[Eliot Ness]

Boy, this one goes back a few years.  Early one morning in 1988 I was talking to Grady Richards (R.I.P.) at the Springfield, OH flea market and I spotted a 12-S-265 Zenith console down at the end of the isle with the chassis sitting in it backwards.  I quickly wandered over and saw the chassis and speaker were there but the cabinet had been stripped and had an ugly black stain on the top, but when the fellow said $15 I quickly paid him and said I'd pick it up later.

Back in KY a friend said he'd work on it for me in exchange for one of my older computers.  I don't mind the chassis work but the cabinet had me worried with the stain, but my buddy was going to strip and refinish his at the same time, so I thought that would be a good plan.  Now, back then I was acquiring a lot of radios and even had a storage unit, so I wasn't too worried about that Zenith since it wasn't taking up any space at my house.  But let this be a warning to anyone who tells someone "there is no hurry."  My friend eventually stripped his cabinet but the project sort of stalled right there.

Fast forward about 30 years to the last Kutztown show and I found a guy with a very nice original finish 12-S-265 empty cabinet for sale for $100.  Since I only paid $15 for the radio originally it was worth $100 to have a nice original finish console cabinet.  Now my buddy had to try and remember where my chassis and speaker were, since he had since retired and crammed everything into every nook and cranny of his two story garage.  With the extraction of my chassis finally successful I began the first step of ordering the parts needed; capacitors, drive belts, and power resistors to rebuild the candohm.

Here are a few pictures of it on my chassis holder.... very dirty from years of storage but if you look carefully at the eye tube you'll see it is the elusive 6T5 that was only used in this year (1938) Zenith.  Even if it still has life in it I'll probably replace it with a 6U5 or 6G5 and save it for special occasions.

This probably won't be a fast moving moving restore since I have some other competing projects I've been putting off.  I am looking forward to digging into this chassis because the '38 Zeniths are one of my favorite chassis to restore, and this one doesn't seem too butchered up, so below is what I'll be working on: