Here is my story about tarting up a Operatic 37MA. It is my first genuine Bakelite cabinet mains radio
Unfortunately it was a bit chopped about to go to the point of RESTORATION so I just fixed the mess up and then TARTED it up and made a goer out of it.
There was plenty for me to learn doing this as it has had a transformer burn out and the replacement of that was less than professional. So once more I had to drill holes and straighten a mess up and then redesign the circuitry a bit to make it work in a more logical way. It is a nice little performer in the end. I also found out where to get speaker cloth in many different designs.

Fred.

Refurbishing an Operatic M37

File uploaded.

This cabinet was used by several companies. The original radio in this cabinet was a Kriesler and half a dozen brands appeared soon after. I am not certain as to whether each company put their own chassis in or Kriesler supplied them too.

Regarding your problems with 2RPH, I believe they transmit from the original 2WS site on Leabon's Lane, Seven Hills, on the same original frequency (1224).

I used to repair my radios here, which is only about 10km from the main ABC transmitter at Prestons. So 2FC and 2BL (50 KW each) totally blasted away the other stations at the lower end of the dial. I would carefully adjust the radio so that a country ABC station on 548 was audible without 2FC on 576 wiping it out, and at the same time, making sure 2FC & 2BL didn't distort. This allows proper reception of country stations without overloading and other nasty effects.

The Kriesler bakelite cabinet Brad referred to was made by Marquis Mouldings of Arncliffe, NSW. It also at times has been referred to as the Aegis cabinet.

There is a PDF of Marquis products floating around here in the Forums.

Marquis Plastics

On the last page of the linked document.

Thanks for the extra info, I remember Commonwealth Moulding now and see the cabinet is in the Marquis Plastics sheet as part MRC1. That also showed the knobs should be MNK3's and I have a couple of those in a box somewhere.
I note that Marquis call the cabinet "plastic" probably because that was the cutting edge word back then but this cabinet is definitely a thermosetting Bakelite looking and smelling material.
Fred..