[Jayce]

Some of you might recall how I did a little fun comparison between my Zenith C845 table radios and my small collection of German radios from the same era and being surprised how well the Zeniths kept up with them sound and overall performance-wise. Tonight I am listing to my model H725Z1 from roughly 1951 and am once again amazed how well this thing sounds after it 'punished' me for letting it sit a while. Now, the sound on this radio is a bit more mellow than the later c845 with its added tweeter, but still a good sounding AM-FM unit for the time. Local little FM station has been playing 70's and 80's rock this evening and I would say Zeppelin sounded darn good on this radio when I cranked it up a bit. Sort of like having a small jukebox sitting on the shelf on the head of my bed. (Actually, this radio is like an old jukebox, it hates to be left sitting too long!). A lot of big sound out of that little 35C5. Oh, now some Queen just came on!

[Paul Philco322]

You are the Champion! Z went down with some good stuff in the 60's. Enjoy.

Paul

[Jayce]

I can see why people who grew up around Zenith's offerings of this era through the 60's developed such fond memories of the brand. Though restoring them is not without headaches! SMD is a real enemy of Zenith's late 40's through mid-50's radios.

[MrFixr55]

Hi Gang,
On reason for the sweet sound of those 1950s Zenith radios is the sweet 8" speaker, compared to the puny 4", 5" or if lucky 6" speakers. I believe that they were a little more generous with the amount of metal in the output transformer. In addition, they run at a slightly higher voltage with the selenium rectifier instead of the 35w4. To top it off, several of the se radios employed negative feedback (check out the RC connection between the volume control and the cathode of the 35B5 / 35C5) The sound is almost as good as my RCA 1R81 Livingston with 8" speaker, but also with 6V6 and 250V on the plate of said 6V6.