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Found a 1972 Zenith portable color set
I picked this set up at an estate sale last weekend in my subdivision. It's a 1972 Zenith 16" portable color set using the 14CC16 chassis, model C3722W. This one was in pretty good shape but somewhat neglected and unused for a long time. It was in the kitchen dining room, sitting on top of a cabinet covered in dust, rabbit ears extended and still plugged in but not being used since long before the digital transition. The house was built by the same builder as mine in 1964, sharing the same basic architecture and had similar light fixtures throughout including the same red and blue MOE light over the kitchen table which was nice to see. Hopefully whoever buys the house will preserve it.
Anyway, the set looks like it got used pretty well over the years, but it wasn't beat up. It never got serviced either. This thing gave years of dependable service it looks like. I pulled the back off and saw all of the original tubes still in the chassis and no evidence of old repairs. The CRT is still strong and the set still works! I checked all the tubes and the 15MF8 is the only one that needed to be replaced. Unfortunately, the original VHF tuning knob was gone and they had one on there from other set. Since they used the wrong knob, the plastic insulated "D" shaft on the VHF tuner got gouged up, so the knob doesn't fit very well now. So I'll have to find a replacement tuning shaft and knob. The good news is, the plastic shaft presses over the existing metal tuning shaft, so all I need is a donor tuner with and carefully remove the plastic portion. The whole idea of that plastic insulated shaft was because of a UL regulation because this is a series string set. Manufacturers were not aloud to have any metal part of the set potentially exposed thus creating a shock hazard. I also need to find a correct matching VHF tuning knob (original VHF knob p/n is 46-8146). I'm borrowing one off another set in the interim. And last but not least, the original carry handle was broken and missing. But other than those issues, it's a nice set and I don't hold those issues against it since these are almost impossible to find now. It's always fun to spot one of these since they're a cheap thrill and easy to move. I took the set apart this weekend and cleaned it all up and it looks really nice again. I had to re-glue all of the labels and tags which were all just about ready to fall off. I'm amazed they weren't already missing. Typical Chicago area color TV though as it has the "Certified Television Service" tag on it and the date it was delivered which I always liked seeing. That tag was dog eared pretty bad and was able to piece it back together before that one totally fell apart and got lost too. This set was most likely bought at one of the Polk Brothers department stores which used to be huge here back before they all folded around 1992. When the sets got delivered, they had the either Certified or Central service take care of set up and maintenance. I have those yellow tags with the set up dates on many of my sets I've found over the years. The RUN number on the chassis shows that the set was built on the 35th week of 1971, so sometime in late August. It just turned 44, but age still doesn't affect the ability of these sets to produce that nice bright chromacolor picture! https://farm1.staticflickr.com/604/2...e602e8d9_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/761/2...4d9f5c7a_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5728/...cdb0a490_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/651/2...980db4c8_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr How it looked when I first took the back off: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5743/...d6512f7f_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr Another "Before" photo https://farm1.staticflickr.com/601/2...2ab4b7df_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr How it looks "After": https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5634/...a8f4aef2_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/585/2...3d092477_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/575/2...5b386513_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/592/2...d15f7d5b_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5655/...4f9b7243_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/624/2...96c2740e_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5634/...c63260e2_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5676/...74e6e909_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5688/...08c2c1a1_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr |
additional photos:
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/710/2...8a9d265a_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/575/2...a84f6616_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/752/2...be72fcba_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/754/2...9ec4e959_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5717/...88a3ba69_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm1.staticflickr.com/589/2...629f6b2d_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5736/...596d78f7_h.jpg1972 Zenith C3722W by drh4683, on Flickr |
Nice set! I always appreciate the "nudies" of a Zenith - it's a capsule of American manufacturers - Corning, Mallory, Sprague, Sylvania, Motorola, IRC, Ohmite, Bel, ITW/Paktron, Hobson Brothers, CTS, Radio Materials, and so many other 'Merican parts. That IEC cap really stands out, as does the one behind the convergence panel - they are about the only off-shore items in the set!
</FLAGWAVING> :) Cheers, |
Excellent restoration, as always. Thanks for sharing Doug.
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Nudies ! I gotta say I like that term. When we got in
for repair any "new" chassis we couldnt wait for the customer to pull out so we could open it. All of us would critique the set. One cat, Frank the Tool, sounded like an art critic. Look at those red caps ! And those blue resistors !The way they ran the yoke wires along the white FBT superb ! etc. It was choice....... Anyhows you did a nice clean up Doug. Lots of memories selling them & fixing them. The only things that went across the board were the damper socket burned up (78-1888-01 ) & the sliders were crappy. Also like most tube Zeniths the audio was buzzy & took a little care to clean up. A nice catch & I dont recall any other of the 14" & 16" Zeniths here & there were lots of them. 73 Zeno:smoke: |
Nice find!:banana: My first thought upon seeing this set was "Uh oh. It's gonna have the funky plug-in 9 pin demodulator chip." Those had an extremely high failure rate (failure mode was no color). Luckily yours is good. The chip looks non-original, and has probably been replaced.
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Beautiful set, cleaned up nice! I didn't see any labeling for the 2 rocker switches or 3 sliders on top...was it worn off or just not shown in the pictures?
Nevermind see it on the top. I can't believe how intricate that chassis is underneath. Can you imagine them hand assembling that back in the day? |
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What is this white tower, with the thick red wire? A very high voltage regulator? Like a solid state 6BK4?
https://farm1.staticflickr.com/624/2...96c2740e_h.jpg |
That white thing looks like the focus divider resistor. That's a nice set and I have not had my hands on one in ages. Portables like this seem to be the hardest to find because they are the easiest to throw away when they fail or are no longer wanted.
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Yep it's a big barberpole resistor focus divider. The white lead goes down to the focus pot and black lead to the CRT focus anode.
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Also, that static convergence hardware is the strangest I've seen. Finally, I'm thinking maybe, just maybe a piece of heat shrink tubing may compensate for the tuner shaft damage. |
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You always find the nicest sets.
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these sets produced the best picture for a delta gun.sold many of these in the shop days and never had one come back for any repairs.built like tanks and performed flawlessly.great find
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Yes convergence is different but its a delta tube, a
chromacolor. Second rocker is AFC, no chromatic on them. Bright, contrast & V hold on side like many others Zeniths. Sharpness on rear, only some models had it. Most of the 14 & 16 " had low focus jugs, IIRC only the chromacolors had high focus. Quote:
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IIRC, it's a "D" model. Naturally, I still have it. When I bought it, I inquired if it had the high focus voltage CRT, which it has. Still a great set! I see your set has the Standard Coil tuner. |
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I see the set uses a 600ma heater string, which seemed rare for the 70's, except for the Japanese sets. I wonder how many other sets used the 9AH9 and few other gems. It looks like the set uses a 26LX6.
Correction! The GE Porta Color sets used 600ma tubes as well. BTW, I never saw one of those metal cased demod chips fail, just the dark brown plastic button style. |
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I wish I could turn the clock back about 20 years. These sets were quite plentiful still and I had a number of them. Every so often one would pop up at the local resale shop where I used to live and they were priced between $30-$50 then which was pretty expensive. I had an incredibly unique last gasp 14" tube portable from late '74 or early '75 with the detented UHF tuner. It was in the charcoal colored cabinet. I wish I still had that one as I've never seen anything else like it in 20 years. I took a photo of it back in 1998 before I cast it away on ebay, never keeping a record where it went... I still have that photo which I should scan and post. |
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Getting back to the Zenith, it's one with the two-tone beige cabinet, in good condition. That poor Motorola was bad luck for every one of us. First of all, the implosion on your part. I bought it and bought a conversion kit on the Eplace, half the parts were missing, as those parts were used in a conversion job. Then I get brilliant idea, that I'm going to get a rebuilt 23EGP22 and keep it original. I bought one that was acquired from the Moyer's stock, by VDC. It looks like it went to air when they had it. It seems like it was a bad weld, when it was rebuilt. I kept the CRT, as I think it can be re-gunned. The least thing, is the one that sold it to me, could've checked it. :thumbsdn: |
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That Motorola was indeed bad news from the start. Its as though the set doesn't want to live. It had the most flawless picture on it when looking beyond the cataracts and I did everything so carefully and that CRT lit up in my face... I don't regret having attempted the repair though because that CRT had cataracts that covered everything but the center 10" of the screen; it had to be done if one wanted to use the set. In fact, when Scotty was still rebuilding CRT's over at Hawkeye, I once asked him about 23EGP22's and he said those tubes are a total nightmare to rebuild. I specifically remember him telling me that over half of the ones he'd attempt to rebuild would implode when he put them in the vacuum oven and that they would often implode when they would cool down and glass would go flying throughout his shop. He said if I ever wanted a 23EGP rebuilt that it would be double the cost of the regular CRT assuming it would make it out in one piece. I never went though with it. But as for the Zenith portables, as Zeno said, sound can be tricky on these. They usually come back loud and clear with a touchup of the quadrature coil and the buzz control. Zenith's were hard on the 6Z10/10Z10 audio outputs like an RCA is with 6GH8's, so it's always important to have a good one of those in there prior to adjustments. I always was fascinated by the two pole convergence on the little sets. The CRT was small enough that geometry correction was simple enough to combine both red and green in the same circuit. The '68 portables using the 15Y6C15 had the "upside down" CRT, and used the typical 3 pole convergence in those. The CRT was inverted so the blue convergence magnet wouldn't physically interfere with the tight space limitations required for the big convergence panel in those sets. |
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I recently got a record player for my mom and she got records for it at a specialty shop. I was surprised by how good they could sound. I guess I only ever had crappy ones. Quote:
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I'll tell you what, I've seen some low hour Motorola sets with the 23EGP22 that had one heck of a nice picture. I think we're all used to seeing these sets after they had a million hours on them and things are not so nice. A low hour set and modern broadcasting equipment made for a pleasing picture on an early Moto rectangular color. The set dieseljeep got from me had a stunning picture. If that cataract repair had gone well, you would have never guessed it was a 23EGP in there.
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Cheers, |
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My family only got 10 years of use from it, with the original CRT. Only the last year, the CRT was starting to show it's age. |
I have a nice Ge from1967 with that 23e tube and produces a fantastic picture. Every tube in it is original. Came from the estate of a 99 year old woman. She had a flatscreen on top of it. Why I dont know since it worked so well.
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I have to know Doug, how do you clean the insides to make them look showroom new?
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Dunno what Dooug uses, but we used a canister vac and a soft-bristled brush on sets we serviced. We carried a small 1-gallon wet vac in the service van for service calls. Nowadays, with the air-in-a-can, you could probably take it outside and blow out most dust. A rag moistened with either IPA or naptha will wipe away sticky stuff.
I got caught by my Dad while cleaning the HV area of an Admiral tube color set that belonged to a police officer. We had replaced the boost rectifier and a cap, and I wanted to make the whole area look as good as new - Dad told me not to waste my time, but I finished the job, and the set went back to the cop. We went over to his place a few weeks later to play Atari (they were new then) and Dad told the story of me cleaning the caps in the HV section. The cop, one of the funniest men I've met - gave me the moniker "capacitor cosmetologist" - and it stuck....the cop, now retired, is a missionary to the poor with his wife - really wonderful guy.... |
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Look at the homes they come from! Not exactly, the poor section of town! :thmbsp: |
The sets coming from a clean non-smoker home is the key. If it's got grey fluffy dust inside, like most sets from clean homes, then they come back looking like new with minimal effort. I use a very small portable electric air compressor regulated down to about 20 PSI so any loose labels don't get torn or blown off. I do that in combination with a soft bristled paint brush throughout the chassis. After that, the tops of tubes are carefully wiped off with a water dampened cloth being careful not to wipe off any of the original markings on the tube. That's about it.
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Doug, What glue is best to to re-attach labels? Im afraid of using something that reacts and discolors the lable.
I have one of these 16" Zeniths - an A-set with filament transformer that looks fantastic, then I got two more from Bryan G, so I passed them on to Tim P. :) |
What works great is UHU brand glue stick, which is a German made product. I used to use liquid glues and evenly spread it behind the (larger) labels, but that often led to the glue over saturating the paper causing it to wrinkle and/or tear easily when trying to position it. Glue stick is just the right density, doesn't absorb into the paper like other liquid or paste glues, yet adheres very well to all surfaces and has lasted years in many cases with no issues. I use it for all labels that have completely separated where I can turn the label over on a table and apply the glue. In situations where a label is only partly detached but still adhered enough to where you don't want to risk tearing it by completely removing it for re-glue, then I use Aleen's Tacky glue. I put a little bit on a toothpick and gently get it under the label and then use something to weight the label down in case it wants to peel back when it's trying to cure.
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Thank you Doug. I appreciate the info.
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