I find it curious that they both seem to have a large cutout that accepts a chassis that has a small panel, including the knobs and dial, that covers the cutout. Any chance that the cabinets were somewhat generically produced and that this is still the original? That unmarred label has me puzzled and the layout of panel matches the cutout quite well.

John

I've been wonder about that too. Many radios from that era had the same knob & dial layout - close enough to swap cabinets. I believe this cabinet was sold without a radio - perhaps to manufacturers - perhaps to the general public.

Now that I've seen a really good photo of the interior of a "real" 931, it's pretty obvious that my radio is still attached to it's original mounting board. It's meant to slide into a slot in the Sparton cabinet. It's just sitting on a shelf in mine held in place with four bolts. The real clincher is that the original speaker wires with their spade terminal are about 3 inches shy of the speaker. Someone put little wire extensions on to bridge the gap. Overall this cabinet appears to be about 20% bigger than the original.

I can't explain away the label though. It appears to be unmolested and I can't find any area where an old label might have been removed.

Entirely possible that your cabinet is original, that the factory needed some alternate-maker cabinets to finish a run, something like that. After all, there's that label that looks authentically placed. Also notice the rear view of the set over on ARF: the speaker cone looks the same color as your Jensen. Of course, radio mfrgs. used speakers from various vendors, Jensen, Utah, Rola, etc.

Reece

Could be. Even if it isn't I don't really mind. It's all certainly from the same era and looks great :)

If it helps at all, radio manufacturers of the period would sell just the radio to various furniture stores, who turned out a cabinet to hold them. I have friends in Seattle with a wonderful Atwater Kent model 60 in such a custom cabinet (with medieval castle decor) and I have a Midwest chassis that came with a simple wooden face so you could slip it into your own cabinet.