I may be getting a jukebox
 

For years, I've wanted an older vacuum tube jukebox with a visible record mechanism. Lack of space and lack of money have prevented that from happening. It seems like most people around here want hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars for beat-to-heck older boxes or even more modern boxes that have little interest.

Lately, a friend put me on to someone who has an old Rock-Ola box; but, no one can tell me anything concrete about it. My friend said he thinks it has a visible mechanism; but, "thinks" is not quite good enough. He did tell me that the owner said that it still had records and would load selections; but, the audio output was very weak. The owner said they'd take $100 for it like it is.

I talked to the owner over the phone and all they could tell me is that it's a Rock-Ola, looks like "the ones that were in the honky tonk's many years aog", and they think it uses tubes. I didn't want to ask a bunch of questions because I was afraid that might make a light go off and then the price would go up. And, from all the years of buying radios, I know not to trust what they tell you over the phone. I've heard claims from owners that would leave one to believe that I'd be getting an old tube radio; only to arrive and find some junk clock radio from the '70's.

The person that has the jukebox lives about 35 miles away and I'm trying to set up a time to look at it. Hopefully, it will be something I like; but, I've got a feeling that it will be some ugly solid state model from later years.

I was looking at youtube videos of various Rock-Ola boxes and there is a Rock-Ola princess from around '62 that several people have. This model still uses tubes and has a visible mechanism. Then, there are some later models from the '65-'67 time period that have a small window where the turntable platter can be seen. I think these models still use tubes.

Anyway, wish me luck.

Good luck!

If it is pre 1950 I'll be giving you that Yosemite Sam line that Sandy G is famous (infamous?) for....

I have an AMI 55C. They refer as having 110 selections. 25 watt 6L6 PP amp. Player mechanism completely visible. Works well, but slight problem with the accumulator. I doesn't give proper credit. I heard it's probably the least valuable of the boxes built at that time. I don't care. I personally like it. That's all that counts.

The 55c has to be about the ugliest of boxes...its a box..literally. the 110 selections sound off...most AMI's had about 80.

I will say that AMI had pretty decent amps. Rock-ola sound wasn't too shabby either.

There's a jukebox mailing list if you wanted more opinions about what whatever boxes. I don't remember where it is, I know my boss subscribes to it and gets a ton of messages. You'll have to google for it, don't know it offhand.

Personally, my opinions are you go Rowe/AMI if you want good sound...they generally have very basic simple amps. Low part counts, clean audio. Avoid Seeburg. They overengineered their amps and not only are they difficult to work on, I've never found them to be that great sounding. Saw an amp where someone rebuilt it around a simpler 6l6 design...much improved sound. Wurlitzers are ok...but their boxes from the 50's were notorious for using the Cobra tonearm.

Sent from my Samsung Intercept with Tapatalk.

I overhauled one of those mid '50's Seeburg amps for someone and it was a royal PITA. Someone had already re-capped it at some point with those horrible '50's red "tiny chief" plastic paper caps. Of course, they were all leaky by now and these leaky caps caused the output transformer to burn out. A friend has already clued me in that the Seeburg mechanism is much more complex in comparison to other brands.

About 1.5 years ago, I actually saw a later Seeburg 45 box for sale at a church rummage sale. It was an upright model and the title strip panel was V shaped. They said that someone had been working on it, without success, and that I could make them an offer on it. My gut told me to leave it alone.

There's another '80's box at an antique store. I don't know the brand; but, it's one of those "plain jane" models without much character. I think she wanted around $400 for it; which, I don't see happening.

One of the church thrift stores had two '40's 78 boxes that were trashed and missing parts; but, he still wanted something like $500 each for them.

Back in the early '90's, a friend had a circa '55 Rock-Ola 45 box and a '40's Wurlitzer 78box (the round top model with all the lights that everyone goes crazy for). They looked good; but, needed work to the mechanics and the amp. I tried to buy one, or both, from him and he wouldn't hear of it. One day, I went to his house and noticed the boxes were gone. I asked about them and he said that two guys were roaming the neighborhood looking for antiques to buy. They offered him $300 each for the boxes and he let them go. Needless to say, I was sick when I heard this. I would have happily bought those boxes at those prices.

There was a pizza place in the next town east of my old neighborhood that, in the '70s, had an AMI "Stereo-Parti" 45-rpm jukebox, lots of lights. Round "bubble" top, the turntable and records were visible through the bubble. This box also had an indicator that would show if the record selection was odd or even; this indicator was on a curved arm that encircled the turntable (at least halfway, IIRC). I don't know anything about the amplifier, but it sounded fairly good. The place had several jukeboxes before the AMI, one of which was a full-size Seeburg.This place, however, never had a box with the remote control heads that allowed record selections from a customer's table or booth. The AMI box probably lasted and worked well right up to the end, when the pizza parlor finally went out of business; I'll never know now, as I had left town by the time the place closed for good.

BTW, I always wondered what the "TT" (the second T was inverted) position at the far left end of the record selection bar on most older (1950s-'70s) jukeboxes was used for. Was this a test position for the record selector mechanism? Did the technicians who worked on these have a special control box that would force the turntable carriage, which often had the manufacturer's name on a cover in front of it in script (on boxes so equipped) to the TT position for test purposes? I bet VK member AUdubon5425 (Ryan) would know about this, as he services coin-operated amusement machines (jukeboxes, video arcade games, etc.); however, the boxes he works on probably don't have mechanical turntables or record selection systems, instead having Internet connectivity and the ability to store and play mp3s -- this being the 21st century, I wouldn't be surprised if this was the case. However, I'd be very surprised if any of today's video arcades or restaurants still have the old-style mechanical jukeboxes. I imagine most of them were scrapped years or decades ago, except for those boxes now in the hands of collectors.

I think there is one restaurant (waffle house) here in town that has a 45 box. From what I hear, internet jukeboxes are the latest thing. And, one can still buy new pressing 45 rpm records (some of these records are current hits). These records are geared towards the jukebox crowd. I've actually seen some recent 45's that had the words "for jukeboxes only" printed on the label. In the early-to-mid '90's, EMI released many Beatles 45's on colored vinyl and these were meant for jukebox use. I used to have some of these colored beatles records; but, gave them away. Now, I wish I still had them.

My neighbor ran a drive-in restaurant from the early '50's until the early 2000's. This place was most popular during the '50's and '60's and by the time his health got too bad to keep it open, it was more like a bar that did very little business and it was basically just somewhere for him to go everyday. He told me that back in the day, the jukebox would make him enough money to pay the power bill. In later years, he said the jukebox didn't bring in enough money to justify having it there.

Rockolas use pretty much the same mechanism from the very early 60's to the late 70's. We have worked on a lot of them. The mechanism is probably the simplest out of all the major types and most types use a magnetic cartridge for good sound quality (some did use a ceramic but they are easily convertible to magnetic).

I think Rockola went to transistorized amps around 1967 or so. The last tube type amps used 7868's. Rowe jukeboxes continued to use tubes into the early-mid 70's.

I just watched most of Chad's Youtube video featuring his AMI (Automatic Musical Instruments, I'd guess) jukebox, and realized that I was mistaken as to the model name. This box is AMI's "Continental 2 StereoRound" 45 RPM jukebox from 1962; unless AMI came out with a box later in the '60s or early '70s it dubbed the "Stereo-Parti", I definitely was in error.

I looked up "AMI jukebox" on Google a few minutes ago and found out that the company was founded in 1935; they were making jukeboxes until at least 1978-79. I saw no references, however, to Internet-connected or mp3 AMI boxes, so perhaps the company left the business long before this type of jukebox started replacing the old mechanical ones.

Speaking of Internet-connected/enabled mp3 jukeboxes, how much smaller are they than the earlier mechanical ones? I would think any 21st-century mp3 jukebox would be much smaller than its predecessors, since the new ones do not have turntables, tone arms, 45 rpm records, or record selection mechanisms. I'm sure these new boxes take a lot less electricity to run than the old AMIs, Seeburgs, et al. as well, since they have solid-state amplifiers and no turntable motors.

AMI/Rowe is still very much in business. Not too long ago they bought Rockola's commercial operation. The AMI name is mainly used today as the supplier of the downloadable music on modern boxes. The last AMI/Rowe 45 box was the R-93, made in 1988. They still are producing CD jukeboxes and of course the internet boxes.

I can tell you that by 1974 Rowe boxes were solid state.

Up until last year I worked for a large amusement company who is a Rowe house, so I'm kinda familiar with this stuff :)

I don't go to bars too often, but I have seen a couple of the online/download-type jukeboxes, and they were wall-mounted devices with touch screens. On at least one of them, you paid more for a song if it had to be downloaded, but the amount of selections available was amazing, probably thousands of songs.

AMI=Automatic Music, Incorporated. The 1962 Continental 2 Stereo-Round model that I am working on is the last model made by the original AMI company, they were then acquired by/merged with Rowe. The next model after the Continental 2 was the first to use the Rowe mechanism with the tonearm on the left side and the mechanism in the bottom of the cabinet. This same mechanism continued to be used (with some modifications for computer technology) up till the last Rowe 45 RPM jukebox.

I am thinking there are some Rowe models in the early 70's where they offered the option of a tube or solid state power amplifier. I know our Rowe MM-6 which I think is from '72 has a tube type power amp/solid state preamp.

I wish jukeboxes were more common like they once were. Pizza Hut was about the last place that wasn't a bar which had them but they seem to have taken them out.

I'll add that the Rowe CD mechanism was a direct copy of the 45 mech.

Also, there are many internet boxes (wall and floor models) that are conversions from CD boxes. There were ventilation issues leading to CPUs overheating, with converted wall boxes being the worst. I was getting pretty creative working around those issues. The factory-built internet boxes have much better ventilation.

I miss the work, but am glad I don't have to deal with most of the bar crowd anymore.

The onternet jukeboxes are putting regular ones out of business. More overhead...because you need to supply it with an internet connection. But they are taking over. The sizes vary...they're usually smaller than a trafitional, but still take up room.

The "remote heads" one talked about. They're called wallboxes. Seeburg included the stepper units to run them in the jukeboxes, the other guys, it was usually an extra add-on. That is one reason you see more Seeburg wallboxes than anything else.

Funny story about that. This diner up in NW DC (Chevy Chase neighborhood) has a bubbler reproduction...not sure if its the Wurlitzer OMT or the Rock-Ola clone...but they're using vintage wallboxes with it through the use of a converter. I can't remember if its a diner up here in Fairfax or one out in Warrenton (I live in Virginia) has a hide-a-way unit that's controlled exclusively by wallboxes. This allowed them to stick the guts of the unit somewhere and save space.

Well, I don't know what's going on with the owner. I had someone with a truck lined up to go look at it today; but, I've made several attempts to contact the owner and they won't return my call. I'm going to ask some of my flea market vendor friends to keep an eye open for something. Surely, if I look hard enough, I can find a restorable tube unit that won't break the bank.