5 Valve broadcast band upright consolette. Available with or without a pull-out record player.
The Challen was said to have been made under licence from the Challen Piano Company in England and utilised "Scientific Tone Projection" - which was a fancy way of saying the speaker pointed up, and sound was reflected off the lid, which could be set to any angle the listener desired - although the lid was also flock-lined and this might have had some effect on the upper frequencies it could distribute (not that this would be an issue with early AM broadcasts). On the positive side, it would allow the sound to be directed straight at the listener by rotating the cabinet and setting the lid accurately. This gimmick was likely designed to mimic the action of the lid on a grand piano.
Advertising shows a radio consolette being available in mid-1948, and a radio-gramophone consolette being available in mid-1949. No further advertising was seen after early 1950.
Notes found on the following brochure would suggest there were three models, RAF, RAL and RAM however the model RAM is a mystery and does not appear on the factory serial register. It is unknown at this stage if there was any difference in code for the versions with the record player.
The RAF has a 5V broadcast band radio, the RAL is believed to have a 6V broadcast band (no service data has ever been sighted for this version), and it is possible the RAM was a 6V DW - hopefully more examples will show up in time allowing more research on the differences between models.
Sales can not have been as high as hoped - there seem to have been very few made and only one has ever been sighted by the author, for sale on an online auction site in 2021.
Intermediate Frequency: 460kc/s
Frequency Bands: 1
Chassis Notes(most schematics can be clicked to download a full size version)
General Construction Notes for Radio (1936) Ltd:
Early Radio Ltd. schematics did not show the models, just the year, valves and bands, so some sleuthing is required to find the right one.
Early 30's Ultimate models with three digit model numbers indicated both the number of valves in the set, and the price it retailed for - for example, the model 856 was an 8-valve radio which retailed for $56 pounds. The equivalent Courier models were reversed, so an Ultimate 856 was a Courier 568 (theoretically, at least). This was the Auckland price though, and often the sets would retail for 1 or 2 pounds more in other centres, presumably to cover the freight cost of moving them around the country from the Auckland factory.
Note the use of old resistance terminology on older schematics: ω means ohms and Ω means megohms.
Some 1936-onward 3-letter chassis codes vary the last letter between brands, for example:
BBU - Ultimate model BB
BBR - Rolls (and Golden Knight) model BB
BBC - Courier model BB
All use the same chassis.
Golden Knight, Courier and Rolls appear to use the same copper-painted chassis while Ultimate chassis' are painted silver
After the war a new model code system was introduced, whereby radio models all began with R - the first model being the RA, a dual-wave 5-valve set commonly released in a pressed tin cabinet.
MENU
