[Arran]

I was not suggesting that the bleeder resistor was good, bad, or unnecessary, just that they fail regularly in 18/118 set, and it was somewhat of an archaic feature for a set of that time. I did not know that it was related to the design of the power output stage but that does make sense, what I remember reading was that bleeder resistors were used for filtering in some early AC sets, which means voltage and or current regulation. What makes these a bit of a pain is that there were a proprietary Philco part, 7500 ohms I think, which is not a standard value of a wire wound, so you need to pair up two resistors to replace it. I suppose in practice it's connected somewhat like a Zener diode, but working out a Zener substitute might be a tall order. However I don't like using "Sand" in a vintage radio without a good reason, or unless there is no other option like with a dead selenium rectifier.
Regards
Arran