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Upgrading a Rock-Ola Jukebox with Co-axial speakers?


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Hey guys,

Got a strange one here.  On Tuesday I'm planning on buying a 1982 Rock-Ola 488 Jukebox.  It's a 45 rpm stereo machine with two 12" woofers and two 6" midranges.  It's been fully refurbished both mechanically and electrically.  Total disassembly of the mech, greased, new bushings, etc.  Amp has been recapped, new transistors, etc.

 

My concern is there's no tweeters.  As a kid, I've always liked jukeboxes but thought most sounded too dull.

 

I was thinking of some way of adding tweeters to it without modifying the cabinet.  Then I got it, co-axial speakers!  My only concern is finding something that will fit and sound decent.  I don't want car speakers.  I was thinking something older with a horn.  To me it would make the most sense to leave the 12" drivers alone and look for 6" coax jobs.  Did anyone make 6" coax units?  Or should I look for 12" ones and leave the 6" hooked up too?

 

Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself since I haven't even seen the machine yet.  I'm going mostly off of old memories.  I'm just thinking it might be nice to add a little high end to it.  Or would that bring out sounds from the amp, etc that I don't want to hear?  LOL.

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It wouldn't hurt to try. B&C has a 6.5 inch coaxial, but they are about $150 each. Might be a little steep to experiment.

 

Does it come loaded with stereo 45s? I used to have some.

 

Bruce

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Ouch, that's definitely a little pricey.  Not too far from the cost of the jukebox!  I don't think it comes with records unfortunately, so I'm going to be looking for them.  I'm looking for 60s through 80s.  Beatles, Beach Boys, Doors, Pink Floyd, Alan Parsons Project, Supertramp, etc.

 

As far as speakers, I think I'll just enjoy the box as it is for a while.  Perhaps I'll be perfectly happy with it as it is.  I suspect I'll be busy enough grabhbing records, printing labels, and loading it up that I won't have time to focus on anything else.  I'll be sure to post more pics when I get it!

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Thanks for all the information and suggestions.  I'm packing up to go get the jukebox now!  With any luck in a few hours it should be sitting in my living room getting my paltry few 45s put in.

 

All the suggestions sound interesting, but they're more expensive than I had anticipated.  I'm going to see how I like it as it is first, and go from there.  I'll post pics once I have it!

 

Thanks,

Jon

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Well, no go on the jukebox yet.  It was acting up, not grabbing the records.  He said it hadn't been used in about a year so he was going to check everything out and fix whatever was wrong.  He expected to be done sometime next week probably.  However I did grab about 300 records for $100.

 

However it's turning out to not be as good of a deal as I had hoped.  Most are stuff I'm not interested in, and even worse, almost half of them are moldy!  This has me very concerned because the jukebox was in the same room as the records.  When I touched the one silver trim panel on the outside I thought I felt some mold.  I really don't want to bring a moldy machine into my pristine house.  I also wonder if that's what's causing the problem.  It's a shame because he does good work, he just has a lousy house to keep the machines in.  The area really should have dehumidifiers running all the time.

 

So, I'm not sure if this is going to pan out or not.  I'm going to talk to him again and ask if he can clean it up.  He' asking $475 for the machine, so for that money it really needs to be right.

 

-Jon

 

EDIT:  I'm picking through the records more and I realize the mold is totally inconsistent.  Some are a bit moldy, while others are pristine.  Kinda seems like they must have been pulled from different places and assembled in the boxes recently.  He said some of them came from old jukeboxes he got.  It's possible the bad ones were from a trade in jukebox that was store poorly before he got it?  Just trying to give him the benefit of the doubt.

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Well, I have the jukebox today.  He changed out the computer and it works perfectly.  Turns out it's definitely not going to need any tweeters.  With tone controls set in the middle it's plenty bright!  So, I guess that's that.  He also brought over 450 records, so I've got a lot to pick through.  Should be able to get it loaded up and labels printed out in the next few days hopefully.

 

Pics will follow shortly!

 

Thanks,

Jon

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 7/29/2018 at 12:36 AM, Dave1290 said:

Have tons!  Let me know when your ready... :)

 

Hey Dave,

If you have records in good shape I may genuinely be interested.  I've got my machine loaded up, however the ones I have are complete garbage.  I'm honestly gonna take most of them out, enact my revenge on them, then trash them.  There's just nothing left of the grooves for my turntable to get ahold of.

 

I need records that are in good shape and actually track worth a damn.  I like 70s-80s stuff, Pink Floyd, Supertramp, APP, Chicago, a *little* Doors, Carpenters, Olivia Newton-John, etc.  I'm so frustrated with my machine skipping all over the hockey pucks inside posing as records.

 

The holy grail jukebox record for me would be Guns N' Roses- November Rain.  As a kid I used to love playing that on the old Rowe-AMI machines at the local arcades while playing pinball.

 

-Jon

 

I'm also going to shoot you a PM.

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  • 4 years later...
6 hours ago, Zebra said:

Dave 

 

I am wondering if you might have some 70's and 80's rock n roll 45's that you might be interested in selling.

 

 

 

Thanks 

Terry


If you click on Dave’s username you’ll see he hasn’t been on the forum since 2020.

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Back when I was living in Memphis (75-80), we did an interview with Sam Philips. Later went over to where they had a storeroom of 45s. Stacks and stacks of Sun Records. They had, for a while just let folks in to search for titles they wanted, but finally stopped it.

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