We have an older style Zenith record player with capability of playing up to 6 LP's or 78's as well as 8 track recordings. While getting the unit cleaned recently, the cleaners lost the needle cartridge and we are trying to find a replacement unit (for the needle). Does anyone know where to find the model or serial number?
If you lost the whole cartridge then you are probably out of luck.
Needle Doctor still caries Zenith replacement styli.
Your cartridge would have been a piezo type almost certainly Rochelle salt crystal.
I took this from Audiotools so you understand your problem.
The Piezoelectric pickup takes advantage of the fact that certain crystal structures generate electricity when put under a mechanical stress, this system is remarkably efficient, in fact so much so that a crystal pickup can generate enough voltage to drive a line input directly and is very cheap to manufacture but has problems with linearity, the RIAA pre compensation Eq. is designed to accommodate the characteristics of this sort of transducer. Almost all early piezoelectric pickups where made out of crystals grown in Rochelle Salts solution and where almost all budget devices although in the 50's and early 60's there where a few designs that attempted to gain higher quality, in some cases there was a noticeable improvement in linearity but that created a problem with the pre compensation and in those cases you will often find resistor networks inside the pickup that modify the signal back to that of a normal crystal pickup. As for old crystal pickups, these can be repaired or rebuilt but the crystal element deteriorates over time so even if you find a NOS unit chances are that you cannot use it without a rebuild or that the performance will be abysmal, thankfully however most carts of this type are still being made (or equivalents). In the 60's ceramic pickups started to replace the crystal pickups in the marketplace, they have the exact same characteristics as the ones made out of Rocelle salts but are easier to assemble and last much longer, longer than either MM or MC's in fact and in the 70's ceramic designs appeared that competed with other high end pickups in quality. Piezoelectric pickups are sometimes seen referred to as "Electrets" and the first company to design crystal pickups was Brush Development Company in the 1910's although they never actually made them themselves commercially but rather licensed the concept.
I'm not aware of a source of new crystal pickups any longer. You will not be able to use an MM or MC cartridge on that unit.
