[captainclock1988]

Greetings everyone when I was a kid (about 15 or 16 years old) my pastor that was at the church I went to growing up gave me an old Zenith Console Radio to keep and work on, and I unfortunately was a newb at radio repair at the time and didn't know that radios weren't supposed to hum when you listened to them and didn't know that it was bad filter capacitors and I was listening to some records on the record player on it and it suddenly let out magic smoke (it smelled really bad like burnt electrical wires, which now I know that what happened was that the filter caps dead shorted and took out the power transformer in the radio) but anyways the radio was a rectangular cabinet that had a front facing speaker with a lyre (or harp) shaped wooden grille insert with gold and brown colored grille cloth that had a leaf pattern in it, and the top of the radio had a lid that opened to reveal the radio and record changer, the radio had 4 knobs I think (a volume/power knob, a tone control knob, a tuning knob and a mode switch to switch between the phono and radio modes), and the radio was AM Only as far as I know and the radio dial was square shaped about 4" square (maybe larger but I don't remember as I never measured it and I'm just going by what it looked like from memory) the dial pointer had a stylized lighting bolt "Z" surrounded by a circle and a pointer that went through both sides of the center of the pointer assembly, and the tuner dial itself readout 550-1620 on the top of the dial and the bottom of the dial read 250-550 Meters, and so far I have yet to find anywhere another radio like it, and I don't know what model it was, or how many tubes it had in it. I was trying to do a GIS for Zenith Console Radios from the 1940s with record players and I haven't seen anything yet, and I even did a GIS for 1930s Zenith Console Radios with record players and not even that returned anything, and like I said I have no idea what year the radio was from, if it was 1930s or 1940s. 

Does anyone have any old Zenith Catalogs from the 1930s or 1940s that they could scan in and upload onto here for me to look at, or know what model of Zenith radio I'm talking about based on the description I gave?

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Levi

[Arran]

Levi;
  What you describe sounds like a Brand Z model from the 1940s, if it only had one band then it was probably a five or six tube model. I don't generally care for that site but looking through Radiomuseum may help, Or you could post about this on the ARF, there are more of the Brand Z enthusiasts on there who might know it by your description. Do you remember if the cabinet may have had a faux wood grain on it, many of the lower end consoles did in that era?
Regards
Arran

[morzh]

If a console, rectangular; was it a portrait/landscape aspect ratio ?
The lid: was the top of the radio the lid, or was the lid opening forward?
If both the radio and the player were under the top lid, was it a chairside?
From your memory, approximately, would it look more like 1940-s, or 1950-s?
The turntable: was it more of a really bulky old one? Or thinner 50-s one?

You possibly could from the memory, put a search on a Zenith radio with record player, and then show us "ok, the player looked like this / the player was in this position / the radio was about this shape" etc etc.

[Arran]

Levi;
  I think that I may have found your mystery radio, it was possibly a 6R687R https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/zenith_6r687r_ch6b06.html You mentioned a lyre in the grille and I remembered to look for that rather then looking at radio phono combos with the control panel under a lid. 
Regards
Arran

[morzh]

Fits the descriprion.
I also looked for the lyre. Found a couple, not this.
In fact,  my Spinet also has it. I knew it wasn't it, no player.
   



Shoulda known, they are consecutive years, 1941-1942.

[captainclock1988]

Levi;
  I think that I may have found your mystery radio, it was possibly a 6R687R https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/zenith_6r687r_ch6b06.html You mentioned a lyre in the grille and I remembered to look for that rather then looking at radio phono combos with the control panel under a lid. 
Regards
Arran

Hello Arran, Yes that is the one I had, I didn't know what the model number was or what the tube lineup was in it or when it was made, I just knew I liked it and I did use it for quite a while with failing filter caps (it had a 60 cycle hum coming through the speaker but it wasn't loud enough to make it so you couldn't listen to it, because I did use it quite a bit to mainly listen to records on it which the one I had someone at some point in time in the radio's life had removed the original 78 RPM only record changer and installed in its place an old Sears Silvertone 4-speed "Stereo" record changer from the early 1960s so that they could continue to listen to records on it well into the LP era.

When I looked at the tube lineup for this radio I realized that it had the infamous 6X5 rectifier tube which was known to fry power transformers when it shorted out, and now I'm beginning to wonder if perhaps the rectifier wasn't to blame for the radio going up in smoke, and not the filter caps... 

Another thing about this radio I had was that the radio function didn't work on the radio, whenever I attempted to use it in radio mode the radio was dead silent, I couldn't get a peep out of it, I couldn't even get the local 10kW conservative talk radio station, that was also a part time Southern Gospel Station on the weekends and on weekday mornings in (that's what it was at the time, its now a full time Southern Gospel Station) and my question is, what would of caused the radio portion of the radio to be completely dead but the record player portion of the radio to still be functional?

[captainclock1988]

I found a website that explained the Zenith Model Number ID System and how it worked, apparently the first digit of the model number was the number of tubes the radio had in it (which I already knew that from reading it in a post on another electronics forum) and the second character (the letter in the middle of the model number) told you what kind of radio it was and what voltage(s) it could run on (whether or not it was an AC Only set or AC/DC set or if it had FM on it or if it was AM and shortwave or AM Only or if it was a battery set or if it was a 32V Farm Set, etc. the first digit of the last 2 or three digits of the final character string of a Zenith model number identified the model year of the radio and the last two digits referred to what kind of cabinet the radio was, which the middle and last two or three characters of the model number string I didn't know about, I just knew about the first number of the model number referring to the tube count and that was it. It is interesting to point out that the 6R687R radio was apparently a fairly high end radio for its time and thus why it is there aren't many of them left anymore, because it probably was a rare model to begin with because it was probably in a fairly high price point, and so not many people bought one for that reason. It apparently had a Solid Mahogany Cabinet which was probably part of why it was considered a fairly high end unit despite it being an AM Only radio with a 78 RPM Only Record Changer.

[stereo4fun]

Guess it's time to show off my fully restored Zenith 9s262! This picture is when I picked it up at the restorer's workshop. Just beautiful!

Mark

[Arran]

Levi;
I think that the 6X5 has really been made the scapegoat for other faults. In the case of your old set I think it probably was a shorted filter caps, or possibly the tone correction cap on the output transformer primary, the latter takes out more power transformers then one might realize. The reason I say this is that it doesn't appear that the tube was misused or overstressed in the circuit, the 6X5 was paired up with 6K6s in lots of other radios, especially car radios, without incident, and your radio only had six tubes in the entire set. I think that the maximum current load for a 6X5 is 80 ma, varying with plate voltage, so basically they are for the AC equivalent of a five or six tube AC/DC set.
I actually haven't run into a set equipped with a 6X5 that had a failed power transformer, but then again I don't run into many brand Z radios where I am. I have however run into more then one Canadian RCA or G.E set (same chassis really) with a bad transformer, but those used a 5Y4, they just happened to use power transformers that were barely adequate for the job in the 1940-45 model years, but I've never run into a Philco or a Rogers set with a failed transformer, though one guy I knew claimed to have a Rogers with a failed one.
Regards
'Arran

[MrFixr55]

There are many common reasons for a radio to not play but the phono section to work.  For a transformer powered set, any tube in the radio section (RF Amp, Convertor, IF Amp, detector that is not part of the 1st Audio tube with an open filament would fail to play.  Any open oscillator coil or IF transformer would do the same thing.  If the radio / phono switch was bad, this could also happen.  I have had RCAs and GEs from the mid-30s with transformers that bought the farm spontaneously.  

I don't know if the 6X5 is guilty of commonly shorting, as it had an indirectly heated cathode, unless the insulation between the heater and cathode broke down.  I had sets with 80s and 5Y3s, especially those with the "tent" style filament that if the filament opened and touched the plate, it would short, possibly taking out the transformer.

I had a Philco console AM / SW radio / phono (possibly a 46-1226) as a kid.  I had it on and while in the shower the 5Y3 failed and took out the transformer, filling the house with smoke.  Mom totally freaked, and made dad make me throw out the radio on the spot.  because of this, when I restore a radio with an old 80 or 5Y3, I put silicon diodes in series with the leads from the transformer to the plates of the rectifier to prevent the recurrence of the issue (Ms. Fixr would make me throw the set out, but it would be rescued).

BTW, smoke is what makes electronic, electrical and some mechanical devices work.  I know this from the scientific method.  When you let the smoke out, the device stops working.  Therefore, by deductive reasoning, smoke is what makes these devices work.