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Introductory Information for Zetron Equipment Commentary by Mike Morris WA6ILQ

If you have a manual PDF that we do not have, a wiring hint, a programming trick,
or any other useful information, please consider writing it up and sending it in.

Zetron's product line is oriented towards the Land Mobile Radio marketplace - they manufacture nothing specifically aimed at the amateur market. However, a number of amateur repeater and remote base systems have made use of Zetron equipment to resolve specific issues, and the spec and catalog sheets and manuals we've accumulated can be found on the Zetron Index page on repeater-builder.

The only reason that we have a Zetron section at all is that Zetron Corporation has a bad habit of not having any manuals in any form - not even PDFs - for any equipment not in current or very recent production. Since the mid-1980s almost every manual has been created on a computer and making a PDF after it is complete can be done in a few minutes with a free program like "doPDF". Scanning an older paper manual costs maybe an hour. Disk storage is tremendously inexpensive. In early 2020 I bought a new two terabyte disk drive for US$100 (that's 2,000 gigabytes).

Downloadable PDFs cost nothing but server space, and not having them is a good definition of lousy customer service and a way to make past customers really unhappy. And refusing to make Windows-compatible programming software for your products is an other example of lousy customer service (note I didn't say a Windows application, I said a Windows-compatible app, there is a big difference). Unhappy customers tend to explore their options and end up finding other / alternate manufacturers. And acquiring a new customer costs a lot more then keeping an existing one.

Another example of lousy customer service is "edited" manuals. The Zetron Model 38 factory manual is a good example of this. The manual index says that the schematics are in Chapter 6, but the Chapter 6 pages are BLANK! Someone that has a community repeater (the term used in commercial two-way radio for a shared repeater) that is controlled by a Zetron 38 that happens to need a trivial repair is going to look in his manual and find blank pages. He has a bunch of annoyed (if not irate) users that can't talk to their units. He's going to remember just how helpful Zetron was when he's ready to buy another community tone panel or other device.

Speaking of being unhelpful, your author knows someone who works for an agency with a large amount of Zetron euqipment. He told your author about an event when he was 7 months into the job. He called Zetron with a minor issue on one of their products (he didn't know about the pin 4 issue on the programming cable). The first problem that they ran into was that the Zetron person demanded a sales order number for the unit they were calling about. Of course, he didn't have a number, the unit had been in place for over a decade. He was not able to provide an order number and the Zetron person couldn't use a serial number, or a agency name, or an address, or anything but a sales order number. That basically ended his first Zetron experience. One of the senior techs handed him a interconnect cable (labeled "Zetron Only") and told him about the weird pinout. It's just that sort of Tech Support runaround that will send pissed-off customers to other manufacturers.

History: Zetron was founded in 1980 by John Reece and Milt Zeutschel and they started building radio paging encoders. In 2007 JVC-Kenwood bought the company. Before 2007 Zetron was known for being a customer-supportive company. Not so much afterwards. It was purchased by Codan Limited in April of 2021 for $45 million cash. The new management reformatted the web site, dropping all info on a LOT of non-currently-sold equipment. All support of older equipment has pretty-much ceased.

No Zetron copyright infringement is intended. The only reason this web page is here is that Zetron has totally abandoned their past customers... if they had these files on their public web site we wouldn't need to.

Legal: Zetron, Simplexor, Worldpatch, Microconnect, Repeaterman, Europatch, Deadbolt and a bunch of other terms are either service marks, trademarks, or some other legal mark and no infringement is intended.

Contact Information:

The author can be contacted at: his-callsign // at // repeater-builder // dot // com.

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This page created 01-26-2013 when the the main Zetron index page was reorganized.

This web page, this web site, the information presented in and on its pages and in these modifications and conversions is © Copyrighted 1995 and (date of last update) by Kevin Custer W3KKC and multiple originating authors. All Rights Reserved, including that of paper and web publication elsewhere.