[Jeffhs]

Captainmoody, I'm glad to hear your '72 Zenith still works after 15 years in storage. Those old sets were made to last, that's for sure.

As for the electrolytics in your set, back when those TVs (and others before them) were new, the filter capacitors seemed to last forever. My grandmother had a 1936 Silvertone table radio that still worked with no hum even 40 years and more later, and with the same electrolytics as (I think) when the set was new. I purchased a 1951 Zenith table radio on ebay last year that still works like a champ (very little or no hum that I can hear), even with its original filters. I think this might be close to a record for a set made in the early '50s.

I used to collect old TVs and such back in the 1970s, but had to give it up when I moved to an apartment late in 1999. I had just about every major make of TV except Magnavox in my basement by the time I moved (the first time, in mid-1972), and many of the sets worked for quite a while, but some of them (like my old Philco Microgrid 390 console TV) developed very expensive problems which sent them straight to the junkpile.

Good luck.