After many months of self-isolating due to the Covid threat, we finally got out to a few engine shows over the last month and a half, but after the Coolspring, PA show, I had scheduled some long-overdue shoulder surgery. So, that leaves me pretty much home bound for a few more months, unable to go to work. And, although a lot of fun projects at home are piled up, I'm not able to do many of those, either.
But, during all this downtime, I decided to revisit a hobby I had gotten away from for about twenty-five years. I dug out some old 1950's jukeboxes that I had never gotten around to restoring, and decided that if I did not do this now, my son would probably get to throw them away someday. So, after much work, some of which is still in progress, albeit very slowly at the moment, here are a few of the remaining jukeboxes that I am restoring.
All of them are early 1950's jukeboxes, as they had the most appeal to my generation, and value as collector items. Although much of the value is gone, at this point, l needed to dig them out from behind a pile of pinball machines and kiddie rides that are also stored in my basement.
One is a 1952 Rock Ola Fireball Comet, a fairly rare and desirable machine, even to this day. Another is 1952 Seeburg B, also quite commonly referred to as a "Happy Days Jukebox." This was the first commercially produced 45 rpm jukebox. And, this held fifty records, or 100 selections, which was more than double the records held by the 1951 AMI Model D-40 jukebox, which was one of the last of the 78 rpm jukeboxes. It is the one not fully restored cosmetically, although the amplifier and all the mechanisms are now restored and working properly. Believe it or not, this jukebox has an incredible sound quality for a seventy year old jukebox that plays seventy year old scratched and worn 78 rpm records! Finding any kind of early rock and roll music on 78 rpm records is very difficult, unless you want to spend more for twenty records than the entire jukebox is worth!
Anyhow, it's hard to build or even run engines with one arm in a sling, so I plan on getting some more done to my jukeboxes and hopefully a chance to do a lot of metal detecting over my next two month recovery time.
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