I recently picked up a really unique Salonola Wooden cabinet radio at the ACT HRSA meet 2 weeks ago. My uneducated Guess was it was French or European but no no no it's Aussie and made in Sydney. It's a direct copy of a Aristocrat Model 1051M . The valve line up is EK32, 6U7, 6B6, 6V6 & 5Y3. It's a really lovely example. The one issue I know of is the volume/on/off switch shaft is snapped ( how does that happen lol). I have a big EKCO on my restoring bench at the moment but this one is next. Will send photos to Brad .
Cheers guys.

Hi Carl, I have a Salonola radio with a Breville chassis & 8" speaker, the console still needs a resto, radio works & sound great. Wonder if it's the same as yours?

Cheers
Darrin

Hi Darrinh mine is a mantle/table radio. The photos should be up soon.

Photos uploaded to Post 2.

Thankyou Brad. As you can see the cabinet is near pristine. Will be getting into it soon.

Wow this set works but boy has it been bodgied up. It needs everything. A good clean and more deteriorating wires. The speaker wire is threadbare rubber coated but the field coil wires in the same harness is cotton covered! What gives? Anyway it's certainly fixable.

Well I had to stay up and wait for some parcels this morning so I spent 40 minutes recapping and replacing crumbling wires. Am sending another photo to Brad as I have some questions for you guys. It performs very well but can be better.

Photos uploaded to Post 8.

Thankyou Brad.
My question is this! In the Top photo you will see a voltage divider resistor near the power cord ( wire wound ). The larger section measures at just under 300 ohms, thesmall section when I can connect the wires measures at just under 30 ohms. To repair it I am obviously going to need a 30 ohms resistor but at what wattage? And what does it do? The radio even in this condition works very well. The 30 ohms section goes to the chassis.

Why replace it if it's working?

To answer the question, try a 5W one.

Robbert it's corroded and I don't think the 30 ohm section is connected properly or at all when it's running.

At a guess the w/w resistor is for setting the cathode bias of RF/IF valves. So it would be carrying a lot of the current flowing through a number of valves and as Robbbert says should be maybe 5watt.

One can clearly see the 8mfd cap is above ground, which means its negative is on the Centre tap, which further means that the 30 ohm resistor is "Back Bias" or part of it.

One of the things that cooks back bias resistors, or burns them is an overload like a shorted cap, or tube. The idea with that resistor is to have it "sailing with the wind". It is better to have it burn out like a "fusistor", than the transformer.

That could be wired wrong if the other bit is around 300 ohms? Normally the back bias resistor, or resistor chain, sees the centre tap at the grid bias of the output tube, viz -12.5V 250V plate for 6V6. Chassis positive in respect to CT. The back bias voltage is dependant on the cathode current of all tubes as all of it goes to ground via it. Therefore it is a diagnostic. Resistor 60mA total current, that's under a watt at 12.6V

Seeing its a 6V6 grid resistor, or resistors are usually high& need replacing 1st AF/Det plate resistor can be high.

You can easily work out the value of the back-bias resistor.

Assume the 6V6 draws 50mA. The rest of the radio, 20mA. Adds up to 70mA (0.07 amps)

The 6V6 likes about 12 volts bias.

Ohms law gives you 12/0.07 = 171,4 ohms. Using the nearest (higher) preferred value is 180 ohms.

How many watts will it dissipate? Easy. V times I = 0.84 watts.

So a 1 watt resistor will do the job and, as Marc suggests, will burn out quickly if something goes wrong. A good plan.

That is assuming there is no voltage divider adding to the current draw. These things were often added to ensure there was enough current for the electrodynamic speaker. If you don't have one of those it is better to ditch it and use suitable dropping resistors for the Mix/Osc and IF screens. 22k is typical, it's not critical.

You can measure it, divide the B+ voltage by the value you get, that will give you the current in amps. Add that to the 70mA we assumed earlier and recalculate.