Zenith Roundie from DC 1st pictures
 

These are the first pictures I have posted of the Zenith Roundie from DC I picked up a few weeks ago. It is now the Zenith Roundie from Willards,MD model 5030 chassis 29JC20. Also shown is the HV cage with the HV cup from Moyers and the HV rectifier cap courtesy Bryan Gadow.(Thanks Bryan)

This is the picture with the only thing having been done to it being an open 4 section capacitor80uf475v-80uf475v-4uf450v-4uf-450 v temporarily jumped with 4 individual capacitors to be stuffed in the original although the 2 100uf 500v caps I found may be the only ones that will fit in the original and the 4.7 ufs @450v may have to go underneath the chassis.

All the filters will get restuffed and the black beauty caps replaced.The other filters are working but get quite warm. One black beauty is already causing a problem as after about 15 minutes or so the picture goes into an uncontrollable loss of vertical sync. A little shot of freeze spray on the particular cap restores sync.


Last but not least in adition to restoring the cabinet the crt will have too come out to clean the oily deposits from the rubber seal from inside the face mask.I kinda dread that particular step.

that set looks great!the crt wont be that big an issue.you are a lucky guy to find this.i am happy for you

Actually to split hairs I found it, he just picked it up. Looks great though, it'll be a fantastic set once it's all done!

I've never seen that chassis before. Does this set use the 3*** rectifier tubes on the left there by the power transformer? Maybe 3DG4??

It's got a nice picture on it now!

Congratulations on getting it!

LOVE IT!!!!!! Great picture. Is that the original CRT? Looks like a low hours set. I see the original 3DG4's. They look like Tung-Sol sourced. Power transformer is massive in that chassis.

Looks like a DAMN good picture for a basically "fresh" find...Maybe a bit of convergence issues on the edges, but IIRC, most every Roundie I remember from "Back in the Day" was like that...(I was the Weird Kid who noticed things like that...)

"was?" :D
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Oh, yeah - great condition on that set - you are one lucky dude, JC

I like the picture on that set too. Are those two pictures from OTA signals or cable? If OTA, you must be in a good area for reception from the two Salisbury network stations (channels 16 and 47), not counting the several PBS stations you can receive from Delaware and elsewhere in that area.

When I saw that your set uses two 3DG4 low-voltage rectifiers, it reminded me of my Zenith K2739 1963 23-inch console b&w TV (now long gone after 41 years). My set also used a 3DG4 as an LV rectifier and had fins on the power transformer (yours doesn't seem to). I note this because the 3DG4 seems like an oddball tube that would be difficult to find a replacement for if it burned out or (gasp! :eek: :yikes:) shorted, to say nothing of the fact that most TVs of that era used one or two 5U4s or 5Y3s as LV rectifiers. I think Zenith may have been the only TV manufacturer that used a 3DG4 in that position in the set.

Do color sets of the '60s draw that much more current than newer sets that they require two LV rectifiers? Yours is one of the few sets (color or b&w) I've seen in all my years of electronics experimenting that uses two low-voltage rectifiers, in addition to the HV rectifier.

My CTC-7 has dual 5U4GB's, mounted to the PTX.

http://videokarma.org/attachment.php...3&d=1282703985

The funny thing is the covergence cloverleaf is broken between the green and blue guns and I haven't fixed it yet. There is a liitle bit of red sticking off on the right side of the picture but not much.If I bring it into normal position the convergence gets bad.I think someone tweaked it to the way it is...lol.

I was thinking of tieing the 2 sections together with one of those locking cable ties and doing the convergence since the convergence works so good so far.Is there a better way of fixing it short of finding another convergence assy?

tie wraps are good.i used them exclusively

It is the original 21FB22 manufactured in the 43rd week of 1961. All the tubes except the damper are Zenith and I assume the originals. Availability of 3DG4 in the future kinda worries me.I need to stock up on a few if I can find them.Definitely need to get the old filters outta there.Can't afford a short with those tubes and that transformer which is probably unobtainable.

I also think it's a low hours set due to all the original tubes and the underside of the chassis basically untouched.The chassis is very clean.No rust or corrosion anywhere and only a light coating of dust/cigarette smoke deposits. Wonder how the cabinet got so beat up?Since it's a basic black cabinet it should be fairy easy to fill in the gouges and refinish though.

With all the original tubes in there and apparent light usage kinda makes me wonder if Zenith was hard on damper tubes.I was once given a Zenith 20YC38 chassis Zenith that had sat for years unused because the damper was arcing inside. All the tubes were Zenith and CRT strong.I sold that set when I could sell a console tv for $100 or more.Kinda wish I still had that set.:sigh:

The pictures are from Directv tuned to TVLand.Yeah I worry about 3DG4 availaility also.

I would not be too worried...
 

Zenith and a few others used the 3DG4 as an LV rect in their sets in the'60's but ONLY Zenith used it in a color roundie--AFAIK and ONLY in this chassis. From what I have seen the 3DG4 is not too hard to get. Zenith in particular used it in a LOT of their BW sets till about 64 or so. right now--there are a number of 3DG4 tubes on Ebay, not to too high, either.

I have virtually the same set as you--though mine is a lighter cabinet. Same layout--no remote, and so on. And like yours--it "sorta" works, and my tube is NOT that good. But my set is nearly ALL original and I keep it in my climate--controlled basement. Somewhere this site, are a few pix's from my set, running a few years ago, from A New years celebration and a Def Leppard Laserdisc too. I drove from Cincy to SC to get my 29JC20 at the end of 2002. It was on Phil's radio site for sale then, pretty cheap.

I'd trade my unrestored ctc5 for your unrestored Zenith...........

I wouldn't worry too much about 3DG4 availability. ESRC 1 has them for $4.00 each so so they can't be that rare. I would buy four of them because you don't know about the future.

[QUOTE=old_tv_nut;2987257]"was?" :D
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Uhh, yeah, uhh, well, uhh, (Cough, cough, hack, hack..Clears throat...)...OK, still AM....(grin) But seriously, my grandad had a '65 Zenith roundie in his office that we'd watch the New Years' Day parades & games on, & it had convergence issues a bit...Or it coulda been that I was just sittin' 2" away from it, mesmerised by a "Color" TV... Its sittin' about 4' away from me, one day it'll get to go see Terry & hopefully get brought back to life...

Back in the day, there was an aftermarket item specifically for that purpose. It amounted to a bungee sized to go around the outer perimeter of the convergence yoke, thereby holding the whole thing firmly together. Dunno where such could be found today, but it shouldn't be too hard to make one.

Great find, BTW!
Bill(oc)

JC, I have some 3DG4s on the shelf; I have a ton of tubes to sort through and will set aside the next few I find for you (but it will be awhile.)

That's a beautiful set! I wish Steve at the ETF would find one of these for the museum. I think that Zenith's first mass produced color set would be a great addition to the collection there. These sets rarely pop up, I'd love to have one too.

I started working for a Zenith dealer in 1963 and those sets were built like a tank. I talked a neighbor into buying one and it ran well 15 years before its first service call,

I must have gotten lucky on at least one thing with my Zenith. It has the 25LC30 chassis and uses .5A solid state diodes instead of a tube for rectification. It's good to see an extended ZENITH thread! I wish I had time to get somewhere with my Zenith! I want to find out what is making the horizontal output plate glow red and smoke from underneath. I'm sure that its a capacitor or THREE, as my set was dormant for at least 10 years. I took off the nice access cover on the bottom and at a glance could see two large (probably 1 watt) resistors sitting side by side that have heat bumps all over them where they have been cooking. I didn't see anything charred as I would expect after seeing smoke more than once.

Well, the silicon diodes may give the 25LC30 chassis and those like it a bit more reliablilty--but there is just SOMETHING SPECIAL about watching those two big 3dg4 rectifier tubes come on line---and power the chassis. BTW__ONE of them will actually be enough to power the set---but it will overheat, as I had that happen on my 29JC20, when one 3DG4 was not making proper contact and not working,. the picture did NOT shrink or bloom--but the plates did glow a bit on the one working tube.

As for your overheating HOT, probably a 6HF5, as I have the same set with remote (25LC20Q) across from the 29JC20 (and mine DOES work, at least the last time a had it on, but has a VERY bad cataract on a GOOD tube--) I would make sure my 6U10 H osc tube and caps and such around it was ok, as it sounds like you are losing drive. Be sure you osc coil is good too.

Thank you for the tips. I agree with and undrstand about that "SOMETHING SPECIAL" feeling that you often get from a tube doing its job. I have sat and watched a chassis work with the lights out for quite a while many times. Seems like the HO causes a lot of issues in these color sets, more so than I can say that I hear about in the black and white world, which is where I have spent most of my time. I owned several "roundie" color sets back in the 80s because in the early 80's I was a kid that would wander into the local TV shops and be fascinated by the older stuff often buried underneath newer finished repairs or other sets that the owner never came back and retrieved. I think that it sort of impressed the old TV repairmen. Several times they gave me the old color sets that I mentioned. I remember one was a remote set which I thought was a big deal being my family had just progressed to our first remote controlled color console for the living room. I was toying around with old TVs even then, but my abilities were VERY limited. I was lucky that those old color sets would play all night long, and for years with little or no repair. When something went too wrong back then I would just part a set out and find another. I could even swap color CRTs back then, but I was certainly weak on circuit repair.

This current Zenith model 5111 to me is the best thing that I could have wound up with. The metal cabinet makes it lighter and probably dissipates heat better than wood. The lines are clean and the set is about as basic as one could imagine. Mr. Muntz must have given Zenith a kudos for their simplicity!:thmbsp: As long as the Sylvania crt is up to par, I should be OK. The blue gun reads weaker than the other guns, but still within the "good" range of my tester.