Lovely 1983 Zenith TV
 

I got this TV many years ago at a thrift store. I still use it to this day, and I love it. I had a vizio flat panel thing :yuck: that I hated, so I gave it away. I think this one needs to be recapped because you can see bleeding from color to color sometimes. One day, I will be cleaning the dust out from in between the ribs in the speaker area. Unfortunately, I was born in 1998. I have no nostalgic memories of all the cool old 80's technology. But I do have a four year old sister who already knows the words "VCR", "Tape", and even "Betamax!"

Man, that's pretty sweet. Screen size?

She's a 14".

Nice set! It looks like you have the highest end 13" set from that era, with space command cable ready tuning. I have 3 similar Zenith's; one with standard two-knob tuning, one with the single knob varactor tuner, and one with "omni electronic tuning" (a variable tuner like what's on a radio or those little 5" B&W sets). Your color bleeding problem is likely due to either a weak CRT, misadjusted CRT bias controls, or an issue with the video output stage.

I've got the knob tuned version and had the chance to get one of the omni electronic tuned versions once. MY knob tuned version works like new.

What you see might be a convergence issue.

Nice! I have several Zenith 19" but nothing smaller yet.

Ive still got one, my only real TV left. Got it new in abt '81
still works fine. When your ready to deal with the color
prob put up some screen shots & a chassis photo. This
is from when there was a major chassis change.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Okay, I will probably take some screen shots this afternoon. How would I go about taking the back off this thing?

2 or 3 1/4 screws along top, 2 or 3 along bottom, usually one
at control door & near antenna connector. If it has a rear
control door you just gotta get it in the right spot & the back comes off.
Post model # also, if its faded out there are more inside usually
a little tag on the CRT.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Model No. SZ1319W(7). This TV turned 30 years old last month.

Looks like the smaller version of my 19".

Congratulations on such a great find.

Happy birth day !
Few if any of the TV's sold today will live to see 30 yrs.
But sets from the mid 70's - abt 1990 can last almost
forever & stay for the most part repairable.

73 Zeno:smoke:

Just like my SZ1927W.. a superb performer. Sadly, I threw one of the same model (had two at that time) out for no reason.

She's got a nice picture with minimal bleeding.

Such an ironic screenshot, that's exactly what the man wants all of us to do with our old sets.