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Originally Posted by peverett
I have metal case ,table top, color TVs from the early 1970s from both Curtis Mathis and Zenith. The difference in the quality of the electronics is amazing. Zenith has the hand-wired chassis made like a tank.
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That's exactly why I've liked Zenith radios and TVs as long as I have (that's most of my life, since I was eight years old when I first became interested in electronics). Don't know exactly why I like Zenith so well, though.
I've had Zenith TVs that lasted years, including a 1978 Zenith solid-state 12-inch portable that lasted 22 years and was still going strong when I got rid of it (moved to an apartment in 1999, had no room for it and my other two color sets, one of which is a 1995 Zenith Sentry 2 that still works and makes a great picture with its original CRT).
I have six Zenith radios as well which are built very solidly and work very well, including two 1980-vintage radios with circuit boards. The '80s-vintage sets (Zenith R-70 AM/FM transistor portable and H480W AM/FM/FM-stereo clock radio) were not cheap, and they showed it: the construction was solid, the sound quality is excellent. My tube-type Zeniths are the same way. Metal chassis, conservatively-designed circuitry, all the hallmarks of Zenith before they sold out to offshore interests in the late '80s. You can be sure I will keep every one of these radios, as they represent an era and a level of quality the likes of which, like the Zenith Radio Corporation itself, we will never see again.
I knew someone in my hometown whose family had a Curtis Mathes three-way color console. They liked it, as nearly as I could tell, but I'm guessing they must have gotten rid of it some time in the '70s or thereabouts. This was the only CM console I ever saw before joining AK, but from what I've seen and read here about them they must have been great sets in their day.
The television chassis in the CMs may well have been clones of the RCA CTC-15 chassis, as most 1960s color TVs, except Zenith, used some variation of one RCA color chassis or another. I looked at the front panel of the CM shown in another post (the one where it was mentioned the neck had been broken off the CRT) and must agree. I once had a Sears-Silvertone roundie in a heavy metal cabinet, CTC12 clone I'm guessing, that weighed the proverbial ton (no legs, though, although there were threaded holes in the bottom of the cabinet so consolette legs may well have been an optional accessory). It was given to me by a neighbor of mine in my hometown who had had it in his garage, probably for years or perhaps a decade or so, but it worked fairly well when I got it home. The set met its demise some three years later, however, when the video output tube socket broke out of the video PC board. It was a good set while it lasted, although towards the end it developed color-sync problems and hum bars that floated up through the picture. I didn't try to repair it since I knew the set was on its last legs, but I did not expect it to go the way it did. Those early PC boards must have been as fragile as glass.