Saw this on the auction site we all know. an Admiral 5BW. It looks to use a circuit board straight out of an American AA5 radio.

From pencil markings you can't see here, it uses the 6V version of the AA5 front end, 6BE6, 6BA6, 6AV6, and the other two tubes look to be a 6AQ5 and a 6X4. These tubes have different pinouts, so the circuit board's traces would have to be differently laid out. That would require a different etch mask, but they could still use the same punch press pattern to make all the holes.

Would Admiral stuff the boards in the USA then ship them to Australia as a sub-assembly to be assembled into complete radios in Australia?

It depends when it was built. There were Australian content rules for several years. I can't make out the name on the speaker. The tuning gang looks like a common "Stromberg Carlson" pattern which was used in many makes and the transformers Australian.

What I will concede is that I have only seen imported Philips & other European sets with printed circuits.

Marc

The speaker is an MSP (by AWA) and the main part of the cabinet bears a striking resemblance to the STCs of the era.

I am not certain if Admiral even had a factory here because over the years 'Admiral' branded appliances seemed to be made by other firms. In the late 1980s it was fashionable to buy an Admiral fridge but these were made by Hoover at their Meadowbank, NSW factory, for example.

This set looks like one of the classic 'bitsers'. The cabinet could well be an STC job. AWA for the valves and the loudspeaker, transformers by Ferguson, figure-8 flex by CMA Cables, the plugtop by Clipsal, and the biro lid holding the antenna coil by the last owner.

Marc mentioned Philips. Philips quite often used the same cabinet designs around the world but usually put locally made innards in each market. Silicon Chip magazine has run several vintage radio articles of identical Philips cabinets with very different guts in them, mostly comparing Australian chassis to their Dutch equivalents.

By the way, I enlarged the photo to make things easier to identify.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

The parts on the circuit board looks to be made with American parts, the IF transformers (they look like ones commonly used on AA5s on circuit boards), tube shields (usually only found on the 6AV6 or 12AV6), tube sockets, caps, resistors, and the "coplate" (a ceramic module that contains the audio detector and driver to output tube resistors and capacitors). The rest of the radio looks like other Aussie radio chassises I've seen, including the transformers and the tuning cap. The ferrite rod support on the right end does look like a ball-point pen cap with the shirt clip cut off

Coplate:

G'day,

The ARTS&P decal on the left of the chassis may provide a clue.


Cheers, Graham...

I have seen these coplates or couplates before but never had any idea what they were until now. I restored one of these Admirals years ago without a circuit and hoped for the best.

http://www.kevinchant.com/uploads/7/1/0/8/7108231/5bw.pdf.

I am not certain if Admiral even had a factory here

The address for Admiral was Gow St., Bankstown. There is no indication of whether it was a factory or not. From what I understand about Admiral in Australia I believe they did import some of the componentry, including circuit boards and some valve types (& possibly even couplates!).

As far as I remember there was no actual restriction on importing radio parts, apart from a steep tariff and because of this it was not uncommon to see radios with a few foreign parts in them, such as this Admiral. Another example was turntables for records, most of which came from Great Britain. As Marc mentioned, the import of a fully manufactured radio was restricted though, to protect what was such a large industry in a small country with a small economy at the time.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

It seems that Admiral did indeed have a factory in Bankstown going by these two articles from Trove.

Very different from the articles we read on the manufacturing sector these days. Everything is written there in such a positive light whereas these days it is all about cutting costs, bulldozing the factory and growing someone else's economy at the expense of our own. I think CEOs like to refer to it as rationalisation and realising synergies.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

QUOTE: I think CEOs like to refer to it as rationalisation and realising synergies.

How about "unlocking shareholder value"... a.k.a. cash in and run off while the going is good..

Maven

Yeah, the so-called options packs that form an add-on to their salaries don't help much. They get converted to shares upon their 'retirement' and then cashed in. Then again, a choice of that or a company going insolvent it is probably the lesser of two evils.

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A valve a day keeps the transistor away...

Admiral Australia did manufacture in Australia , they did however "import" most of the designs from their parent company in the US, adapting them for local conditions and local content wherever possible.
The circuit board whilst based on the US design; would have been made locally with required redesign for parallel heaters and valve pin outs and possibly component spacing's.
The Speaker and the tuning gang are from AWA-MSP also in Sydney.

Aus Admiral TV's had (unique?) red vertical-tubular PC-mount film caps, alien to Aus?