I'm getting a Zenith 25CC50!
 

I saw this on Atlanta Craigslist last night - a 1972 Zenith Chromacolor 25CC50 just like Doug found last year. My friend in Atlanta will be picking it up most likely on Thursday. Finally getting a Zenith "tin can" set!

That looks real nice! :drool:

Those were hybrid sets, right? Weren't those the last or almost the last with the 60's style metal back?

Yes. 1973 was the last year for the metal back cover. My set is a 1972, and as such it is Zenith's last (or next to last) hybrid set. After this came the 25DC56 all solid state chassis, which I have in my Zenith console. Before the 25CC50, there was the 20BC50, which I also have in another console.

It's a hybrid all right, and a sweet one at that.

I re-watched a video earlier in which Doug fixes a 25DC56 with a shorted safety cap, one of the dreaded white ones. In that video he said 1973 was the last year for the metal back.

Edit: Whoops, replied too slowly. :)

I'm celebrating getting a new Chromacolor by watching my 25DC56.

Right on, I'm watching mine right now. It's used daily. Darn thing's been starting up with no HV lately though. A few light kicks eventually brings it back.

If your set is a tube Chromacolor, try using some Deoxit on the tube pins. That and cleaning the tuner and the controls are the first things I do to a set. I firmly believe that just cleaning can make a world of difference on a set's performance. In the meantime, here is a close up of the control panel on my TV. I just love the looks of this set.

No tubes, it's a 25DC56. It likely is an intermittent connection though; right now I'm running it with the back off and will tap around when the problem reappears. The tuner is dirty though.

It certainly is a nice set. As for mine, I prefer the tuner bezel on certain other Chromacolor consoles. The stock bezel comes off easily enough; I wonder if the other kind would fit.

If you start poking around in there, DON'T touch the horizontal output transitor. I once got horizontally deflected almost across the room.

Oh yeah, I read about that. I'm sure I'll be horizontally deflected one of these days - I've already been bitten twice by a residual CRT charge. A full wallop is much worse I know.

I've had only one module out, the 9-57 horizontal module. The set started acting up shortly after so that's where I started tapping (with a pencil). Boom, the HV popped back in, then went again. More tapping did the same thing. I've had little success with DeOxit so those pins will need a good manual cleaning. Subbing my spare 9-57s did not improve things.

Mom took a shine to the Zenith once I set it up in the living room on a trial basis. More incentive to keep it performing well.

this is the same model set that my friend had in his store.best picture i had ever saw.people came to sit and watch it.i love these zenith sets

Yeah, these late 60's, early 70's Zenith's are among my favorite TV's. Built to survive a nuclear war, and one in good working order can produce a stellar picture. I'm certainly looking forward to getting this set.

Good news, everybody! The Zenith 25CC50 is safe awaiting repair in Atlanta at my friend's house. It does have a couple boo-boos. The UHF must have taken a hit at some point. The gyro drive shaft is bent, and the knob hits against the plastic, and the plastic itself is broken. There is a nice big chunk missing out of it, and the UHF numbers are all visible. There are also some burnt tube sockets that will have to be replaced. It's pretty clean except for some very light rust inside.

Broke plastic.

An aside: Looking at this chassis, you can see that aside from the high voltage cage, a plastic piece I see just under left of the CRT neck, and tuner, the only parts above deck are the tubes. What Zenith did was to have their assemblers (hand crafters) insert the resistors, caps and such into the cone shaped terminals. Things like IF transformer coils and trimpots had presoldered leads added to them so they could be mounted and stuffed as well. Then after all such parts were inserted, they'd take the chassis and send it thru a wave solder machine that would solder all the connections at one time. A bit like what they do for circuit boards. Then they'd add the power transformer and high voltage cage and such.
http://www.videokarma.org/attachment...1&d=1475201905

GE started that practice in the early 50's with their AA5 radios.

No wonder so many sets are known for troublesome solder connections - bad or misadjusted wave solder machines. I pulled the convergence board on my '76 Electrohome console once I saw poking at the left horizontal blue pot caused the most disturbance in a crosshatch pattern. Yup, that's where the cracked solder joint is. Other connections look like problems waiting to happen so I'll redo those as well.

The Zenith Chromacolor is working! Sort of. The focus pot doesn't work, and the vertical is messed up. It's a work in progress.

Even so, it looks very good. Not surprising for one of these. My Zenith worked right away - except for the power tuning - but still needed work to run reliably. It still had the white safety caps and the screws were missing from the tuner drive tab wheel causing the motor to run non-stop but not change the channel. Goodness knows why those screws were gone.

I got the Zenith home today, and I'm watching it in my hallway. I could not muscle it into my bedroom yet. Tomorrow. The cord died in my efforts of getting it in the house. It has a perfect picture though.

I have achieved the impossible. It's a good thing tin can sets are rare. I'm already sick of this one. Unfortunately, the cord died, and the only other cord I have that will fit this one is elsewhere. Whenever I find it, I'll have to take the back off again.

Just be glad it is not a roundy that is heavier, and has a bulkier cabinet that is hard to get your arms around...I once, after a move, out of sheer impatience hefted a metal table model roundy from the garage to the stairs, up the stairs, and finally on top of a console single handed. I could have waited for dad to get home form work and help me, but I wanted to watch my roundy immediately. :D :tongue:

MY GOD MAN! After moving this thing probably 25 feet, I was absolutely dead. I didn't even have any stairs to climb! To be honest, I really do prefer console TV's. These table sets are just too awkward and heavy. A console was designed to be on the floor, so there is no ungodly lifting. Plus, they're more comfortable to work on if you have enough room.

Well I did work smart and not hard* with the stairs...The stairs were carpeted so I rolled the set onto it's smooth top and pushed it up the stairs using ramp action as a force multiplier. I can carry that set over level ground just fine, but there just ain't the grip points on it to carry it up narrow-ish stairs. The hardest part was lifting it up three feet onto the console.

*Granted my family had just moved ourselves out of a 3-story walk up apartment where most of my sets/consoles were kept all the way up stairs, and I was built like superman then.
A month later me and dad emptied out a ~15x20 storage locker our selves, and carried a dresser bigger and heavier than an aircraft-carrier combo console up the stairs. In years past we could barely lift it (I've seen 3-4 trained movers struggling to move that damn thing), and it was still hard to move for long on level ground but we DID get it turned on it's end, slid up the stairs (I was on the bottom end doing %75 of the work) on it's top, and lifted on back it's end at the top The stairs dead end at the top so that was the only way to get it into the hall...I literally had to stand on the stairs, keep it from sliding down and help upright it onto the top landing all at the same time!...Mom was utterly dumb founded that we were able to pull it off.

I've carried 23" CCII table sets up and down stairs without setting them down single handed, and I considered it easier than some of the consoles I got up the stairs...Sure beats moving that dresser by a country mile.:D

Get good at moving BIG sets and you will have a figure that should attract some galls, and scare off the wiseguys. :D It is the best workout and often the only workout I get.

That Zenith 25CC50 is a great set, from what I've heard and read about it. The 25" CRT is probably why your set is so heavy.

Where do you find the room for all those TVs, and still have room to move around? :scratch2:

BTW, how are you getting the same picture on all your TVs? :scratch2: (I remember one of your recent posts in which you showed a picture of several of your sets showing the same program.) My best guess is you are splitting the cable signal among all of them. You can get away with splitting the cable between two sets, but how you are able to split one cable among all of your bedroom TVs is beyond me. The only thing I can come up with is you must be using an OTA antenna on one or more sets. I say this because I noticed you were watching a cable channel on one set by setting the UHF tuner on channel 22. I didn't think most TVs' UHF tuners could receive cable channels very well, if at all.

Two words. Blonder Tongue. I use an AM-40-550 to broadcast on channel 16 UHF so I don't have coax wires running every which way. I have a firm belief that TV's should absolutely not be chained to a cable box or converter or what have you. A couple of my sets are hooked up via coax, but that's because their UHF tuners aren't the best.

That picture reminds me of my video wall in my room in the old apartment. I had that room PACKED...It's contents comfortably filled 2 rooms at the house we moved to...Here is a picture from that apartment.
http://i1095.photobucket.com/albums/...y/DSCN0429.jpg

all sets worked, but I could only run all of them simultaneously for just over warm up time before tripping the puny 15A panel breakers. :D

I'm getting darn close to having to stack consoles like that. When my mother saw my new Chromacolor, she was furious. So much so that she refused to even look at when I turned it on. Here is another picture. Of the same room.

It might be time to look for a bigger place of your own, or instituting a 1 in 1 out policy...Battles with parental land lords can get nasty, and it becomes worse if prized sets get caught in the crossfire...A friend of mine who don't even collect TVs is moving out of his parent's place because he got sick of all the shit his folks (his mom has to have some kind of cleaning/minimalism OCD) were giving him over what little he does have.

I know the feeling...I want to collect vintage cars, and have one new-ish one for utility purposes, and the picayune BS requirements Mom wants to force on me have caused many a big fight (and I have not even tried to buy one yet!)...I mean seriously not even the government has the right to tell me how to spend my money in the way they are trying to...It is getting to the point where in a year or 2 I may try/have to move out to get away from this crap.

I have 236 days until I move to Wisconsin. I'm gettin' outa this Allybammy craphole. I want to find a decent sized house with a basement in Waupaca county, preferably New London or Clintonville.

Hard to find a decent sized house without a basement up here. Basements are pretty much standard. Not only that, most areas of Waupaca county have few restrictions on outbuildings, so you can have almost unlimited storage up here.

Your biggest problem (other than winter) is that there is a lot of competition for the TVs that come to market. There are probably more TV collectors in Northern Illinois and Wisconsin than any other part of the country.

.

Rookies. https://www.google.com/search?q=stac...w=1344&bih=748

.

Did you live in this area before? If you're looking to buy, best to start looking at the MLS websites or Zillow and get an idea of what's available and the selling price. That's how, I bought my last three properties. :thmbsp:

I've lived in Alabama my whole life, and I'm very sick of it. I found a really nice 3 story house in New London for $59,000.

That's great, Dave. I'm happy for you. However, I only hope the seller can hold the house for you the next 236 days until you are ready to move. A house selling for $59K probably won't remain on the market very long.

Yeah, I don't expect that particular house to be available when I move. But that just goes to show that houses in that area are pretty cheap.

I don't doubt that's a problem down south or to the east, however if you move north/northwest a couple hundred miles, that situation quickly dwindles. Also, judging by the multitude of unclaimed sets typically on Minneapolis/St Paul Craigslist, there's apparently very little collecting competition in that very large metro area. My bigger problem is trying NOT to look at CL, as there's almost always something interesting. :D

Checking Craigslist is a chore for me. Every Single Time I check it, I see once nice TV turned into a fish tank, a dog bed, or a bar. It just disgusts me to no end when I see that. Once in a blue moon, something will turn up. Like the Zenith this thread was about, or back in April, I found a CTC-21 combo, that I sorely regret not getting.

There's still plenty to go around, especially if he gets to meet people like us.
If he settles near you, there's a source right there. :thmbsp:

I'm readying another group for Craigslist now. I'll post them here in the classifieds first. Probably another week or so, if the weather holds up. Pickup will be here in Appleton, or I can deliver to the Nov. 6th WARCI meet on Milwaukee's south side.

http://milwaukee.craigslist.org/atq/5826656637.html

.