1940 Aristone Console Radio – Model 170

This radio is an Aristone Model 170 console radio. While the dial escutcheon has ‘Aristone’ as a part of the moulding, an advertisement in the in February1940 also refers to this radio as an ‘Air Player’ This was a house brand used by Myer Emporium for more than a decade. The advertisement below shows the price being ‘slashed’ from £21 to £14”10 despite just coming on the market. The commencement of WWII led to a change in consumer behaviour

1940 Aristone Console Radion M-170 Back view

1940 Aristone Console Radio M-170 Advertisement

This was more of a upmarket model for that year with a 5 valve circuit and received MM and SW. Radios receiving short wave were heavily marketed to receive cricket broadcasts from the BBC. It featured the new ‘Selectographic’ later called ‘Flash-o-graphic’ dial and 8 inch Rola electrodynamic speaker.

Aristone and Air Player branded radios commissioned by Myer Emporium and made by various manufacturers and sold in their stores around Australia. This particular radio has ‘Flash-o-Graph illuminated letters for the State of Victoria. One imagines that call signs for other States were inserted into the radio at time of manufacture.

Where this radio was purchased in Victoria and moved to Tasmania with the original owner or whether the local radio market in Tasmania to have Tasmania call signs placed on the Flash-o-graphs is unknown.

This radio was purchased at auction in 2022 and as with most radios of this age, it did not work. The original Rola speaker was present in mint condition. The original electrolytic condensers, while still presnen had been disconnected decades ago. It was common for radios of this period to go in for repair every few years as some of the parts were not as durable and reliable as they are today.

Radios of this era also were not as electrically safe as they are today. In bringing this vintage radio back to life it has been made electrically safe with the provision of an On/Off switch, a fixed connection to Earth and a fuse. Even so, the voltages operating inside these old radios is very much higher than in modern domestic appliances so that tampering inside the radio is strictly prohibited.

As a part of modernising the radio, Bluetooth has been added to enable connection to smart devices. See the instructions to enable this. In this case a small 5volt DC circuit has been added to an existing 6.3 volt AC line in the radio to produce the power to run the Bluetooth circuit board, visible in the top right hand corner to the image to the right.

The Aristone model 170, has two terminals on the back of the radio chassis to enable a record player to be connected to the radio amplifier circuit so that records could be played through the radio. This was designed as a ‘hot’ pickup with the radio remaining connected while the record player was also connected. The higher impedance of the radio circuit resulted in it going silent when the lower impedance record player was being used. This was not totally reliable and it was recommended that the radio be tuned to a silent part of the broadcast spectrum while using a record player.

This radio has been modified with two vintage RCA sockets on the back of the chassis. One socket carries the radio output signal from the radio part of the circuit and the other socket carries radio/audio signal to the volume control and the rest of the amplifier and speaker. Together with the bluetooth audio signal, these three wires meet at the switch at the top of the cabinet to enable the radio to be connected and the bluetooth disconnected, as visa versa. The switch also turns the power to the unit to be turned off as the function is switched between radio and bluetooth.

Another interesting feature of the radio circuit is the lack of conventional volume control. This ‘volume control’ is a wire wound voltage divider designed to carry much higher voltages than a regular volume control. It controls current at the first radio signal converter vacuum tube of the circuit. This is the reason that the ‘volume control’ does not work with the bluetooth signal which enters the much later in the signal pathway.

Maker of the Cabinet

The cabinet does not have a makers label There were many more cabinet makers than radio manufacturers.

Detail of the Cabinet

This cabinet is very art moderne in character with very rounded edges to all elements of there the design. It retains the gently sloping central panel with dial window and control knobs. The central panel is Queensland Maple which had been used fro several years in many different cabinet designs. The specialty veneers of the two side columns with the Zebrano strips separating the upper and lower sections are a real statement of quality

The grille cloth in front of the speaker is the original wicker, not a common choice at the time

Your vintage radio collector Malcolm Grenness is a member of the Sound Preservation Association of Tasmania, the Historical Radio Society of Australia and Radiomuseum.org. There is more information on this actual radio on the Radiomuseum.org website. This vast archive and community of radio collectors features over 120,000 radio model listings and 350,000 photos and schematics.