Quote:
Originally Posted by radiotvnut
I also read somewhere that GS was making radios for Zenith as far back as the '70's.
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I have two 1980-vintage Zenith radios that were actually manufactured by Zenith subsidiaries in Korea and Taiwan, and in 1982 I had a Zenith four-mode stereo system which was also made in Korea to the specifications of Zenith. I also had two Zenith 13" color TVs and a 12" solid-state portable that were made by Zenith Electronics Corp. of Missouri and by a Zenith subsidiary in Mexico, respectively. My Zenith Sentry 2 19" color TV, built in 1995 (smack dab in the middle of the time frame during which Zenith color sets were turning up in alarming numbers with bad CRTs) was also made by the Zenith Electronics Corp. of Glenview, Illinois, as attested to by a label on the back cover.
Zenith's last table radio was a small AM/FM set, marketed in 1982. I don't know if this set was built to Zenith's specs by a Korean or Taiwanese company, but it probably wasn't manufactured by Zenith itself as the company was pretty much out of the radio business by that time--the radios bearing its name being manufactured offshore. The radio, a table set in a wood (faux wood by then, no doubt) cabinet, was not much to speak of, despite the fact that it had slide controls for volume, bass and treble and a tuning meter. There was also a little gizmo on the back of the radio that Zenith called a "bass booster", although I think this may have been little more than an air chamber which had little or no real effect on the sound. I don't know how well this radio worked, how it sounded or even how many of them were sold, but I do know they show up on eBay every once in a great while....and I mean great while, as in every few months if you're lucky. I guess it either wasn't that great a radio when it was new, or else Zenith didn't sell very many, putting it in the "sleeper" category along with their MJ1035 11-tube AM/stereo FM table radio.