Premier Radio.

[Shaman]

[attachment=534]Premier Radio, sold in kit form, or i believe could be bought assembled, usually from Practical Wireless and other radio magazines. This one has a white cabinet ( bakelite ) they came in brown and wood, this one works great, anybody else have one?.....Alan.

[Aerodyne]

I don't have one but I do have a couple of the Little Maestros in brown mottled Bakelite that the cabinet was adapted from. This truly was a long-lived design; the only apparent differences between the Pilot cabinet and the ones sold by various suppliers in PW (it was sold as a kit by a number of firms, also as a cabinet with chassis, in both brown Bakelite and white Urea Formaldehyde) are the added side extensions to the louvres and the removal of the moulded 'Pilot' name just below the scale opening. The versions in wood cabinets were also plundered by the PW sellers for their cabinets. Pilot produced several differently housed Little Maestro designs in the early 1950s but as far as I remember, none of the newer designs were ever used by kit suppliers.
A very neat little set, whatever the source.
-Tony

[Shaman]

Hi tony, this little set came from a boot sale, for pennies less the output valve, its going well now and has a space on the shelves with all the other radios, i like the pilot radios, dont know why i just do, ..........regards....Alan.

[Aerodyne]

I like them too, Alan. I think the design is more attractive than the much more popluar DAC90A, though some of the Pilot idiosyncrasies re line cord droppers and heater transformers might put some people off. The kit sets varied quite a lot, I believe - and of course there was the choice of TRF or superhet. All kit offerings, as far as I know, were live-chassis but in any case with such a compact cabinet the chance of finding the space to fit a full-size double wound mains transformer was practically nil. There must have been a lot of kits sold - they turn up on Ebay quite often. If I had the chance of one for pennies, I'd jump at it!
Best wishes
Tony