[NowhereMan 1966]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I too would like to know what Zenith did to cause their CRT's to be so bad. I heard somewhere that the aquadag coating would flake off inside the tube and cause shorts; but, I don't know how true that it. There was a Zenith dealer in town that used to give me all their Zenith sets that were not approved for repair (so they wouldn't have to toss them). I'd say 95% of the ones made in the '90's had some sort of CRT defect. Most of them had shorted CRT's that burned up the power supply or video drive components. Others were so weak that the picture was lousy. Any attempt to rejuvenate them would usually make them worse. Even if they did come back; they didn't last long. These would have been decent sets had the CRT been of good quality. The chassis wasn't a '70's Chromacolor; but, they were usually simple to repair. That rebranded Hitachi is interesting. I've seen some Ward's sets that were Zenith made and I've seen some GoldStar sets with Zenith branded CRT's (also bad).

It's amazing that a lot of sets from the '70's and '80's still have the original CRT's that test almost new; but, a set that's only a few years old has a worn out CRT. That should tell us something about the products of yesteryear.

I suspect these "bad Zenith" sets will be harder to find in 30 years than some of the sets we now collect from the '70's and earlier. It seems like I find more '80's sets than those '90's Zenith's (thank goodness).

I know my 1982 Zenith System 3 when it was fixed last, 1999 I think, the guy who fixed it said the CRT was still very good but showing its age a little. The only difference I notice is that it take about a minute or two to go to the brightness we want instead of like 10 or 15 seconds but we still have an excellent picture that is just as good as it was when we got it in early 1983.