Quote:
Originally posted by Whirled One
I realize that this is a TV forum, but Doug's Zenith console reminds me of this 1966 Zenith "portable" stereo combination (a model X584) that I got a few years ago. I love this thing! It's essentially a low-end Zenith console system that was sold in a portable cabinet with swing-out speakers (which can also be detached if desired), and the changer mounted on a swing-out frame. It is entirely tube-based, which suprised me when I first got it home. [alas, the output stages are single-ended.]
I found this set in an antique store where it had been hiding for years (along with a bunch of other items) underneath a table in the store's basement. I had actually passed this thing up on a couple of previous visits to that store (only the edge of the cabinet was visible), but one day it caught my eye again, and I felt curious enough to pull it out of its hiding place and open 'er up and see what it was. I've never been big on 60's-era stereo consoles and portable phonos, but I was immediately fond of this guy.
Like Doug's console, the tone arm has a remarkably light tracking force for a ceramic cartridge, but the changer mechanism is Zenith's usual rebadged V-M from that era, and not the nifty high-end Zenith changer like the one on Doug's console. Sound quality is okay on phono for a cermamic cartridge, and is quite pleasant to listen to on FM. [I'll also admit that several months ago, I "cheated" and hid a piezo tweeter inside each of the woofers to give it a bit more treble boost and crispness.]
This machine came with all of its original paperwork, including the original store receipt..! (cost: $199.95 + tax on 11/12/1966) What's more amusing, though, is that the TV store it was originally purchased from is only about one block from the antique store I bought it from! [Actually, that should be was, since the TV store has since closed, evidently meeting a simiar fate to most other small-town indenpendent TV retailers.]
--Marty
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I like all kinds of Zenith gear as well, Marty. Been interested in this make for most of my years of fiddling with electronics, radio and TV (I'm almost 48 now; I've been an electronics bug since the age of 8 and a ham radio operator the last 32 years as well). Had a basement full of Zenith TVs, radios, etc. in the late '60s-early '70s. I own two old Zenith radios today, one antique [1951], one not quite there yet [1963]. Both were ebay scores, one last year, the other about two years ago.
I like your "new" Zenith combo unit. Never saw one like that before now, although I have seen several models of Zenith's portable stereo phonographs; in fact, I had one, without the AM/FM tuner, in the late '70s. Mine was made, I believe, in the mid-1960s (I remember seeing one on the set of an old movie some years ago). It worked well as long as I had it; in fact, it worked as soon as I got it home (it was a trash-day find, as are most sets we AK members have in our collections). Don't remember (or perhaps I never knew) what type of cartridge the changer in mine had, although if pressed for a quick answer I would guess it was ceramic. Whatever it was, it sounded really good and worked well, as do all Zeniths before the '90s or so. Those old sets were built for high fidelity, high sensitivity in the case of radios and TV sets, and to last. (My Zenith K731 AM/FM radio from 1963 sounds almost incredibly good, especially in the bass range, for a table radio, but it was made with a 5x7 oval speaker and electrostatic tweeter, 19T8 first audio amp, 35C5 output, and is housed in a large and heavy walnut cabinet, not to mention probably having one or more tone-compensation circuits and a wide-range tone control.)
BTW: Is the FM tuner in your unit built for stereo FM reception, or is it just standard FM? I saw the function switch on the front panel, but couldn't tell if it had a position for stereo FM, FM MPX or MX, etc.
BTW (2): Before I saw yours, I had never seen a combo unit with the AM and FM dial scales right next to each other horizontally (rather than one below the other or vertically beside each other and separated by a logging scale, the latter being common in consoles). I hate to think what the dial cord drive arrangement looked like from the back. Seems to me it would have been one heck of a job to restring this thing to operate two dial pointers at the same time, and to eliminate pointer backlash (which often caused the dial pointer to indicate the wrong frequency when tuned to a station; I've seen radios so bad in this regard that when the thing was tuned, for example, to a station on 1100 KHz the pointer would be on 900 or thereabouts).
BTW (3): I had an errand to run last night and saw a Zenith System 3 (or was it Space Command?) table-model 19- or 21-inch TV sitting in back of one of the apartment buildings in my small town. When I got done with my errand and was coming home, however, the set was gone. Either someone had put it out by accident or some other electronics bug got to it before I could; I'll never know now. The set had the random-access keypad and, I'm sure, the LED channel indicator to the right of the CRT; I could swear I saw the words "System 3" above the panel, so maybe my first hunch was correct.