Let me explain -

First of all this is not the best  Remler Superheterodyne. It seems that "Best" is the fellow that designed and marketed this particular adaption of the Remler Super. It is distinctive because of the use of the fixed value dropping resistors for the audio tubes and the use of only 3 UV 299s in the IF section. The resistors look like a big fuse and are rated to drop 6V to 5V for a particular tube which is marked on the case/paper cover. Cool right? Well sort-of. The rest of the tube filaments are controlled by 2 variables. One must be used for the 3.3V UV299s and the other for the remaining tubes.

When I got this radio it was a mess. It had been wired with rubber insulated wire in a haphazard fashion, It had 4 of the little fixed resistors/holders controlling 4 separate tubes, only he used the wrong values. Two were for UV-201 (1 Amp) tubes. Then he had 1 correct rheostat and one that was 800 ohms which was not hooked to anything. He was also in the process of adding a 9th tube - not wired. Also, he had picked an oscillator coil that was a plug in variety, as recommended in the build documents. Only it wasn't an oscillator coil. It only had 4 contacts - two windings. It was missing the inner choke winding.

It makes you wonder: How many of these expensive projects ever really worked (see other examples below). But does illustrate the dedication and determination of the builder to succeed. To bad there was no e-Pay or Amazon back in those days. He could have just returned it!

Above and below - As found.

So after examining the rather scarce information of the various versions of this design, which includes some of the early Scott supers, I decided that it most closely resembled the Best Super 8 and proceeded to reconstruct it as such.

Once finished I concluded that the moniker "best" was probably inaccurate for a very simple reason. Trying to regulate the RF, Oscillator and Detector tubes with only one filament control makes the radio nearly impossible to use. Certainly it has a poor performance in receiving all but strong local stations. It could easily be fixed by adding 2 more filament controls. Then you could even use a gaseous detector like the UV-200 (A). But no. it was not designed that way. The result was one stage either starving or swamping the next.  Also the oscillator tended to stop. Turning up the filament voltage and then back down restarted it with a noticeable click.

The "after" shots - Wired with square buss wire, avoiding the use of heat-shrink on the top side of the chassis. The colored wires are for the 3 "C" voltages.

I would not have wired it in this way. I would have used different routing for the conductors but in this case, I wanted to use the holes that the original builder drilled rather than adding a bunch of new ones. So I did the bet I could with what I had. I think I only added 2 new holes to the Bakelite panel.

Need some vintage wire?

Reinstalled into the cabinet in which it was found.

 - - - - - For a 91 year old radio.

Around 1925 Electronic Research Laboratories (ERLA) made a series of reflex receivers with crystal detectors under the model name "Superflex". These were 3, 4 and 5 tube kits, though they had also made 1 and 2 tube kits as well.

Our subject is a "Superflex Cir-kit-5. There are several unique things about this radio. First, it worked when I got it after being stored for decades. Second, it was assembled in a reasonably competent manor. This is not, on average, true. Third, the shipping container was still with the radio.

Now, these kits had some unique parts, There was the sealed crystal, to be used as a detector. And there are the little 2 and 3 way splices which were just clamps held together with a screw. This eliminated the need to solder anything and was significant in the assembly both surviving and working in the first place. Bad solder joints are the rule rather than the exception in these early kit radios. Just to back up this assertion, of the last 4 kit radios I have acquired, 2 probably never worked, 1 might have worked poorly, but this one still worked well.

Yes, it worked well, for a reflex circuit that used a crystal detector. It worked well if you sat close enough to the radio to fiddle with one or two controls every couple of minutes. Otherwise your signal would slowly degrade to garbled words or a squeal. The radio is very sensitive to slight changes in cathode temperature and/or changes in B+ voltage, less so on strong local stations. DXing required a dedicated operator. Otherwise it was loud and sensitive with push-pull output.

I had always thought that one of the first instructions in these kits was "go out and cut the appropriate sized board to mount your components on". Not this one. If you look closely in the center of the empty tube socket, the board is stamped "SOCKET" indicating parts placement. ( CKET is visible )

The little red labeled reflex transformers are also cool. The single blue one just helps in antenna coupling and only 3 of the 4 contacts are used. Almost all of the parts are marked ERLA.

So, now where am I going to keep the box?

- - - - Apparently owned Heintz & Kaufman the famous early transmitter manufacture:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dollar

Which is just one of the interesting aspects surrounding this latest restoration.

With ties to the Dollar logging operation in Portland and other West Coast cities, this radio, or at least most of a radio, is another fine example of western manufacturing.

I'll let you read the listing above for more background. Here, is the 3 tube detector and 2 stage audio amp:

If you look carefully, you'll see the mistake the engraver made by placing the word "BY" in the wrong place and then engraving "Robert Dollar Company" on top of it.

Heintz & Kaufman was not known for making consumer electronics. It is almost a sure bet that this apparatus was installed in one of the Dollar Steamships. It was probably accompanied by a matching tuner section that would have been hooked by buss wire to the "TICKLER" and "RA RE" connections since this is just a detector/amp (DA) with no capability of tuning except the presence of an 85 mh choke.

It looks like the manufacture attempted to prevent corrosion in a marine environment by using enameled buss wire and coating all of the connections with a black substance. While this did preserve the connections - internally, the external connection hardware had a noticeable amount of insulating green crud that had to be cleaned prior to testing.

I am happy to report that the "Detector" stage hummed when touching the RA terminal (RE to ground) and each of the successive stages hummed louder, which is all you could expect missing the tuner.

This is probably a very scarce item, but I am hoping to find the Two missing knobs.

I am, today, working on a single stage tuner. Once it is completed I'll see how it sounds coupled to this unit.

It is possible that this radio was designed primarily for CW reception. I believe that it would have been manufactured in early 1925.