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Originally Posted by AUdubon5425
The latest piece of Zenith equipment I own is a 1981 integrated stereo (IS 4031), an AM/FM cassette with a BSR changer. Probably the last gasp of the big wide combo units. It states on the back "Mfd. in Korea to the standards and specifications of the Zenith Radio Corp., Chicago, USA." Can't see anything on the inside with a mention of Zenith - did see a resistor lying loose in the back corner though! I'd imagine that, "specifications of Zenith aside," it was a badge-engineered stereo - I've seen Soundesign units from that era that have similar control setups and faceplates.
We had a Zenith System 3 19" color set from the late 80's through around '94 - no remote, had ten number buttons across the top with a green digital tuning indicator - can't remember for sure if it was cable ready (my gut tells me no.) Mom discarded it after the power switch, which was a pushbutton mechanical switch, blew up and shot fire at her one evening  |
I also had a Zenith stereo like yours in the early '80s. It served me well and worked well for about 17 years; I'd still have it today, but I moved to a very small apartment nine years ago and was forced to downsize, so I left the Zenith at my former home and bought an Aiwa bookshelf system. (Just as well. It was time to upgrade to a CD system by then anyway.)
As to those IS- series Zenith integrated systems such as yours and mine, you may be right--they could well have been re-badged systems actually manufactured by Soundesign, et al., with the manufacturer using the Zenith name under license.
I don't know about yours, but the speakers on my Zenith IS-4041 had a nameplate at the lower right corner of the grille cloth that stated "Allegro 100 by Zenith." (Zenith made several integrated systems in the late '70s-early '80s, all of which had this nameplate on the speakers; the next model up from mine had speakers with the nameplate reading "Allegro 300 by Zenith." Perhaps the "Allegro 300" speakers were capable of handling more power than the 100 series?
) The rest of my system had, as I mentioned in my post, been made in Korea. The only ties to Zenith I could see were the "Zenith" nameplate on the front of the unit (they had done away with their trademark "crest" emblem by about the mid-'80s) and the notice on the back of the system stating that it had been manufactured in Korea to the specifications and standards of the Zenith Radio Corporation of Chicago.
IIRC, the word "Zenith", with the company's trademark lightning bolt forming the letter Z, was also near that notice. My Zenith Sentry 2 19" color set also has the same signage on the control panel, above the power switch and the IR remote sensor.
I've seen advertisements in my Sunday paper from time to time (I haven't seen them lately) for bookshelf stereo systems bearing the Zenith brand. I'm almost certain this is a rebadged offshore make, such as Soundesign, again with that firm using the Zenith name under license from whatever is left (if there
is anything left, which I seriously doubt) of the original Zenith Radio Corporation. I don't know for certain. Perhaps by now, with the original Zenith being history, their name and logos might well be in the public domain. I notice LG (Lucky Goldstar) no longer uses the lightning-bolt Z logo on its televisions, so I think LG has completely severed whatever ties they may have had with the former Zenith Corporation, however shaky they may have been (and probably were) by the time the latter left Chicago.
BTW: Wow! That must have been some huge short in your family's 19" Zenith System 3 TV if the pushbutton power switch "blew up" and shot sparks. (I hope your mother was and is OK, that she wasn't shocked or injured.) Those switches don't normally handle very much current (the power switch probably only energizes a relay and the degaussing coil, as is common in most TVs made in the last 15 years or so), which is why I suspect some large component must have shorted the power supply or the HV supply directly to ground. Whatever it was, as I said, it must have been a huge short drawing a tremendous amount of current (I'm surprised the fuse didn't blow) if the power switch was destroyed and there was a large amount of sparking.
That System 3 TV you describe sounds to me (from your description) like a large-screen set Zenith marketed in the '70s or early '80s, in a large box-shaped cabinet, similar to the design of RCA's ColorTrak 2000 sets of the same era. The latter also had the channel selector buttons in a row across the top of the TV (and the green LCD channel indicator), above the CRT. If it looks like I think it does (with a door the full width of the cabinet over the control panel, Space Phone and Color Sentry), I used to see advertisements for this model of System 3 TV in
National Geographic magazines of the early 1980s that stated, "It's time you knew the difference between a television and the Zenith System 3." At the time, Zenith was heavily advertising its System 3 line of televisions, which were the successor to the Chromacolor II sets of the 1970s.
Late '80s to 1994 sounds to me like an awfully short life span for your family's Zenith TV. I have a Sentry 2 that's nearly 14 years old and still works almost as well as when it was new (it still has its original CRT as well).
I'm just curious--what finally killed your family's TV? As I said, with all the sparking from the AC switch, some large component must have failed and knocked a short directly across the power supply, the HV supply, or the AC line itself.