[Arran]

Arran

Yeah once I looked at the sch it looked downright scary to me. I would not ever allow such a design to leave my department, lest I be a subject to multiple lawsuits.
What I've figured I would do is I will fix it, make it work, as a part of the collection, and then I will be the only one who will ever touch it, so it will be a demo unit only, a conversation starter, if you will, but not something I will make play for me regularly - after all, most of the sets I have are AM broadcasting radios with exact same band, so.....

Even with the hot chassis sets the manufacturer usually had enough sense to use an insulated back, knobs, and recessed or hid the chassis screws so that someone couldn't accidently touch the radio and a grounded object at the same time. You could modify the Zenith so it has a floating common negative or B-, a little more work but not too difficult. With the Medco (Telesonic) radio I went through my schematic collection and looked for sets with similar circuits and a similar tube lineup for ideas, sets that already had the floating B- like Philco and Canadian RCA, etc. There is no way to make one of these sets 100% safe but there are ways to make them less lethal, and in spite of what some think adding a polarized plug and swapping which side of the line goes to the power switch doesn't cut it.
Regards
Arran