1962 Zenith 12 tube AM FM Stereo demo

MJ-1035. I swapped out the Zenith left external speaker with a KLH 7001 Professional Reference speaker, as Zenith made this marvelous set, all hand made point to point wiring (no printed circuit boards assembled by machines, American workers, mainly women, hand wired and soldered every piece of this), and inexplicably put shitty speakers in it.

I was not disappointed. I listened to blues and Grateful Dead and more on this on NPR last night, and was floored by the detail, tone and depth.

Next going to try running the wires from the stock internal speaker to another KLH, so I can hear what this set is like in full syereo.

This set has an early stereo decoder, so when in stereo mode instead of mono, when tuning between stations you hear a lot of hash noise. This is not bad silver mica breakdown, it is normal for this era. Modern stereo radio signals are different than when this was designed.

Kind of cool that this set uses 12 tubes. Most FM capable sets of this era use only 6. The only sets you usually see with this many tubes are serious very expensive ham radios. Add to that many of the tubes in this set serve 2 or 3 functions, and it performs more like a 20 tube set.

Going to be careful to be able to return the set to its stock speakers when desired.