While visiting my sister in Mountain View, California, we decided to take a trip down to Hearst Castle, near San Simeon, and take a couple of tours through it. At one point a tour lead us to the great Assembly Room where at the far end of the room, next to a roman statue of a female, sits this Zenith radio housed in a huge fancy cabinet. I believe the cabinet was designed to house the radio and speaker in the left side compartment and house the phono in the right side compartment. I believe that the cabinet dates from around 1928 to 1933 while the Zenith radio (I don't know the model) dates from 1940 or so. I think the Zenith radio may have replaced an earlier radio which was installed in that cabinet. My question is is this cabinet from a brand name radio manufacturer or was it purely a third party cabinet to which any brand of radio could be installed in it? Has anybody ever seen a cabinet like this elsewhere? It almost looks like something Zenith, Scott or Stromberg Carlson might have produced in very limited quantity. My picture is the bottom one. The parks service dosen't allow flash to be used inside the castle so a long exposure photo had to be made. That's why it's not very clear.

I haven't been there is over thirty years, but I was under the impression that the radio was custom made. I do remember the tour guide saying that it was set so that only radio stations owned by Mr. Hearst could be received.

Could the cabinet have been made by the Independent Radio Co. as discussed in this thread? Looks like a good candidate.

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=185243&p=1542710#p1542710

The radio is one of the post-war (1946-1948) 12 tube chassis such as used in the 12H090. There also was a 14 tube model, but I believe it used brown bushbutton assemblies rather than black, but this could be a 14 tube chassis considering the owner.

-Steve

I posted the same last year...

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=170761

Stan, somehow I totally missed that posting, of yours, last year. I see it received some good comments but, still, nothing really conclusive. Maybe well never be able to come to a definitive identification to that cabinet and we'll just have to look at it as just another mystery custom cabinet of unknown manufacturer.

That makes perfect sense in view of the subject. The radio must have had only pre-set tuning, like a set of pushbuttons.

If the man himself happens to interest you, see Citizen Kane.

Larry

I've seen that cabinet with an "independent" talking machine in it. It was offered by the Columbia Graphophone company, but thousands of "art model" cabinets were taken back by suppliers after Columbia went bankrupt in 1920. These cabinets, which were of the absolutely highest quality, were then offered with various talking machine and radio equipments. The last of these cabinets were still being offered as late as 1928.

I once owned one of the "small Gothic" cabinets which had been fitted with a Victor mechanism at the factory. I recall an example of the cabinet in the Hearst home shown in one of the radio weeklies (c. 1924) as a custom job, fitted with a Victor talking machine (electric motor) on the right-hand side, and with a Radiola Super-hetrodyne, with its own loudspeaker ( behind a Gothic grille) on the left.

I was there a few years ago and missed that one. In another part of the castle there sits a Zenith 12H090, same chassis I think as one pictured, but it's a chairside, where u push a button on top and the record player comes swinging out of a trap door, cool radio , I had one awhile back.

I remember visiting a collector in Dubuque Iowa in 2005 when I was a newbie to collecting.
The collection he had was impressive and his showcase radio was a huge dark wood console he claimed
had belonged to Al Capone.

I am about 90% sure the cabinet looked like the one pictured at the top of this thread BUT
with a different radio installed in it. The fellow has since passed on and I don't know what happened to his radios.