[Jukebox-list] SEEBURG M100A TRIVIA

[Ron Rich]

David,
  From what was told to me, most, if not all of the basic design work for the "A" mech was done pre WW II.  All that was left to do was the final "tweaking", after the war.
  Humm--would they have called it a V100 ?----I think that the 78 mechanism would indeed fit into that cabinet-----
  Ron Rich

David Breneman <david_breneman at yahoo.com> wrote:
  
--- Ron Rich wrote:

> I can 'splain that as it was 'splained to me---
> Seeburg was unsure that "100" selections would be a hit with the
> operator. They never wanted the operator to see the fact that only
> about 10-20 % of the records, made up 99% of play (as they found
> out in pre-release testing). It turned out that the "locations"
> forced the 100 play sales, not the operator.

That makes sense. It certinaly couldn't have been that hard
to include a popularity meter. Wes' response suggested that
the 45 mechanism was the ultimate goal of M100 development
even as the M100-A was being designed. It's certainly
possible, as RCA had been working on a "compact disk" since
the late 1930s. But I have a hard time believing Seeburg
considered the M100-A a "stopgap" because so much R&D was put
into it, and none of the record changer tooling could be
applied to the 45 RPM mechanism. So I doubt they were looking
to the 45 much before the M100-A came out. RCA's paper on the
development of the 45 came out in June of 1949, after the
M100-A had been on the market for half a year. I've always
wondered if Seeburg made any real money on the M100-A at all.
Hard to imagine all that tooling was paid for in just two
years' worth of production. Even though they were a leading
force in the success of the 45, I'd imagine they were
expecting a much longer transition period. Does anyone
know if there are any surviving design treatments for 
follow-on models with the 78 mechanism? A 78 version of
the VL-200 would be really cool. :-)



David Breneman david_breneman at yahoo.com



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