1936 Zenith 5-S-29

(No audio file is available for this radio yet.)


Ah, this little beauty was a real labor of love. I found it in a storage bin in a California coastal town as part of an estate sale. The deceased must have been killed by cigarettes, as this set was literally BLACKENED with it over the decades. It covered everything; the outside, the inside, the guts, literally everything was coated with so much tobacco smoke we started calling the mixture, when it started coming off in the restoration process, "Bear Grease".
It took a long time to get it up and running...and then it gave us operational fits that left me raving. There was tobacco damage even in the wafer switch and tone control! It was a long de-bug, but it was worth it. Beautiful tone, very adequate shortwave reception, and an appearance that speaks for itself.
NOTE: The set's schematics call out a mixture of metal and glass tubes; however, the ones that are metal are then shielded by external shield cans, something hardly necessary! Many odd things happened in the "metal tube" era, and this is one of them.
General Specifications
Design TypeTuning RangeNumber of TubesWeightPower ConsumptionOriginal Selling PricePermanent Collection
Superhet .540-18000 Khz Five 15 Pounds 40 Watts (approx) unknown Yes

Tube Complement and Types
RectifierIF StageMixer/DetectorAudio Stages
80 (glass)6K7 (metal) 6A8 (metal) 6B6/G (glass), 6F6 (metal)


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