rare zenith chromaII on ebay

[drh4683]

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...091280656&rd=1

These are very rare, chromaII console especially in this cabinet style. Its not too far away from me if anyone is interested.

[Chad Hauris]

I have never seen a Zenith w/side by side channel knobs...I've got a few RCA's like that although most were vertical.

[drh4683]

that is rare to see the side by side arrangment. That was always a works in a drawer thing.

[kc8adu]

even rarer is the setronic control.
it has a slider with a moving pilot light for all adjustments.
slide it over and push/turn to adjust.

Oh yeah! My friends grandparents had one of those oddballs but in a more traditional cabinet. I remember playing with it in the late 80s and it did still work fine. Not my favorite style Zenith but cool and rare nonetheless. I wouldn't turn it down if it showed up at my door.

[Charlie]

The seller mentions the set being 40 years old... i wonder what gave them that idea?!

Originally posted by Charlie
The seller mentions the set being 40 years old... i wonder what gave them that idea?!

It's 29. It's a 1975 model.

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by drh4683
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...091280656&rd=1

These are very rare, chromaII console especially in this cabinet style. Its not too far away from me if anyone is interested.

This is a rare set, no doubt about it. Looks to me like early to mid-70s, not sixties (see my note below). The slider operated the color and other controls ordinarily adjusted by front-panel knobs on other sets. One positioned the slider over the function he/she wanted to adjust, pushed it in to engage the shaft, then turned the small knob on the slider to adjust the control and released it. (kc8adu had the correct name for this system, which I had forgotten--thanks, kc, for jogging my memory.)

I think Zenith only had this model in its lineup for a year or two, before returning to the traditional knob controls behind a panel door. I only saw a picture of the front panel of one of these sets, and that was in a Zenith service manual about 30-35 years ago. This was a great idea, but Zenith's and others' idea of putting all controls on the remote and, years later, in onscreen menus was and, IMO, is much, much better. Today's sets have few if any potentiometer controls, with just about every control that used to be on the front panel now on an onscreen menu. To tell you guys the honest truth, I prefer this system over the earlier one, as there are no pots to go bad, intermittent, etc. The onscreen controls are easier to adjust as well; no guessing, for example, as to when the tint control is at midrange. You see the exact position of every control right there on the screen.


Forty years? Where did the seller ever get the idea this set was anywhere near that old? Zenith hadn't even thought of the original Chromacolor, let alone its successor, back then. That would place the set in the early '60s; Zenith and other manufacturers were making largely roundies at that time. Further, the single slider (Setronic) for all picture controls hadn't been thought of, by Zenith or anyone else to the best of my knowledge, back when roundies were popular.

[Jeffhs]

Originally posted by jasonlava
Oh yeah! My friends grandparents had one of those oddballs but in a more traditional cabinet. I remember playing with it in the late 80s and it did still work fine. Not my favorite style Zenith but cool and rare nonetheless. I wouldn't turn it down if it showed up at my door.

If I were still living in a house, I wouldn't turn down a rare bird like that either. The Zenith Setronic design was novel, cool as you noted, and sought after by collectors these days. (I wonder if Doug has one or more of these in his Zenith collection?)

[orthophonic]

I know that set well, it was our first color set. My parents bought
it in the summer of 1975 for their 25th wedding anniversary, it
replaced a 1956 Zenith B/W. The one my parents had was
identical except the wood was darker and the mod base
didn't have casters. It was called the Montmartre, I still
have the brochure somewhere. I remember it cost 749.00, marked down from 899.00 because it was last years model.
My parents had it until 1989, no repairs, until the power
supply caps started to go. it was going to cost around 200.00to fix it, so sadly they traded it in on a new Zenith. That old set had
a superb picture, one of the best i have ever seen. The '89
Zenith (which they still have) picture could not campare to it,
looked putrid by comparison.
It was one heavy sucker, I remember being home from college
in the 70's and having to help put down a new rug in the
family room where the set was. You could barely lift one end
of it!