Pictured a little larger than life, this array of resistors and hand-wired craftsmanship is what lurks on the underside of the circuit board on the early Zenith Royal 500 radio. It wasn't long before Zenith moved to the use of printed circuit boards, a logical production decision and an innovation some other makers had already adopted; but there's something really special about these earlier pieces of electrical artwork. That cute little red component to the left of the center is the Raytheon 1N295 diode. I only discovered that this puppy had been re-capped by the previous owner after purchasing the radio. Would have preferred to do the job myself so I'd still have the original caps, but such is life and it doesn't detract much from the radio.

This is what we call "o-make" in Japanese, (a little extra treat at the end). The maroon sample pictured on these pages is serial number 38056 and sports the dark blue dot code at the top of the battery holder.