Found a last gasp Zenith "Chromacolor II" table set!

[drh4683]

I stopped at a local estate sale today and found an unusual set; a last gasp Zenith "Chromacolor II" 23" metal cabinet table set from 1979! It's also equipped with the original Space Command "800" remote control. I put "Chromacolor II" in quotes only because that's how we typically identify the vertical chassis sets. Being such a late model, the word "Chromacolor II" is no where to be found, nor was there ever a tricolor emblem on this set. It's totally nondescript which is somewhat typical for an end of an era item. It also uses the older rounded corner delta gun CRT.

This particular set was manufactured in October, 1979 making it an extremely late model to use a hand wired chassis. As you can see it's actually an L-line model (SL-2311W) which technically makes this a 1980 model year television! Even the chassis is an L-line, the 23LC45. Up until this point, I only saw 1979 K-lines as the newest "Chromacolor II" sets.

The System 3 was introduced in May, 1978, so the older model hand-wired chassis sets like this would have probably been more on the bottom end of the price scale, when ironically, you would think they should have been more because of the increased labor costs to make them and they were also superior in construction to their System 3 successors. But if you notice, inside the control door appears to be an original hand written price label that the original owners either taped on, or left in place that shows a very pricey cost of $689.95!

Another unique characteristic is that this set was built at Zenith's Reynosa, Mexico plant. Reynosa was Zenith's 2nd Mexican plant which was opened around April, 1978. (Matamoros was Zenith's first plant in Mexico which opened in 1971).

The party was pretty much over at Zenith's Chicago plants by the fall of 1977 when massive layoffs took place. The Chicago plants, while not entirely shut down did operate at a much reduced scale for quite a few years afterwards, basically as sub assembly feeder plants for final assembly operations at the Springfield, MO plant. The Mexican plants however were basically operating almost all on their own by the late 70's, producing entire hand-wired CCII chassis' and sub assemblies themselves and even completed TV's. If it wasn't for the "Made in Mexico" tags found throughout the chassis and on various components, one basically could not tell the difference between a Mexican made and US made Zenith. Same exact parts, same specifications, same quality, just built at a different location.

It would seem that as the Chromacolor II era was coming to a close by 1977/78, that there would be no reason to have all of that additional manpower as required for tedious hand wiring operations which resulted in the Chicago area layoffs. As the System 3's phased in, the straggler old-hat Chromacolor II's, which were obviously a much higher cost to manufacture were shifted over to Mexico where labor costs were much cheaper (unfortunately). They probably only kept these very late Chromacolor II sets going only because they could produce them cheaply in Mexico to use up remaining parts and chassis blanks. But this set is still really a hybrid of American and Mexican made components. Parts like the Orange Drop capacitors, transistors, etc were made in the US. The drive motor for the VHF tuner was made in Mt. Prospect, IL by Molon Motor Inc. (who is still in business today). The metal cabinet was also US made which has the "MoFab" stamp from 10-18-79. MoFab was a metal cabinet fabricator in Anderson, Indiana. The CRT's were always being built at the Chicago suburban Melrose Park, IL CRT plant too. It's a neat piece of history and represents a unique mix as the game was changing in the industry.




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