Hello All,
Have just purchased an Aristone mmodel very, very similar to Brad's as shown on the Very Old News Page here... http://wireless.iserv.com.au/default.asp?m=main&id=home3

Mine is the exact same body shape although my knobs are different (suspect non-original replacements) and has the different dial glass to Brad's. Does anyone know the approx vintage of this model radio? And can anyone suggest how I might go about restoring the dial glass, which is intact but has the majority of the paint flaked off?

What is the usual process for restoring dial glass?

Thanks for your help. Am really enjoying the website.

Mine has the small baseless valves which became commonplace after about 1952. They were first introduced in 1949 though didn't make much of an impression in Australian sets immediately. Many models made at this time had a mixture of the octal valves and baseless ones. Further research has identified that this model carried several brands though the case didn't seem to have a badge, instead the brand was on the dial glass, though my receiver doesn't even have that - it's totally nameless.

Regarding the restoration of the dial glass, a chap who is or was a member of the HRSA offers(ed) such a service though I am not sure if it was for every model or just some of the significant models like the Empire State Radiolettes. Contacting the HRSA might get some results here.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Thanks Brad.

yes mine has baseless valves too.

As for badges, just between the two knobs on the front is a rectangular area that appears flatter (or even slightly raised) as though a badge of some kind ought to go there. It's about 3 cm wide and 1 cm high. Don't know if yours has the same.

Have you heard of anyone having luck re-creating dial grapics and screenprinting them? Seems a likely way to restore such things.

Cheers

Oh... one more thing... as you can see from above the orange paint in the dial artwork is very poor but the white seems to be fairly intact. (The pic is clickable to get a larger image) Does anyone know of other good quality photos or scans of dials online so I might get an idea about what's needed to reproduce the dial graphics?

Thanks

It's funny and it doesn't seem to be specific to any particular era but there were many models made where the paint for the numbering was made of a very durable substance and other models where it was made of something water based and I've had a few times where the numbers and letters just wash off.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Brad,
Any chance of you posting a clearer pic of your Aristone's dial glass? Would be nice to see it for reference / comparison purposes. May help me in my recreation efforts too.

Cheers

Not to scale but fairly close. Also, this example only accounts for six of the eight states/territories. Maybe WA and TAS had their own dial as this was common practice in the late 40s/early 50s.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Heh,
Interesting how they all cram up at the bottom of the dial!

Yours is totally different to mine, which has 6 states (but no territories) represented.

Helpful though, gives me some clues about what's missing from mine.

BTW Brad I may have a source on that Kriesler 11-7 you are after... I know of a non-working model that looks like what you need. If you want to discuss further maybe we could email rather than take up space in the forums. I'm at shane_richelle at optusnet dot com dot a u

Cheers

Shane.

Oh! Where are my manners?
Just re-reading and realised I didn't say thank you! Thank you Brad for scanning / photographing that dial glass for me. I sure hope you didn't pull the radio apart just to do that for me.

Also just realised that your dial works opposite to mine. Yours has lowest freq at top and highest at bottom whereas mine is reversed with 1600 kHz topwise and going down to lowest.

Would this mean they are fundamentally different inside?

Cheers
and thanks again.

The territories will probably be accounted for on your dial. Have a look for 2CA in the NSW section and 5DR in the SA section. The former is a commercial station in Canberra and the latter the local ABC station in Darwin, which became 8DR when the laws relating to callsign allocations changed which allowed stations in the mainland territories to change their number prefix from 2 to 1 and 5 to 8 respectively.

Re: The Kriesler, I am still after a dial glass and a knob for mine though I am tied up with a few other commitments at the moment. I'll keep it in mind over the next couple of weeks and will contact you when the pocket book is being a little nicer to me

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

My dial is too far degraded I'm afraid to see if 2CA or 5DR is there, sadly.

I do know all about 2CA though, I used to work there! Not to mention 2XL, 2CC, then to Brisbane at 4BH & 4KQ (I'm omitting the FM stations also affiliated within those networks) and some long distance work for 2GY Gympie and 6IX Perth.

I also think you may have that part about changing from 2 to 1 backwards as the ACT is still very much 2. At least that's how they id themselves.

Cheers

The change was from 2 to 1 though only one station changed as far as I know and I think it was 1RPH. On the FM band there is 1CMS, 1WAY, 1ART, 1XXR (known by the old callsign of 2XX) and 1CBR (Mix 106.3). I am not sure what the other stations identify themselves as - most of the time it is too hard just keeping track of radio stations with the way they change their branding so often.

Looks like you had quite a career in radio. I helped a mate at 2GB do some voice-over work for Val Morgan Advertising once but that was about my limit there.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

I had a thought (I sometimes have them) - I should put a list of all radio stations on here. Might take a while to compile the list though...

Information included might be: callsign, identity (if different from the callsign), date founded, founded by who, current owner, location, etc.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

That's a BIG job. Believe me. Although the list of who owns them is getting smaller and smaller all the time.
I do remember 1 RPH from Canberra and the FMs always went by MIX or HEAT or whatever name was trendy that week.

A list that includes original broadcast frequency and current freq might be useful, all AM stations nowdays are on a freq divisible by 9, eg 1053 2CA or 882 4BH. But once upon a time in my Childhood I remember 4CA in Cairns where I grew up was on 1010 (and is placed there on old radio dials) likewise 4BH here is brisbane is shifted from where it used to be on the old dial. Why the decidion to shift frequencies?

It was one of those odd-ball decisions made by the Department of Communications, or whoever preceded them - similar to the decision to increase the number of VHF television channels from 10 to 13 and include channel numbers' 0, 5A and 11 instead of 11, 12 and 13. Now in relation to this, there was a proposal about ten years ago to further increase the number of channels and Channel 9A was included in the proposal, not that it means alot now as television tuners don't have fixed identification anymore and all new transmitters are only allocated channels on the UHF band.

It should be noted that no other country adopted the 9kHz spacing, not that I am aware of anyway and Japanese radio manufacturers complained that making a seperate tuner for Australia would make receivers sent here more costly - something that never eventuated.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...