Popularity

[Sean Regan]

A few people know I'm into vinyl jukeboxes, I've two and I've had them for over ten years.
I've not bought any records for some time, but recently bought a few to "ring the changes," in one of them, although I've over thirty in a record rack, that are now "out of favour"
The problem with a conventional jukebox, is that if you want to add a new record, you have to take one out to make space for it.
Now throughout time, this was always the problem for jukebox operators, as it is now for me.

You can't always rely on what you think is popular

These things cost several thousands to buy or were expensive to rent. Their prime purpose was to make money for the bars and diners that had them.
So there had to be a way of deciding which record to take out, that wasn't making them much money.
Now you couldn't have a blanket policy, because different establishments might have a completely different clientel to the next one, so they may have had different choices of music.
Tthe makers of jukeboxes pre 1980 devised a mechanical method of determining those records least played.
This was done by a "popularity meter."

This is the one in one of my jukeboxes, it's at the bottom of the photo.

Every time a record is selected, a linkage rotates the meter and halts it as the record is removed from the carousel. A linkage you can see by the total use meter actuates a little brush which cleans the stylus before the tone arm sets it down (it does it on its way back) to) and the linkage carries on past the right hand side of the turntable to an actuating lever in the middle of the back of the meter.

This advances one of the curved pins one notch through to the other side.

The numbers on the rim of the meter, match those of the title cards in the display. From this the operator could see the numbers of the least popular records and take one out to put in the new one.

On completion of this task, they would press the button in the middle of the meter.

Then all the pins would spring back to the zero position.

If you aren't bored with this by now, here's my YouTube video of the operation of a vinyl jukebox with a simplified explanation in the write up.

Well some have been interested in the past as it's had nearly 10,000 hits, but has taken nine years to achieve them.

 

[Peace perfect peace]

Ive still got two record players ive had for years and as you say the old records are now coming back on the market and are snapped up,
I think this just shows the music today is'nt anything like it was during the 50's 60's etc
But even simple things can go wrong with any music delivery system,
One of my record players plays perfec if i put an old two pence piece on the head of the arm just above the needle, it seems that little bit of weight is all it needs to play for hours and hours,

It was the same when i played drums in the group years ago, i had an old kids dressing gown inside the base drum (the one on the floor played via a peddle)
Pre using this dressing gown the drum would vibrate and the top hat and large cymbal would rattle away when not needed,
It was due to some old flooring in some of the places we played,

To learn these things as time passes on is what makes a interest get better and more understanding,
Some times you wonder why didn't the makers know this or that,
I have a small SIROMER tractor, and it has a front mounted exhaust pipe that points upwards towards the sky,

No problem here "you might think"
But the pipe "when it rains" gets water going down it and this water collects around the manifold,
Not a good place for water to be anyway,
So i have an old metal dog food tin that i put over the top of the pipe to stop rain getting in the pipe,
The only thing is more than enough i get in the tractor and forget the tins sitting on top of the pipe and when i start the engine the tin shoots up in the air and "Henry" shoots after it (only for biscuit reward when he brings it back)
Daft as this may sound, it all makes life more interesting thanks to some ones design mistake and life the way we know it,

Playing now "Since you"ve been gone " by rainbow"

 

[Sean Regan]

There should be a tone arm adjustment for your record player. There's usually a long thin coiled spring under the arm and you can increase or decrease the pressure by moving the point at the front of the spring where it attaches the underside of the arm, forwards or backwards, by a notch or two.

I'm still very vintage audio, with a turntable, cassette deck and wall mounted speakers from 1972.
Combined with a 1980 hifi tuner/amp.

There's also these, jukebox wall boxes from the seventies which with an adapter and iTunes playlists on second hand 3rd generation Ipods, let me select tracks and play them through my hi-fi. So I can still get the "jukebox experience."