Editing Zenith Electronics (section)

===Hand-wired chassis===
[[File:Zenith Tube Box.jpg|thumb|upright|Zenith vacuum tube carton]]

In the late 1950s, many electronic manufacturers, such as [[RCA]], [[General Electric]] and [[Admiral (electrical appliances)|Admiral]], were changing from hand-wired metal chassis in their radios and televisions to [[printed circuit board]]s. While circuit boards save time and errors in assembly, they are not well suited for use with [[vacuum tube]] equipment, in which high temperatures are generated that can break down boards, eventually causing the boards to crumble if one attempts to remove a tube. Zenith, and to a lesser extent [[Motorola]], avoided this problem by continuing to use hand wired chassis in all their vacuum tube equipment. Zenith kept circuit boards out of their televisions until the Chromacolor line of the early 1970s, and even then used them only with solid state components, mounting the four tubes used in the Chromacolor "4 tube hybrid" on the steel chassis. Zenith began using circuit boards in radios when they converted to solid-state in the late 1960s, but even Zenith's early transistor radios were completely hand wired with socketed transistors. Due to the use of this chassis construction (and the high quality components), Zenith televisions and radios of the 1950s to 1970s found today are often still working well, needing little work to restore them to like-new operating condition.