T2966-1 , chassis 23XC36. It weathered one small rainfall in front of the people's house, then my friend grabbed it for me at my request. Looks undamaged, and is complete with the back.

Me thinks this is up Technicolor's alley :D

I'm out of room and the wife is out of patience. But thanks for thinking of me.

good solid zenith chassis.

Is it missing part of the top knob?

Looks like Christine is fixin' to EAT it...(grin)

Nope, that's the window for the channel display :)

(oo)====v====(oo)
.........======........

:D

Have you tried it out to see if it works?

Oh, of course. I did exactly what you're not supposed to do....I plugged it right in to see what would happen :) . Figured if it blew up it wasn't a huge loss, because it's nothing rare and great.

Lights are on, but nobody's home......as in the tubes lit, but no raster or audio. I figured it would need the works anyway. As it stands at the moment, I'm going to be almost out of NON-working sets around here by fall, so I may just redo it, as long as the picture tube tests good :)

Think I've done 4 or 5 complete restos this year already.

Wow, you got lucky finding that.

Nice one Tim, last of the channel knob-window Zeniths. Those tone controls are so COOL on those sets.

What year would this have been? It would have had to have been one of the first rectangulars then....1966 or 67?

You can tell by the letter in the model number: N is 66, X is 67. (I think those knobs were used on the 67)

Isn't it amazing how the grill cloth holds up on those old Zenith consoles?
The Zenith cabinet in my Avatar is 43 years old and the grill cloth is something like a semi shear drapery material. Very thin.

It's a darn good thing too. Ain't any of this stuff around repro, that's for sure.....

Gonna have to test the picture tube, then get it in the basement. I'm getting awfully packed in with sets at the moment. Thing is, all the sets coming in belong to other people....lol. Most of which are done.

The sets with bass & treble were I believe the first & 2nd yr.
In 67 the family got a Zenith console. Was in the fall for Red Sox series
so may have been a '68 Went to one shaft tuning. T shaped selector with push to ft knob, ft knob doubled as UHF. looked much more modern.

I rebuilt a top of line console more like yours abt 1978. It had
bass & treble in same place & IIRC motorized tuner but no remote.
Great audio & nice pix. Massive maple cabinet, a real knock-out.

For exact date use date codes on major parts. For model year use
model #. Roundies probably overlapped for a year or two as a
cheap model.

73 Zeno

How long did Zenith use that one knob design?
IIRC, they were more problematic. The two indicator drums would rub and the teeth would chip on the VHF drum.
The next year began the UHF tuner problems. :scratch2:

There was a Zenith roundy with similar knobs in the ETF live auction, it wasn't the one I bought though.

I have 1970 and 1971 Zenith sets with said UHF tuners, very annoying - bumped the knob and it went total snow, at one time UHF tuner was important in my area, not anymore:sigh:

I never got ambitious enough to try my theoretical fix: remove the shaft and clean/re-spring the copper grounding "fingers". I thought an intermittent ground on the rotor plates would stop the UHF osc :scratch2:

IIRC 2-3 yrs. All black behind knobs then they added some silver
around the vol/color/tint controls later. Then IIRC went to separate
dials w/ spotlights then the big chrome knobs & side controls.
Been a LONG time so I may have missed something.

Only probs I remember were a few of the drums, ft gears, I think
shafts ( clutch?) . UHF probs usually were bad U shaped grounds. Later found a few drops of WD40 cured them without the fuss & risk.
Also some U tuners had a flywheel driven by a thin metal rod.
Clean it good & would work agn for years.

73 Zeno

I found that removing the cover on the UHF tuner and resoldering the grounding fingers, would help a whole lot.
I remember the flywheel tuners too!
I sold a lot of 6AF4's, when I first started TV repair. They only lasted a few months, because we used UHF so much. The 6DZ4 was a real improvement.

For those never "on the job" a few other UHF tips
Watch lead dress & NEVER bend the plates !
CLOSE plates while working on.
No U mixer diode
No U osc transistor, to delicate so I never did one.
Make sure its getting B+
UHF IF cable. Cheap sets like GE crimped the cables & would die
or go int. When we junked a Zenith we would save those pretty green
UIF cables & use them as replacements.
VHF RF amp tube can cause snowy UHF so can the mixer.
You can plug a tuner sub into the UIF jack as a test.

Thanks for the memories.................

73 Zeno:smoke:

Had a Zenith from about 68-69 when I was a teenager, it was intermittent-sometimes it would do just like this one, just tubes light. Other times it would play great. Back then I couldn't figure it out but now I'm guessing circuit breaker (if it uses one) or something simple in the B+ circuit.

Here is a Zenith ad from 65. not sure if thats the year or model
year. The maple job at the end was the one I had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIefAOli1QY

73 Zeno:smoke:

Nice TV glad you saved it :) It seems I never get lucky I was in west seneca 3 times this past week and never see anything good in the trash i guess my timeing is a little off. Glad you got it before the heavy rain we got yesterday!

Quite a nice find my friend,good for you :)

You're welcome to it, if you like. It's still in my garage keeping my '58 Plymouth company. I have a pair of RCA color sets ahead of it, a CTC-16 and a CTC-25A, so if you want it, it's yours :)