[Jukebox-list] RE: AMI G-200 questions.

[David Breneman]

--- "S.R. Boland" <digiovanni13 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> OK, glad to hear that... now maybe that's something I
> could actually attempt myself.

Very simple - it's mostly the wires to the light
fixtures and a few other things.  Be careful of the
little plastic clips that hold the wires against the
inside of the cabinet.  Those are brittle, too.  You
can gently pull out the old wire and push in the new
one, but if you get aggressive they'll break.

> Yeah, that's the one thing I can't get over, that the
> thing uses those little 8" woofers... but they must
> have very large magnets to achieve a low bottom end
> (and well matched to the horn, as both you and David
> have said).  And I do know that two 8's will move more
> air around than one 10" and probably even more than
> one 12", so... OK...

Like several folks have said, big drivers are only
necessary when you have a non focused radiator like
the face of the speaker cone itself.  That doesn't
couple to the air very efficiently.  If you've ever
listened to one of those Bose tabletop radios, they have
very good bass response with a 4" speaker because they
have an "accoustic labrynth" (acutally an RCA idea from
the 1920s) that serves to focus and concentrate the
low frequencies.  Not as good as a tuned horn, but good.
Like I said before, pre-electric phonographs and
gramophones could fill a room with music with no
amplification at all, and most of those pre-1925 had
simple rule of thumb designs.  It wasn't until Bell
Labs made extensive accoustical experiments in the early
1920s that any real science was applied to the reproduction
of sound, and Victor's folded exponential horn Orthophonic
Victrolas that came on the market under their license in
1925 sounded as good as many electronic phonographs of 20
years later.

> But would you say that the bass on the G is as strong
> as on, say, a '50s Seeburg?  (I am really into bass.)

I don't have a lot of exposure to 45 RPM Seeburgs, so I
can't testify as an expert witness, but many machines 
which have pronounced bass achieve that effect at the
expense of treble response.  The G has a balanced sound.
You can pump up the bass if you want, and unlike a lot
of systems, it will not sound tubby or muddy, I enjoy
good bass response as well, especially on pieces with
a good walking standup bass line in them, and this
machine delivers that very well.

> I do remember reading somewhere that the later
> Rowe/AMI machines sound fantastic.  But now, THOSE are
> ugly... :D

Well, blame Rowe.  Vending machines are not revered as
sterling examples of industrial design.  But they
must have done something right because as far as I know
it's the only jukebox producer left that's not on
some kind of life support.  Seeburg's gone, Wurlitzer
is mostly into home systems, Rock-Ola is in new hands and
seems to be out of danger, but they're also big into home
systems.  Rowe-AMI is still making revenue-producing
machines that you see in real public locations.



David Breneman         david_breneman at yahoo.com


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