resistor in power cord
 

I have a olympic radio (6a606)that has a wire wound resistor in the power cord. Of course the cord is junk and here is the problem; I have two options, I do have a 20 watt resitor or I have a roll of resistor wire The diagram calls for it to be 540ohms.If I use the wire I will have a 4 foot section to try and hide(it gets kind of warm). If I use the 20 Watt resitor it gets really really darn hot. The radio only pulls 20 Watts and this resistor does not have to cover for the whole radio, just the 35Z5 rectifier tube and the panel light.The heat from the 20 watt res. bothers me though.Any ideas?, other options?

You could do a capacitance in series with the heaters to drop the AC powerline voltage without generating waste heat. See my web page http://pw2.netcom.com/~wa2ise/radios/compaa3.html#hcap that describes how to select a cap, and some simple SW and Excel spreadsheet to calculate it.