Doug, it's not so clear in the picture I posted, but from the other pictures I have, it's obvious that my AR-1302 did have the additional black trim paint, unlike Hardy's pictures. Unfortunately, it's still hard to pin a date down on my AR-1302... if I had to guess, I'd say we got it in 1974 or 1975.
Also FWIW I pulled down pics on a few AR-19s, 29s, and 1302s when originally trying to find "innards pics" to match my photo. All of them have the additional black on their faceplate. Although their provenance is unknown (just eBay auctions etc), I guess it at least supports the idea that the additional black was not a short-time fluke, and may have been available for quite a while.
If it helps anyone: A way to find pics like this is to first do a Google search on something specific (like Heathkit AR-1302), then click on the Google "Images" results for the search.
If anyone wants to, I guess they could see if the pics in the catalog changed over time. Although it would be problematical - Doug's already pointed out how they once used an incorrect old photo, and we all know catalogs (and websites) often don't reflect fine points of model revisions. The catalog pics we've seen in this thread supports it being available from the introduction of each line (right?). It makes me wonder what's going on, because I think receivers with the additional black look a lot cooler than MHardy's pics without it. It almost makes me wonder if there might have been some slightly off-spec pieces used at some point, or maybe a temporary trial of slightly different looks. But who knows. Anything could have happened, shrug.
Jones, my dad bought the Heathkit for me. I can recall that at the time, stereos were like beautiful women... you could lust all you wanted, but the really primo ones were way beyond your reach price-wise. (Laugh.) Oddly, now a lot of things have changed. I have a lot more money, and audio is largely a lot cheaper. The advent of the much better speaker magnets has made small, cheap ones really quite good compared to speakers from decades ago. Same thing for receivers. Yes, a ton of money WILL get you something better... but not so much better, like in the old days, because the new electronics and materials make relative good ones quite cheap. That's how it seems to me, anyway.
Where was I going with this? Oh, right: I never thought about it at the time because my dad got me the AR-1302 kit, but I suppose it was (and probably still is!) a pretty good receiver.
I've always wondered if the Heathkit people really made much savings by having folks assemble their kits, or if it's really a bit of a gimmick to get folks to think they're getting a great bargain making their own - thus appealing to two things (thriftiness and tinkering). Jones, that AR-15 is $350 as a kit, and $540 assembled, which is a 54% markup (540/350)... I can't believe that even skilled labor on an assembly line couldn't do what took us a few nights, in a dozen minutes (i..e, for a few dollars in a factory). If true, then, the "$540" assembled price existed mainly to inspire penny pinchers to buy kits, although I'm sure they did in fact get at least some orders from folks with more money than time (and that was fine with them, too).
Mike aka Heath
) for listening to some of the stuff we do today like The Carpenters (because of quad availability). 
