estate sale find

[sampson159]

zenith system 3 space command with zoom!manufactured in may 1978.estate sale in north columbus today.working set with remote.inline crt that after waking up from long hibernation in basement,looks very sharp.convergence was horrid so i replaced magnet assembly with a unit from mid 90s set with large tabs.looks very nice and i am pleased with my 5 dollar find.dont care for zoom feature though!pictures to follow

[zenith2134]

Nice! Glad to hear that there are old sets out there still .

[sampson159]

i left the repair business in the early 80s so this set might be a little foreign to me.are these crts any good?picture is as sharp as chromacolor set.i know zenith had crt problems in the late 80s and early 90s.not sure about this one.any info?

[zenith2134]

Nowhere near as bad as those early 90s Zenith CRTs. My '79 25" looks really good...but from what I've read, the system 3's crt didn't have the impressive lifespan of the Chromacolor ones.

[radiotvnut]

Yeah, the early inline Zenith CRT's are better than the ones from the '90's; but, they are still not as good as a delta gun chromacolor tube. In fact, the last few Zenith's that I've had from this era had weak CRT's. If yours is still sharp, that indicates that you have a well made CRT or the set was not used much.

The other two things that gave the most trouble on these were the horizontal sweep / HV module and the video output module. As old as this set is, it probably uses a 9-153 horizontal module.

Anyway, nice set and I think it will serve you well. I actually have the 19" version of that set that has tuner issues and it appears to be a low hours set. I also need a remote for mine.

[old_tv_nut]

Originally Posted by sampson159

dont care for zoom feature though!

Some people called it the "bazoom" feature, since that's the anatomy that the picture usually expanded on - there is no centering control for the zoom.

[mwplefty]

At least for me it seems like less estate sales have had any good vintage sets pre-1990's. The best ones are found on Ebay or Craigslist in my opinion (that's why I post so many of them on here). Even thrift stores and flea markets only carry cheap late-1980's/early-1990's sets (However, I did see a 1989 Sony Trinitron at Goodwill that looked well ahead of its time. It looked better than the 2006 CRT TV sitting next to it). I've mostly been using these places just to buy old records for my turntable.