I just pulled this exact model out of a lady's basement and everything seems to be working on it but the cartridge is broken and the needle is gone.

Can you send me a link to what I need to buy to replace?

Thanks for any help,
Benji

These people may have cartridges for your Zenith. I purchased a needle assembly for a 1965 Zenith console recently from them:
http://thevoiceofmusic.com I overhauled a 1965 solid state Zenith console chassis recently. Had Germanium transistors and two of them in the lower level audio were noisy and bad. Otherwise caps were not a big issue from testing them. Had to clean all the controls and switches and replace some lamps in it. Now it works fine. I got the SAMS manual based on the chassis number stamped on top of the chassis. It is sort of a family heirloom unit. You can hook a CD player to the "tape in" terminals and probably any other line level source. Thing is built like a tank. I shied away from the thing for years till it became practically unusable but dove in head first and got it all cleared up. The plug in transistors allowed swapping transistors in the audio stages between channels to pinpoint the bad ones. Without having to test them outside the unit. It was worth the trouble. It does not see much use but my mom picked it new and always loved the thing. She likes to play CDs thru it with a portable CD player and headphone jack to phono plug adapter.

It seems you are ignoring the part where you won't be improving anything. These older TOL stereo units were better reproducers of sound than anything on the market today (or the past 25-30 years for that matter). Don't be fooled by the watt ratings of new units. Since the mid eighties mfgs have pushed the power at the expense of accurate reproduction. Search the net, there are numerous examples of comparative sonic tests between old and new and old wins every time. They just sound better.

Larry

Thanks!

I reached out to them and hopefully will hear back soon.

BB