Doug (drh4683),
I just saw the pics of your latest Zenith finds. They all look as if they are in excellent condition, and the pictures look great as well.
It's great when all one has to do is something simple like replacing a fuse or a tube, etc. to get a set working. I restored many an old set just in that fashion when I was collecting them about 30-some years ago. It has been stated, here in this forum, that the only reason old sets were discarded in the '60s through the '80s was, generally, that the owners bought newer sets with larger pictures, more features, etc., not necessarily because the sets were not working. Those which were inoperable for any reason could often be brought back to life by a simple tube or fuse replacement; in some (an awful lot) of these cases the sets had nothing whatsoever wrong with them. Today, it is all too common to see late model Guide Plus RCAs and those troublesome Goldenith or "GZ" (my terms for today's cross between Gold Star and Zenith) TVs coming off GS's assembly lines in Korea (and RCAs coming from Thomson's own overseas plants) on treelawns and curbs the minute something--anything--goes wrong with them after the warranty expires. The glory days and years of once proud U. S. home-entertainment equipment manufacturers such as the original RCA, Zenith and all the other formerly great names in television and radio (Philco, Admiral, Packard Bell, et al.) are now only memories.
BTW: I'm curious. What station, network, etc. is channel 26 in the Chicago area? I ask this because the picture you took off the screen of one of your Zeniths (the one with the Colonial style cabinet) looks like it was from a public-service or educational cable channel; that and the fact that the person in the picture had a smock on that has "Cleveland Clinic" embroidered on it. I now live in a very small town in Lake County, Ohio about 30 miles from Cleveland, but I grew up in the suburbs, so am very familiar with the Cleveland Clinic. What was the connection between it and Chicago in that program?
Good luck with your "new" Zeniths, Doug. I do wonder, though; where on earth are you keeping all those sets?