1966 zenith entertainment center on ebay

[drh4683]

Looks to be a nice unit:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...378475342&rd=1

[captainmoody]

Wow! Thanks for letting me know Doug, that one is practically in my back yard! I am going to bid on it for sure.

[drh4683]

Great! Glad you bid on it, it will be saved! Now that I look at it again, it looks like it has a RCA Colorama replacement tube. No green halo or cateracts!!!

[captainmoody]

Yes, I noticed that too. Hopefully it has that tube. I also noticed it has the exact same cabinet as my '68 SC 600. Here I am trying to downsize and find myself bidding on another entertainment center! Oh well...

[captainmoody]

Well, after parting with a whopping $18.04 I picked up the monster today! Got it working by putting the service switch in the proper position. They said it hadn't worked for years after their late father in law tried to "adjust" it! He had been gone since 1984 and his wife just passed on. She kept it only because the phono and radio still worked. It will need a good tuner cleaning and most likely a little work in the vertical section as the linearity is off. Other than that, the set should be an easy repair as it has a rebuilt crt and looks to be a low hour unit. Gotta love those Zeniths!

[drh4683]

Glad you got that set! Dont you love simple repairs when you expect something worse! That service switch saved me lots of $ back when i could find these sets at resale shops. Big consoles for $95 was a joke at the resale shop, flipping the service switch would fake out that the set was defective and they would let the set go for "$10 for parts if you want it". It worked the 2 times I did that. The 3rd time I tried it at the marklund resale shop in downers grove about 5 years ago for a table space command 500. It didnt work on them, the manager said they cannot sell a broken TV for liability reasons? They said it had to be thrown out. So they couldnt throw it out, I hid the TV underneath the cloths rack on the other side. The next day, I had some money, so I had my friend go in and buy it working so the set didnt get tossed. Cost $40!!!
Those were fun times!
Im lucky if I can find a chromacolor II now..........

Look forward to seeing the pics of it!

[Carmine]

Wow does that sound familiar! A few quick twists of the color/tint/brightness knobs were usually enough to get the old bags at Sun City estate sales to lower the price on their 60's Magnavox consoles!

"Magnavox. Strangely popular with old-people in Arizona." tm

[OvenMaster]

Heh. Thanx for the headsup, guys. Now I'll know what to look out for when I try to sell my old RCA color set from 1982 when I have a yard sale and someone comes along and says, "Look! It's broken!" and they've probably monkeyed with it! I'll be able to tweak it back into correct color right in front of their eyes.

No discount for you!

Tom

[captainmoody]

Here is a picture of it working after flipping the service switch. I had done nothing else but turn up the brightness to take the picture. Yes, I know the picture looks strange, that's because the set is on it's side on a furniture dolly until I get help moving it! I had to rotate the pic 180 degrees to make it useable.

[drh4683]

Nice job dwight! Be sure to post a pic of it in the picture gallery for the record.

We should all be happy, another combo off ebay was saved!!! Most dont survive, even through ebay!