My grandparents had a similar zenith console like that for a very long time. It was kept until they "upgraded" in the late 90's when they moved from new Hampshire to Florida for retirement. Of course they got another zenith console, but it was the last of the consoles pretty much exactly like the empty plastic and mdf dog bed set a few videos back...
@@donh01965 Yep, been there & done that. I even once sat a console on top of another console in my young poor days. One had a picture but no sound & the other one sound but no picture. I suffered through that for about 3 or 4 months, but I got to watch my shows!
I love how the American drug commercials take up 50% of the commercial time with warnings - _"Don't say we didn't tell you about what could happen to you if you take......"_
My parents bought this same TV new back in the 70s,lasted 30+years.had only had to fix it a couple of times.They loved it,as it was there first color set.
There's a lot of us, that would gladly take that Zenith out of your way, if we were nearby!😁😊 Great videos, I remember working on a few like that 40 years ago, then, an occasional tripler failure, that red board (yes, we simply removed the blackened conductive areas), some later tube chassis flyback red boards would arc and burn around the focus rectifier diode, and repair the same way! Fun times, thanks!
You enjoyed all of those colors. We had B&W family TV until my childhood electronics hobby and curiosities started paying out good working color televisions.
We had one of these. Exact same and was a very reliable set for us so we were one of the lucky ones I guess. It’s fate was sealed by a tired CRT. I remember being fascinated by the chromatic-tuning switch and it’s neat orange mechanical shutter function indicator.
My grandparents had a newer version, which I believe used the system 3 chassis that had independent plug-in modules. Contrary to the reputation (dirty contacts on the boards), it performed well until 1997 when my parents bought them a new TV with PIP. The blue gun was failing, but it was still usable and another family member took it. Unlike yours, this had a digital display for the tuning and a keypad below. It also had an updated space command remote (which you had to press 'enter' after selecting the channel).
I dragged a similar chassis Zenith home from the trash as a kid. I was successful making it work and managed to tweak the color pretty well. The set lived in my bedroom for a couple years. It was cool having my own big color tv back then. Thanks for these great videos. Unfortunately I find it impossible to watch TV today. Radio is pretty worthless too, unless I’m looking for a slip-and-fall attorney or order a snake oil product.
as a repair man for 40 +years i repaired hundreds of zeniths sets of that era ... they were actualy fairly dependable .. except the focus board also the dark grey silicon and component lift from circuit board was factory after the manufacture was informed of the issue ... there also was no preference to gun failure in the crt .. .. enjoy your videos .. brings back memories from the back of the set
My parents had a 1966-7 25' Zenith TV that we had for almost 20 years. It was a great TV though it looked like it had 15+ tubes inside. I'm amazed they had such a small speaker because my brother and I had it blasting watching cartoons. At least ours was made out of wood and not plastic and fiberboard crap.
That set came off the assembly line just in time for the Arab Oil Embargo and the resulting Energy Crisis! Your hard-earned money didn't go as far in those days due to "stagflation," so television manufacturers had to cut some corners with the materials in their products to keep their costs down and mitigate price increases for their customers. This was happening throughout the 70's, into the early-80's.
Shango I love your videos, man. I’m not even sure why, but I do. Maybe it’s just someone competent and enjoying what they do. Keep them coming, I’ll keep watching.
Brings back memories. In 1971 I took Radio & Television repair at a technical high school, then went to work as a gopher for a mobile TV repair store. We would go into homes to fix televisions. I would test & replace the tubes and degauss the picture tube.
We had this exact TV when I was growing up in Memphis in the ‘80s! Our TV repairman, Mr. Ray Holland, was out at the house quite often repairing it! I used to sit and watch (read: pester) him as he would replace a vacuum tube or whatever it was that was wrong with it. He’d keep me at a distance by warning me about the dangerous potential voltages from the capacitors with the rear cover off. Made back when America was strong!
This was our first color tv. The set lasted a long time. The vertical hold was the first thing to go. We hit the upper right hand top to get it to hold. It got us out of our sitting positions for some excercise. We loved the set.
I stopped watching regular over-the-air TV a year or so before our analogue broadcasting officially ended in April, 2013. Just as well since it's mostly boring BS shows nowadays. I don't even listen to local radio anymore since it's all talk and hardly any music (when they do play a song, it's some auto-tune modern-day garbage that took probably 20 minutes to produce - no classics from the 70's or 80's when _REAL MUSIC_ existed). So it's nice to see something like this video - presented in *Shango-Vision* ... Thanks. :)
of all the sets you have fixed, this is the quietest set ever on your channel, beautiful sound! barely crackling at all. love your videos shango please keep it on a daily basis don't keep the market thirsty for a long time ..
My Grand Father had a similar one. I remember the red button under rocker switch. You should have seen how far I jumped when I toggled the switch and the tripler blew and started to arc. I changed it out and was back in business. Ended up throwing it away because it was so heavy and took up so much real estate. Now I’m kicking myself.
I think tubes were used because early transistors did not do well for high voltage circuits back then. So using tubes around the horizontal circuit and HV circuit back then made sense.
This is the set I grewup with. I think I even took it part once or twice as a kid. I remember getting shocked a few times. The back of the set brings back memories of hooking up Super Pong and my Atari 2600! What a great TV set to growup with.... you could really see what was going on in these old sets.
X-OR they were great until the pots got dirty from pointing up. Then all heck broke loose if you touched one, especially if mom cooked a lot with no ventilation.
Jerry Springer Shameless Exploiter of Fragile Human Emotions-the View wenches are rough to watch,but it's great when they expose MORE CRIMINAL ACTS by the leader of the Red Hat losers and Commie Sympathizers AND Jerry's an ex-politician, so it's OK. HA! Mayor of Cincinatti (WKRAP)
My wife and I bought that exact same TV. We had only been married two years and that was a major buy for us back then. We kept the set for several years and the only repairs I did to it was two picture tube replacements. But then I was in the TV business so I got the tubes really cheap directly from the supplier. Other than that it was very reliable.
2 new CRTs in several years? Either you had very high standards or something must have been making them fail before their time. A CRT in those days must have cost more in real terms than a flat-panel set does now. I forced myself to watch the washed-out picture on my 1978 Sears console until the flyback failed in 2015.
@@pcno2832 Yes, I did have higher standards than most people for a TV. Also, I was buying seconds. The cost of rebuilt CRT seconds back then was about $20. I didn't mind changing the tube again at that cost..
My Grandparents had this same model. My Dad threw it out in the late 1980s when we bought a new Zenith. I wish we still had it. I'd watch Columbo DVDs on it.
This is cool we use to have one of these in the 80's when i was a kid. in the early 90's me and a friend of mine use to pick these up off the curb and get them working. the all solid state one's with the plug in boards were always fun.
atleast you can silicone it and be done with it....nowadays they have more imaginative ways to enforce planned obsolescence...for example by adding software to everything and deliberately bricking your device when they want
I'm sure it was just the dust particles lining up along the voltage gradient until eventually they were dense and damp enough to conduct. After the arcing the carbon track forms and embeds in the surface.
The Zenith Chromacolor 23 inch model year 1971 / 1972 was my parent's first color television. Wood or particle board cabinet; not as much plastic. Also an early hybrid with an IC color demodulator but the HV was traditional. The sales shop on Whittier Blvd in La Habra was adjacent to Charles Stone Television repair. Hence, if a customer asked for the BEST color TV, they were directed to buy Zenith exclusively. We spent over a month just watching TV. It was an amazing picture; much better than color televisions we had seen at relatives and friends. The chromacolor CRT with black mask was REAL and SPECTACULAR innovation. Anyway, we burned the heck out it for months. Then the electron guns in the CRT started arcing. So Mister Stone took it in his shop. He said that they get some gas that shows up later. Years later the color was wild squirmy crankipation. Mister Stone sold me the new IC for his cost ($17) and taught me what to do. Bam! My folks kept that set for so long, their next set was solid state. Watching that spark and arcing in the neck after the back off and ran the set with a cheater. Hooked me on CRTs!
*Chromacolor®* is about the dots of screen, less space between each dot (blue, green and red), wich technically gives more luminous area to the image, it is less dark spaces of the grill, reducing this way the luminance finally. After dots, ending '70s came bars like vertical bricks. Trinitron used continous line from up to down of screen, considered the best quality used as monitors in television studios. Chris. Santiago, Chile. SouthAmerica 🇨🇱
You sir have my humor on watching television, and you sure make videos a relaxation; I wish to send one of my older televisions to you to see what's gone bad with it. I do have a Sony 5-307 UW, the problems is (and was) the CRT would only display about half of inch of screen, but I managed to view it, but another problem happened and it was a lot worse; the CRT disconnected itself after powering it on, and I had smelt something weird, so I switched it off and unplugged the television for a long time. It's never had power since. I did some research about it, I felt like I cannot fix the problem, because I'm not certain of what I would be doing to servicing a CRT television. Do you think you could receive my TV and service it (with probable cost) or if not, that's totally alright for me!
My DVR auto-skips commercials. I never see them if I'm watching a recording. So when I watch live TV for some reason, I feel my brain cells slowly dying. The worst part is how the *same* commercials play in every break now.
Nice! Hardwood skirt. Yes, you don't want your 25 pound Hoover Convertible upright tearing off chunks of particle board. I actually have a 1965 Zenith 25MC33 roundie combo coffin set with a particle board floor in the cabinet. But it's Zenith quality particle board. Everything else is real hardwood (cherry).
That set represents the start of the "bean counters" getting control. Plastic, partical board, etc. Made as cheap as possible while charging as much as they at the same time..
We had the 19" "Space Command" portable version of basically the same chassis: a hodge-podge of tubes, transistors, and integrated circuits. It lasted 13 years and did have a great picture. In the shop several times, one time the UHF tuner module actually caught on fire.
You wouldn't think a UHF tuner of all things would burn, but from what the serviceman showed us, it burned pretty darn good! Thick smoke was bellowing out the back of the set, yet it remained playing until powered off.
I live in southeastern Wisconsin, and those Zenith's were pretty common here. Of course there were dealers all over the place. I remember a couple of elderly ladies on my street living next to each other had those early Chromacolor console sets, and they were probably used until their deaths. I remember the now defunct local liquor store had one too, but i remember it died.
Made my day another shango video these TVs were made pretty cheap that's 4 sure but grew up more around this solid state stuff 1 thing I liked about these sets were the easy servicing module boards energy efficientcy
First color set in my family was a Zenith of about that vintage but not a console. Never got to take it apart (it lasted too long). On reflection, it might have been more like a 1971 Zenith as my Dad usually bought the last of the older model sets from the local Zenith dealer. He also bought a huge Fisher stereo console a few years late, sadly an early solid-state one in a fake-Italian cabinet, not the modern-style now-collectible one.
Can anyone explain "cutoff" in a CRT tester? I tried looking it up, but couldn't find an answer. Yeah, modern junk uses a lot less power, but their life expectancy is dismal.
Setting the cutoff level on the tester biases the control grid so there is a minimum preset current flow. This calibrates the emission read on the meter for the good-bad indication. At cutoff there is little or no beam current from the electron gun.
I had a 1975 Chromacolor table model Zenith set, great picture, very reliable. Got a recall notice on the HV four lead capacitor in the flyback area. I went to my local Zenith parts warehouse, they gave me all the recall parts, which I installed. Other than that, the set ran flawlessly for eight years. The picture bulb went soft, and it wasn't worth re=tubing it, so it got scrapped. It was all solid state.
I wonder if that's a Philips yoke, seeing as it's made in Holland? Perhaps even a few Philips IC's and transistors? They were a big player in colour TV back in the day.. Most, if not all European colour TV's had some Philips influence with regards to the innards, so I wouldn't at all be surprised if Zenith were buying-in certain parts to keep the bean counters happy..
Zenith used hand wired chassis until the System 3 in the mid 1970s. Unlike companies like Admiral who introduced their 3/4 printed circuit chassis built in a semi automated factory in 1955. Growing up in the 1960s, we had a 1956 Super Cascode B&W who's audio board had been replaced with hand wired circuity on a piece of sheet metal by a local service shop.
I have one in a darker cabinet - same plastic sides. Lost sync and could use a better 6LF6, but couldn't justify the cost so I packed it away years ago.
I think the UL TV cabinet flameproofing standards kicked in for 1975, so this would have been one of the last made with solid gasoline up against the guts. That might explain why the sets from later in tat decade (Freudian-typo, I guess) had particle board lining the side walls, with the plasto-Mediterranean carvings screwed to the outside of the box. They must have had plastic that was almost un-burnable to make the portables, but it was probably too expensive for these boat anchors.
Zeniths are hard to find in my area too. Only thing Zenith i saw on next door locally was this really nice looking Transoceanic. And once this very very good condition 1940s or 1950s Arvin TV for $500 i think it was.
My grandmother had a 1974 Chromacolor II Model #:E4549P Chassis #: 19EC45 which if I recall looking inside was an all solid state design. I believe that set had the same cabinet as this one (you can see it in the "Old Technology At Grandma's House" video on my channel). The cabinet style was called "The Maracaibo" since that baroque Mediterranean styling was all the rage in the 70s (the "P" at the end of the model number indicated Pecan finish). Like this TV, the Chromatic circuit was fussy.... also the AFC as fubared. I think that set was also instant on as well.
I remember a few years ago there was a commercial for birth control pills I think, with dancing and singing women extorting the benefits of this new pill. They were so happy, kicking up their heels like a chorus line, it was just the best pill in the world. A few months later they did another commercial for the same drug, the entire commercial was a disclaimer. If you have this or that, don't take our pill, if you are taking this other drug too, don't take our pill, etc. It's the only drug commercial I can remember that is one entire disclaimer.
what kind of cord did you use to plug this tv up? I found a tv quite similar to this one, although a tad bigger, and I've been searching for a power cord to use for it. The prongs you'd plug the cord into are really strange, cause one is like twice the size of the other. I can't any power cables that would match it, and was wondering where you got yours from
Wow.. Exact TV from my earliest memories. This is what I watched Saturday morning cartoons on, as well as The Dukes of Hazzard and The Incredible Hulk every Friday night.
I think 1973 was the last yr Zenith made any type of tube television, it's gorgeous and I remember those models fondly. Never see that quality again. And yes, they were very troublesome. Especially that chromatic switch..!
I get a kick out of the drug ads. While the guy tells you about all the possible nasty and life threatening side affects you may experience, the people in the background seem to be smiling and happy as can be as if this drug changed their lives forever!
Yeah, I watched this and remembered I have a "Mass: no more than 60kg; Power: no more than 250W", soviet made television set from 1980, very much like Shango's one, in my basement. I didn't allow my parents to throw it out, when they have decided that it wasn't worth repairing any more in the 90's. I had the idea than to put in its box something more modern japanese made and double the number of speakers inside so to allow stereo sound. It had great sound out of the two band speakers inside its wooden box wich would allow putting another set of the same speakers in its other side. However, ten years ago I've left my newly bought smart TV (the first generation of its kind, from 2009) to my parents and I haven't watched TV since than. Than I've looked around my appartmet and have decided the ammusement out of it would not be as great as the cluttering effect it will have on my home. Plus, getting "no more than 60kg" from the basement up to the fourth floor without elevator doesn't sound like fun. Probably I'll have my basement storage room cleared soon. Another thought I had while watching insides of this Zenith and comparing them to the ones of soviet made set is that soviet designers have overdone it - a mix of huge amount of transistors, silicone ones and some power and VHF germanium ones, ancient specialised chips of very low integration and a bunch of tubes.
Shango, back before the early sixties, when they came up with the rare earth europium-ytrium phosphors, the red gun was the first one to go cuz it was driven really hard. They had to as the blue & green phosphors were much more efficient than the red. After the introduction of the new phosphors, it wasn't quite so bad.
A friend told me that he bought the hybrid version in '73 and that the full SS version was $100 higher. He said that for the price difference, he could wait on the picture to come up. As far as the flyback in these and the later SS ones, the only time I've seen one bad is when the tripler shorted and took out the flyback and the HOT.
We bought the full solid state Zenith color set new in 1973. I recall debating whether to get the hybrid or fully solid state set. In the demo room, the fully solid state set did look better. The price for the full solid state was somewhat higher than the hybrid.
