My 'new' tv from 1960 or 1961

[classiccaprice]

Hey fellas,

So I wound up selling the porthole 1950 Zenith, it just needed more work than Where my skill base currently is and It was bought by someone who seems competent enough to be able to get it running. However, to take it's place I picked up this lovely set which I think is from 1960, or possibly 1961. It will need some tubes and possibly a recapping too, but all in all I am quite pleased with the set. What do you think? Here are the seller photos of the set.

 

[norgeway]

NICE!

Zenith always put out a high quality set, especially these old black and white models.

 

[whirlcool]

Very nice looking set and it screams "Eames Era!" It also looks like whoever had it before you took very good care of it too.

 

[wayupnorth]

"The quality goes in before the name goes on". My aunt and uncle had one of the first round tube Zenith color sets. Does that one light up which VHF channel in the center of the channel selector dial like theirs did?

 

[ovrphil]

My dad bought frequently bought Zenith. The last one he bought was my mom's constant complaint, as it took up the whole side of our 10x12 ft. living room. Housed in a walnut case, it was about six feet long with the color tv, stereo am/fm and record player. Too bad he didn't keep it, but mom's complaints eventually caused him to buy one of those non-legged boxy, ugly late 70's or early 80's tv. Zenith was a great product. When the parents left on Sundays for dinner and visiting, and if I was home, I exercised those big speakers!

Yes, I LOVE your new tv. Very classy vintage cool. The legs are definitely one of my favorites in the MCM era. Thanks for sharing, I love seeing these old vintage sets still being used.

 

[twintubdexter]

That'a a great looking console televison. I love black & white TV...Alfred Hitchcock, Perry Mason, even Wagon Train if I'm awake at 4:00 AM. They're all better on a genuine B&W set. I'd like to find one of those medium-sized sets on a roll-around stand that was specifically made for the TV, like the kind Rob & Laura had in their bedroom.

She probably sent Rob out for a case of Aquanet...the Princess phone's a nice touch..."It's Little, It's Lovely, It Lights"

 

[bluejay]

That's a beautiful set! I love old TVs; as with everything else, the quality is just not there with new ones. Our Toshiba from 2002 has speaker issues, but our '53 Motorola ran without issue until 2011, when we recapped it. Now it works like a charm!

 

[d-jones]

Televisions like this one always take me right back to my childhood. Growing up my family had a mid 50's black and white Zenith in a nice wooden cabinet. Then in the early 70's we somehow acquired a color Philco with an awesomely vintage looking round picture tube, but years later the color went a bit strange, and since all the tubes tested good down at Sav-On, the Philco went into storage and the black and white Zenith came back out. That darn thing soldiered on until the mid 80's when my mom finally insisted that it was time for a new color tv. To this day the old Zenith is sitting out in the garage waiting for someone to come along and do something with it.

 

[countryford]

d-jones, have any pictures of the Zenith sitting in storage? What ever happened to the Philco? Still have it too?

 

[pulltostart]

Love the set - classic MCM design. But I also love the floor!!! Do you have this tile throughout your house?

lawrence

 

[firedome]

Zenith...

was truly the best made in that era, imo. That model also came in many other cabinet styles and was quite popular.

Joe, our first new TV was a 1971 19" B & W Zenith on one of those roll-around stands ala Laura Petrie's, shown above, and it was used in the bedroom (only TV we had) until we finally gave in to a Sears 21" "portable" color set with those nifty di-electric tuning buttons in 1979. The Zenith had a great picture and now regret not having the foresight to hang onto it!

 

[veg-o-matic]

I think you'll love it! Here's a picture of my Space Command 300, from (I'm pretty sure) the same year as yours.
Hard to keep a Zenith down!

 

[philr]

Both of your TVs look great! I spent quite a few hours last looking at vintage electronics for sale, including at least an hour just for Zenith TVs. One day...

 

Roger, 

 

About the Sears TV, I know someone who used to have one. No remote control but I liked the tuning buttons!

Weren't these made by Sanyo? 

 

[paulg]

The "can't kill / never fail" chassis

That is a TV from what I believe to be one of the most reliable periods of Zenith's history. Provided the picture tube is still good it should be easy to keep running. I've only seen one CRT go completely bad on that series (it cracked when the building's heat went out. Freak failure).

My Grandparents had a similar version, a UHF version series about 1968. It outlasted them.
One professional service call, and I serviced it once in the 1980s. Simple maintenance.
Mr. Twintub: Mary is watching a Magnavox - though you probably already know that. I am a big fan of that show. What is funny is that in some scenes they use a Zenith remote hand unit for the TV. Perhaps the original Magnavox "Phantom" remote hand unit (with the whistle) didn't have enough "click"!

 

[paulg]

Sears-Sanyo

The Sears TV circa about 1979 with the "touch control" buttons were largely made by Sanyo. Great set.
Sears went through a number of TV vendors:
Pacific Mercury (Later named Warwick Electronics) - 1940s ( ? ) Through about 1977 or so.
Warwick also made the Thomas Organs.
Warwick sold to Whirlpool then turned around and sold to Sanyo.
There were also Sears-Toshiba TVs during the 1970s. Mostly portables.
Later sets were Goldstar. Yeesh.

 

[d-jones]

Justin (countryford)

I don't seem to have any photo's of the Zenith at the moment, though I can easily get one when I'm over at my folks on Friday. But I do have a picture of the Philco that was taken just prior to listing it on eBay. It sold for one hundred dollars to a guy that owns a business here in the L.A. area whose primary focus is the preservation of old television shows. If I understood him correctly, when people come into his lobby one of the first things they see is a number of vintage televisions, each playing vintage programs dating back to the same period as the television that's showing them. In other words, a set from the early fifties will show programs from the early fifties, while a set from the early sixties will show programs from the early sixties and so on. It sounded interesting, and at the time I'd planned on making a trip to his business to see it for myself. But I never got around to it and now I've misplaced the contact information.

 

[twintubdexter]

Paul,

Being able to watch a vintage TV show and realize that the remote and the set are two different brands is pretty darn good. I can't recognize the brand of a television simply by seeing the back of the set, unless the name is stenciled in six inch letters. I'm sure you're right about it being Magnavox. The Petri's had a Magnavox console stereo in the living room and Magnavox table radios in the kitchen that changed models over the years.

You Can Be Sure...If It's Magnavox

 

[paulg]

Leftovers from the TV shop days.

My first tech job was in a TV shop in Chicago.
We used to not only guess the brand of TV as the customer was walking up the sidewalk - but sometimes what was actually wrong with it!
Yup, you can tell a lot by looking at the backside.

 

[boboh1]

Beautiful

That is a real good looking set. Love them with those types of legs. here is my 1957 RCA deluxe.