My 'new' tv from 1960 or 1961

Automatic Washer - The world's coolest Washing Machines, Dryers and Dishwashers

Help Support :

classiccaprice

Well-known member
Joined
Jun 26, 2007
Messages
2,059
Location
Hampton, Virginia
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.

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_1.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_2.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_3.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_4.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_5.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_6.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_7.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_8.jpg

classiccaprice-2014060220493201565_9.jpg
 
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.
 
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"

twintubdexter-2014060223173300913_1.jpg
 
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!
 
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.
 
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!
 
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? 
 
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"!
 
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.
 
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.

d-jones-2014060313014109159_1.jpg

d-jones-2014060313014109159_2.jpg

d-jones-2014060313014109159_3.jpg

d-jones-2014060313014109159_4.jpg
 
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

twintubdexter-2014060313395201459_1.jpg
 
-Tim, yes it does light up which VHF channel in the center of the channel selector dial. -Lawrence, I wish I did have that tile. That was out of the TVs original home. A modest 1955 rancher. It was quite lovely. The new owners were 'carefully updating" it... I hope they don't rip out the floor or get rid of those turquoise sofas! I have 7 vintage sets, mostly Zeniths from 1959, this 1960-ish, 1963, 1969, 1975, and 1981. I also own a 1962 Magnavox stereo console with black and white set. This one has horizontal issues, no picture, but a lit raster. The sound is awesome though! I wish the other sets sounded as great. Here's my 1959, which I happen to have a picture of handy. Who knows the movie?

[this post was last edited: 6/3/2014-21:20]

classiccaprice++6-3-2014-18-53-57.jpg
 
Ditto Allen, I have brand loyalty to vintage Zeniths. The magnavox is most likely the one that belonged to the lady I delivered meals on wheels too. I found it in the thrift store not long after she passed. It was too cool of a set to not get.
 
Can't fool an Admiral fan!

112561, that is a classic Admiral. Danish modern, pre-1963.
This boy was born and raised in Chicago aka Admiral town.
I cut my teeth on them Admirals. Actually was running my Admiral Color today. Rainy day project, but it still runs.
 
Our family always had Zenith's except for one. We had an Admiral (about 1965 or so) with the tilt out control panel. But we only had it for two years as there was so much opening and closing of the panel the television started to have problems from it.

We had a 64' Zenith 25"(?) square screen set (first year?) that lasted until 1972 when it was replaced with a Zenith System 3 25" set. That lasted until 82 or so.

The best Zenith we had was a 17" color portable that was in the den. It had the clearest, sharpest picture I had ever seen on a color set. My sister grabbed that one in the early 80's. I would imagine it was a 71' model or so.

I had a Zenith 21" table model color set with real wood cabinet and a built in speakerphone. Nice set, the year before Zenith offered the "zoom" feature on their sets. While this set looked nice and had a great picture after it was about three years old it started to blow power supplies. After the third power supply was installed in as many years the set was stolen when our house was burgularized. We replaced it with a new 91' Zenith which was really a Goldstar or LG set. Three years later that one caught fire in the middle of the night. Our dog Brandy woke us up to alert us of the fire. Fortunately when I unplugged it all the sparks and smoke stopped coming out of it. The fire department moved it outside for us in case it decided to have a repeat performance. That was the last Zenith for us.
 
That's a shame, Allen.

This 1981 Zenith, which I still own and use, was our family set, and eventually my bedroom tv growing up. iI replaced the 1953 or so table top model that my parents had inherited when they first got married (I wish they had kept it!)  That was why they bought another Zenith set, because it lasted.  They replaced it as the main tv in 1994 with another Zenith, which lasted about 15 years before it started sounding awful.  My father refused to have it repaired and then one day there was a loud "pop" and it died.  My grandmother got one around 1997 and something similar happened to it before it bit the dust after about 7 or 8 years.  Interestingly enough, the smaller sets bought around 1990-1993 that she, my great aunt, and parents bought lasted for over 15 years each working fine as they slowly left the family heading to thrift stores.

[this post was last edited: 6/4/2014-21:30]

classiccaprice++6-4-2014-20-09-6.jpg
 
Magnavox was really more into their Hi-Fi console systems then TV's-remember a Zenith table model set while growing up-was the "parents" set-our Hoffman was in the basement.That thing had a hidious green screen-but watched many an episode of Mickey Mouse,Lassie,Howdy Doody, and so on.If we were really good or some special show came on we were allowed to watch the Zenith-SO MUCH BETTER-even though it was monochrome-but not green monochrome.The channel selector dial indicated the channel # on a tiny projected screen in the center of the dial.The set went with Mom during the divorce.It was still working when she and my Stepdad traded it in on an RCA "Accucolor"in the early 70's.Watching "Outer Limits" was all the more spooky on that old Zenith.
My Mothers mother used to be a Magnavox Salesperson.She had a few sets in her basement-A Magnavox BW console,A Scott Radio console(Really wanted that-loved to listen to it while visiting her house)And of all things a Zenith color console.Don't know what happened to these when she died.So wanted that Scott!!
 
Tilt-out control panels

I always thought those tilt-out control panels on mid-1960 Admirals were among the most elegant of designs of the time.
I only have met two in my life. One burned the flyback completely. The other was in a dwelling that burned.
... Maybe Whirlcool, it was good that y'all got rid of it.
Mid-1960 Admiral color sets had a propensity to catch fire - some even caught fire on the showroom floor. Admiral was sued and it was revealed that the flybacks ran hotter in reality than the tests in their lab. Those chassis had comprehensive modifications afterward.
I was just a child then, but learned about all this later.
My 1970 Admiral has a silicone, not wax flyback. Regardless, I don't leave a vintage TV run unattended.
SPACE-PHONE TVs were cool but, as you found, the power-supplies did poop out a bit. I was just starting in TV and Zenith had moved their board-repair program to Mexico. Afterward, rebuilt boards had a very high failure rate for quite some time.
 
Back
Top