This weekends estate sale finds........

[Jeffhs]

Thanks for all the comments, guys; I appreciate each and every one of them.

I have all solid-state equipment here, except for two Zenith radios I scored on ebay. I have to say, however, that my Zenith K-731 AM/FM radio (1959 model, one of my ebay scores) sounds quite a bit better than my TV's audio and, in some ways, even my Aiwa bookshelf stereo with three-way speakers and 240 watts total output. I bought that Zenith more for the looks of the cabinet (the thing matches the furniture in my apartment just about perfectly) than the sound, although I do fire up the radio every now and then just to keep the capacitors formed.

The older TVs had much better sound than today's so-called "stereo" sets with their small transistor-radio speakers. I again reference a Zenith 23-inch monochrome console I had from roughly 1969 to 1972. That set was one of the best-sounding TVs I have ever heard in my life, second only to my late grandmother's 1951 General Electric console with a 10-12-inch speaker directly below the CRT. My Zenith had a 6BN6 quad detector, 6BQ5 output stage, 6x9 oval speaker, and a wide-range tone control. It sounded so good I patched an FM tuner into the audio system, as I mentioned in an earlier post. When you have a TV with a sound system this good, it's a shame not to share it with other hi-fi gear if you have it. (My grandmother's GE console TV had also been modified so that the audio from her Silvertone radio/phono could be run through it; I remember when I was a kid listening to it when she used to have it on, and that 12-inch speaker in her TV made the RP unit sound great.)

Here's a list of my current audio-video gear. Nothing fancy, but then again I like things as simple as I can get them (and I don't have the room in my apartment for anything more).


RCA F-19261 XL-100 19-inch color TV (audio patched through to my Aiwa bookshelf stereo; I use this connection mostly when I am listening to one of the music channels on Comcast digital cable TV)

Panasonic PV-4022 VCR


Aiwa CX-NA888 AM/FM/CD stereo, 240 watts, four-channel surround sound


Zenith H-511 Consol-Tone receiver, BC only, 5 tubes

Zenith K-731 seven-tube AM/FM receiver (honestly, it sounds so good it should have been in Zenith's Consol-Tone line, with its two-way speaker system, large speaker and heavy wood cabinet; this set sounds unusually good for a table radio, especially in the bass range!)