AWA Radiola

By 1960 the writing was on the wall for valve based radio receivers. AWA hedged their bets with the B15.  

Not only did AWA sell it under their own name, they also marketed it under the Electrice (Brand of EMAIL and EMMCO); Sydney, NSW, and Westinghouse brands. Furthermore, there were mains transistor, and battery only models. See table below.

The B15, and it's branding variants, was a five valve set - the line up being BBE6, 6BA6, 6AV6, 6AQ5 and the ubiquitous 6X4 rectifier.

I presently have about 20 of the radios (Only 6 have been restored, most of the remainder are for parts.) I have repaired many more, and they are both simple and popular. However, the Electrice remains elusive, may have been more a NSW brand, and I only have 1 badly damage battery transistor version.

The chassis was long lived proving very reliable with excellent sound. It had a very small footprint with a concave front. Unfortunately, the case is so pared back there is no room for a Bluetooth module.

There were two periods, early one with coloured branding plates in the lower right, and later models with the white plate.
Colours: black. sherwood green, oriental red and deep lavender backs, all with bone white, or mist blue back with vista blue. By 1972, when the model run finished, they were only available in grey. Among my collection of 13 is a coffee brown back, so the list on Radio Museum is not complete. 

According to Radio Museum, there is no output transformer as the speaker is 80 ohms. However, the service manual specifies an output transformer, so that may be refering to the transistor model.

While very reliable, there a few things to lookout for.
It is quite hard to find a red back. Red, of any kind be it paint or plastic, is subject to fading by UV light. Such light is particularly strong in Australia. (We have the highest rate of skin cancer in the world.)
There is a gold paper sticker that surrounds the dial, this wears off, and so far has proved illusive to buy in that particular width.
The gold lettering wears off. This can be redone using a Pental paint pen, but you need a very steady hand!
Speaker clips are very tight, and the mounts are fragile and break easily. The solulion is to glue the speaker in place. Unfortunately, this means it is difficlult to scrub the front face.

The other thing is to ensure that you follow the modification either in Silicon Chip magazine or originally in Radio Waves. You need to be a HRSA member for Radio Waves.

Page last updated - January 2023