Could Zenith Have Made the Last B&W Console?

[Findm-Keepm]

Originally Posted by radiotvnut

I'd like to see one of those. Did the chassis look similar to the "XA" chassis that was used in their 19" B&W's?

And, those NTE712's - I remember replacing those quite often in various B&W sets back in the early '90's.

A friend of mine, who started repairing TV's in the early '70's, said that some of the "rent by the hour" motels around here had Muntz (AKA, the gutless wonder) B&W TV's.

I don't have a picture, but yes, these were XA variants. The sets had a "kit" feel to them - simple plastic escutcheon attached to a pressboard cabinet - I remember the smears of pinkish glue inside the cabinets. No CRT bell, and the back had openings for only the "F" fitting and the power cord. The audio circuitry had the chip feeding an output transistor with 110VDC on the collector - and the speaker was right under the UHF tuner. I got to the point where if I had no sound and a herringbone pattern on the screen, I'd pull the back, disconnect the speaker and ground wires, slide the chassis out, replace the chip, re-connect things, and put the back on, all without checking things. 90% of the time I was done - the chip failures were that common. I worked on 10 or 12 of the sets, but they had about 60-70. Once I reduced my buddy's backlog, he took to fixing the rest with bad sound.

Cheers,