Found a 1969 (?) Zenith today!

[drh4683]

What a great find! You can't get much better than this! Looks like probably a 12A12C52. Very impressive find. If I ever get up that way again, Id like to get that fixed up. Those are my favs to work on.

[Carmine]

Originally Posted by drh4683

What a great find! You can't get much better than this! Looks like probably a 12A12C52. Very impressive find. Does it appear to be a low hour set? Most original tubes still in there?

"Better" might be a raster, lol.

I was there in literally the last hour of the sale, it was dumpster food if I hadn't found it.

I haven't spent very much time poking around it today, but the tubes I can see all appear to be Zenith. One nice thing is that because it was a remote set, it appears to have not been "touched" very much, so all the controls have no wear.

[fsjonsey]

Have you checked the plastic cup that holds the 3DC3 socket? The HV seems to burn through these pretty easily, arcing to the chassis. A coat of GE silicone II on both the inner and outer surfaces fixes it right up. As you can see from the picture, the burn holes are practically microscopic. I've found at least three zenith sets in basements with the same arcing problem. I have a feeling thats why the sets are retired, they started snapping and the owners didn't bother servicing them.

[drh4683]

You should be able to tell if the arc is comming throught the HV cup by the sound. If its somewhere else in the chassis, then its obviously not the cup. In these chassis, the pincushioning saturable reactor can be a culprit for HV trouble. Hopefully the fly is OK. Is this a 12B14C52 chassis? Should say on the paper tag ontop of the HV cage.

Dont worry about the residue. ITs typical on practially every zenith of this age. Its just breakdown of the HV anode cup. It becomes sticky and trying to clean it makes more of a mess and has no effect on the operation of the set.