Have you noticed the historical links here. "Using the playmaster circuit" playmaster was the brand of amplifier that was sold in the original " Dick Smith" electronics stores before they became another Retrovision. And now we are witnessing the demise of Dick Smith stores.

RT&H magazine and its successor Electronics Australia used the Playmaster "brand" for its projects for decades, right into the late 1990's -- if not later.

By arrangement, after it came into being, Dick Smith Electronics made kits available for most of the Playmaster projects of the day.

Their house brand was DSE.

Woolworths drove DSE and Tandy into the dirt and gave Jaycar the greatest free kick in the history of retailing.

Yes I remember the days when I was just a teenager ( not long ago lol ) when I could walk from home to dick smiths and buy speakers and other components and then go to mitre ten and buy enough wood then walk home and build my own speakers from scratch. In Tamworth where I grew up we had a choice of Tandies or Dick Smith. So we as kids were pretty spoilt for choice and it was good for us to be creative. Now well what do we have , I have to admit that Jaycar is now my Bunnings/toystore.

I think the last Playmaster was the 60-60 in the mid 1990s. There was an 'original' version and a more expensive 'Blueprint' version with better quality components with tighter tolerances. A Playmaster AM-FM tuner was described not long after this amplifier.

I agree with the comments on Woolworths. What they don't use to tie shoppers into relying on them they pretty much destroy. Shutting Tandy down was a trainwreck of an idea. Changing Dick Smith from a hobby store into a little Harvey Norman was equally a trainwreck. The sad thing is, even accounting for the demise of these retail chains, Woolworths still controls 40% of the retail landscape in Australia and they are the largest owner of pubs and poker machines in the world.

Woolworths' ineptitude must be a source of enjoyment at companies like Jaycar and Bunnings.

In Tamworth where I grew up we had a choice of Tandies or Dick Smith.

I spent some time in the Electronic Dick's Kable Ave store myself some years ago when I lived up that way.

Nowadays only Altronics offers any real competition to Jaycar, but their stores are few and far between and, like Coles and Woolworths, their prices tend to track each others anyway.

I do miss Tandy in its early days. With its American house brands like Archer it offered genuine alternatives to what could be found at DSE.

The valve line-up in my amp/AM-radio is 4x 6GW8, 6BA6, 12AX7, 6AE8.

I had in fact opened it when I first received it. This is because I had replaced the original speaker sockets with phono sockets. They fitted straight in without needing to drill extra holes. Since it seems the original amp used a 12AU7, I may have put the 12AX7 in there.

Knobs (left to right): Volume, Treble, Bass, Balance, Selector, Tuning

Selector choices (left to right): Reverse, Stereo, Mono, Radio. (Reverse means the left and right channels are swapped around)

Back panel (looking at the back, left to right): Right input, Left Input, Right speaker, Left speaker.

What model would mine be?

Yours would be the Playmaster 106 from December 1963. 12AU7 was specified. Tuner's detector should be a germanium diode such as OA90. Original speaker sockets (as per design) were 5 pin DIN.

Thanks. It has no labels or names at all, and no station markings.

It appears to have been professionally made.