There were many small radio receiver manufacturers in Australia
until the Japanese began to dominate the radio manufacturing industry in the
mid-1970s. In most cases, these small Australian firms made radios for much
larger organisations like Myers and similar chain stores. The sets were branded
to suit Myers and the various other organisations that did not make radios
themselves.
This re-badging has been part of the radio and TV consumer
market almost since radio made its appearance early last century. Of course,
once a set was opened up, its true manufacturer was usually obvious to an
experienced serviceman.
The Aristone M1
The Aristone M1 is one such set that was made by a small
manufacturer for a large retailer, in this case Myers. As far as I can
determine, "Aristone" was the name Myers used on the radios badged for them but
I have not been able to discover who actually made the Aristone sets.
The M1 was a fairly standard 4-valve mantel receiver that came
housed in a plastic case. It employs a conventional superhet circuit, with a
6AN7A converter stage followed by a 6N8 as the 455kHz intermediate frequency
(IF) amplifier – see Fig.1.
The diodes in the 6N8 are used as the detector and for the
delayed AGC system. From there, the detected audio is passed through the volume
control and then to the 6M5 audio output valve.
The power supply uses a 6V4 as a full-wave rectifier. This
provides around 260V DC at its cathode, which is then fed directly to the plate
circuits of all the amplifying valves.
