Radio Rentals 797

The Model 797 was made in the late 30's. This set is unusual, having been made by KB for Radio Rentals. However this arrangement did not last long because of the appalling reliability of the KB built sets. It must be remembered that as far as rental companies are concerned reliability is key, since every service visit is eating into the profit margin, the reverse situation to a normal wireless retailer. Therefore Radio Rentals discontinued its partnership with K.B within months, and utilised Ekco receivers for the majority of its range, with occasional input from the likes of Cossor. This model is actually in a greenish bakelite. I have seen the 797 in the more usual mottled brown, which I believe incorporates a chassis from the Ekco works. The 797 is an uncommon model anyway, but I have never seen another one in mottled dark green (or any other Radio Rentals receiver for that matter). It could be that only K.B. based receivers were supplied in the mottled green cabinets, but I do not know for sure. If you have a K.B. based receiver I would be interested to compare notes. Valve line-up is 7D5, APV4, 15D2, 9D2, 11D3. Presuming the majority of valves to be original I assume the valve supplier at this time was Micromesh. (Micromesh was a valve supplier to K.B. in the early 1930's, The APV4 would seem to be a equivalent replacement). Note the plug to disconnect the speaker from the chassis to save de-soldering the leads. Even little things could save a serviceman's time, and Ekco had already provided this feature on many of their own sets, like for instance the AC85 and AC86. 

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